Storage at SNW Fall 08

First published on TECHNET on Oct 31, 2008

The Microsoft Storage Solutions Division is participated at SNW this Fall at the Gaylord Texan in Dallas, Texas.

The goals at the event were to strengthen industry awareness and enterprise credibility of Microsoft storage technologies and showcase our partners end to end solutions in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion.

We highlighted partner solutions specific to virtualization, data protection and data storage on the Microsoft platform, demonstrating our technologies to a live audience through booth Demos and interacted with end users to showcase:

• Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V High Availability with Failover Clustering


• Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

We also highlighted what Microsoft technologies can do in enterprise environments in the Hands on Labs, and delivered 5 sessions covering a wide variety of topics, showcasing some key Microsoft storage practices and technologies

SNW Fall 08 Statistics

• 72 Sponsors


• 1300+ Registered IT End Users

Gaurav and Jose prepping their demos	Sanbolic, Nexsan, LeftHand	Booth during Expo hours

Microsoft Partner Pavilion:

Partner quotes:

“I had a ton of interest from customers and engaged in several opportunities” Frank (Nexsan)
“ Thanks for offering the Galleria booth to LeftHand (two of our best leads came from there )” Dave (LeftHand Networks)
“Overall, it was a great event and we were able to connect with many members of the Microsoft community and chat with many prospects.” Dan (AppAssure)
“ Traffic was even better in the Microsoft Partner Pavilion than our own booth, with more technical interactions!” Mike (DataDomain)

IT End User quotes:

“ Wow, I didn’t know Microsoft was in storage – what do you do?? ”=> This is one of the reasons we have done this event for awareness!
“ Isn’t everyone a Microsoft Partner?” in response to the “Please visit our partners for a chance to win…..”

Microsoft Partner Pavilion Sponsors:

AppAssure	DPM
Brocade	Hyper-V and File Serving
Bocada	DPM
Data Domain	DPM
EMC	DPM, Hyper-V
HiFN	DPM
HP	Hyper-V and File Serving
LeftHand Networks	DPM and Hyper-V
Nexsan	File Serving
Sanbolic	Hyper-V and File Serving

Microsoft Pavilion Demos:

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V High Availability with Failover Clustering

• Configuring Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with Failover Clustering


• Quick Migration of virtual machines between Failover Clustering nodes


• Using a Microsoft iSCSI Software Target as shared storage for the cluster


• Using a Windows Server 2008 File Server as shared storage for the cluster

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

• Continuous Data Protection for Windows Application and File Servers


• Rapid & Reliable Recovery from disk instead of tape


• Advanced Technology for enterprises of all sizes

Microsoft Presence

Hands on Labs

Darrell Kleckley was the Microsoft lead for the SNW Hands On Labs and he drove and organized the participation in four labs and also developed a new lab for SNIA (Server Virtualization).  Darrell worked with Micrsoft colleagues to serve as instructor for the labs.  The labs we participated in and their respective instructors were:

• Zero2SAN (Bart Denison)


• IP Storage (Bruce Langworthy)


• Backup and Data Recovery (Marc Kamstrup-Braad)


• Server Virtualization (Darrell Kleckley)

Many of the lab sessions were at full capacity and the students reviews were overwhelmingly positive.  Students really see value in learning about new technologies/scenarios (for them) on real hardware coupled with the participation of industry experts.  Microsoft and its technologies were well positioned and appreciated.  Many of the students were potential customer of DPM and some were Linux shops on VMWare that will now evaluate Hyper-V for future deployments….clearly some business value add from these labs even if the teaching is “vendor neutral”.

Microsoft Presentations

1. How to Choose and Evaluate Storage for your Environment: From the Consumer Point-of- View – Chris Lionetti


2. Green Storage I Economics, Environment, Energy and Engineering – SW Worth


3. SMB2 – Big Improvements in the Remote File systems - James Pinkerton


4. Scale Unit Computing - The Convergence of Blades, OS Virtualization and SAN Storage - Lee Donnahoo


5. Availability versus Protection -- and What is New for Windows Environments - Jason Buffington

Storage Networking World
October 13-16, 2008

Checked in:

IT End Users	708
Press/Analysts	58
Channel/Integrators	26
Total Quality	792
Total Vendors	923
Total Checked-in	1,715
IT End Users Registered*:	1,233
Registered quality audience*:	1,310
Total pre-registration*:	2,345 (excluding staff/guests)

The demographic breakdown for end user registrants for SNW Fall 2008 is as follows: