The best of Around the Storage Block in 2012
2012 was quite a year. I'm not sure how I feel about it but there was enough bad news in the world that I'm hoping 2013 brings better days. But I can't help but feel really good about HP Storage, what we've accomplished, and the groundwork we've laid for 2013.
Looking back in the rear view mirror
I thought it might be interesting (and hopefully useful to some of you) to highlight some of the better videos, podcasts, and blog posts of 2012. I'm not using any qualitative process here to do that but I am looking at the metrics on blogs, videos, and podcasts and will use that to guide my lists. So here we go...
First, the top guest blog posts
The year's most viewed blog post wasn't even a blog I wrote - it was by Brad Parks. He wrote a blog post titled "What does my kitchen remodel have to do with big data". Brad - who I then asked to be my boss - also had the second most read blog on ATSB titled "How to avoid the 5 stages of storage grief". Ok - I didn't really ask him to be my boss but he is my boss and a good one at that. BTW, it did help that both of these blog posts were featured on the hp.com home page. One other guest blog post, this one by our StoreVirtual product marketing manager Kate Davis, was very popular titled "Built for virtualization: Introducing the new StoreVirtual Storage".
My top blog posts
Next I'll list a few of my best (and most viewed) blog posts of 2012. Here's the list, in no specific order:
- HP 3PAR SPC-1 results put to restAn industry analyst wrote an article for SearchStorage saying that we had short-stroked our SPC-1 results. Since we had less than 15% of unused capacity, there was no way in heck we short-stroked the SPC results.
- HP Storage integration with VMware - self-explanatory but if you don't know what we've done to integrate with VMware, check out this blog post. Lots of other people did! Note I also talked about a Wikibon survey - that survey is closed now.
- 12 year old ProLiant finally retires- this blog post stirred a lot of conversation and was pretty cool for me to here from a customers who had been using HP gear for years.
- HP 3PAR gets a boost with SSD - this blog post focused on the all SSD version of the HP 3PAR P10000 (now called the HP 3PAR StoreServ 10000). Since then, we also announced an all-SSD version of the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000. SSD continues to be a hot topic!
- HP LeftHand is the first iSCSI vMSC certification - I'm not sure if any other iSCSI arrays have been certified but the fact is HP LeftHand (now StoreVirtual) has had the functionality for a long time.
- HP ExpertOne Fast Track for Storage - my guest was Karl Kovacs and he game me an overview of HP ExpertOne and talked about how partners with certifications from EMC and NetApp can "fast track" an HP ExpertOne certification. With all the momentum we have in HP Storage, maybe one that a few channel partners need to hear. I'm counting it as a blog because I included a transcript and more people read it than listened to it.
A few ATSB podcasts to revisit
In 2012, I finally figured out how to get my ATSB podcasts on to iTunes. That made a dramatic difference, doubling the number of people that regularly listen to them. Thank you! You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes - go to the iTunes store and search for "Around the Storage Block" or you can open this link and click on the "View in iTunes" button under my picture. Here are a few of my favorites. Note the URL's point to the blog posts that have more context and the embedded podcast only.
- What is VM density with VMware and how to improve it is a podcast I did with fellow vExpert and HP Storage employee Eric Siebert. If you don't know about VM density, this is worth a listen.
- Andrew Friedman talks baseball and technology - Andrew runs baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays and this had to be the best guest I've ever had on a podcast.
- Virtual Connect and 3PAR with Flat SAN technology - pretty cool stuff when you have a solution that can save tons of money on infrastructure, uses far less parts, and faster. This was the most downloaded podcast of 2012.
- HP VSA and Veeam - we've been working on integration with Veeam and this was a podcast talking about our VSA and Veeam backup that I did with my friends from Veeam Doug Hazelman and Hans DeLeenheer.
- Something completely different, Naomi Psalm - I found local Boise artist Naomi Psalm on an indie music site (NoiseTrade). I listened to her songs and really liked what I heard to I asked her if she wanted to do a podcast with me. It was a fun podcast to do and lots of you listened to it. I've done a few more of these podcasts that are completely off the topic of storage like one on innovation and creativity that I did with Boise State professor Nancy Napier and a podcast I did talking to writer (and HP employee) Jim Haberkorn about his fiction book Einstein's Trunk. Jim let me read the sequel to Einstein's Trunk and I loved it!
Finally, a few videos to highlight
I do have a playlist of my ATSB videos on YouTube and I try to keep the latest and most compelling videos at the front of the playlist. Just for fun (and because I've never embedded the playlist on the blog), here it is:
Now here are some of the video highlights from 2012:
- I started a new video format late in 2012 - the HP Storage ChalkTalk. I did several of them around new products that we announced in November and December so it's tough to pick one or two that I really liked best; given the buzz around the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 announcement, if I have to pick one, that would be it. You should also checkout the StoreOnce and StoreAll chalktalks I did. Expect more of these going deeper in 2013.
- Another video format I started doing in 2012 was our Countdown videos. I did several of these for the announcement at HP Discover in Vienna but here's the one I did with Pooja giving an overview of our Converged Storage announcement. This was pretty cool based on where we did it. See if you can guess!
- I also have a demo of the HP EVA to HP 3PAR online import - it's rather new but already getting tons of views.
- It's not how much storage you have. It's how much you can do with it - I did a live webinar with the Sr VP and GM of HP Storage David Scott and storage consultant (and blogger) Chris Evans. It's the first time I tried something like this and a lot of you attended or watched the replay.
- The best customer visit I've ever had was to the Tampa Bay Rays so I have to include a video of my visit there. I was thoroughly impressed by the Tampa Bay Rays organization and hope I get the chance to visit Senior Director of IT Juan Ramirez soon!
- I did a series of videos with me doing some hands-on-labs with the HP StoreVirtual (LeftHand) VSA. There are four videos but I did a single YouTube video that has embedded links to the four hands-on-labs.
I hope you find what I do helpful and if you have any suggestions of topics you'd like me to cover in 2013, don't hesitate to either leave a comment, send me a tweet or email.
