Seems like we've had a steady stream of announcements over the last several months and a few of them have come from our HP StoreVirtual team.  We made some enhancements to the HP StoreVirtual Storage in November, including changing the name from HP LeftHand.  I did a ChalkTalk on those updates.

About a month ago, we had a few more updates to share focused on new mid-range StoreVirtual appliances and I had another ChalkTalk with those updates.

Guest blogger Kate Davis is back—with news on the next round of new models for the HP StoreVirtual Storage portfolio. Get the run down on what’s new. If you’re an HP LeftHand customer, you’ll definitely want to check this out. And if you’re attending the HP Global Partner Conference this week, stop by the booth and she’ll show you the new HP StoreVirtual 4730 that is on display.

I've been playing around with the software over the last couple of weeks and made three HP Storage ChalkTalk videos.  I think they do a good job giving an overview of the HP StoreEasy NAS and HP StoreVirtual Storage solutions we announced last week. 

I plan on doing ChalkTalks more often so check them out and then let me ask you to answer a couple of questions with your comments:

1. Do you find this video format useful?
2. What topics would you like me to cover in future HP ChalkTalks?

Thanks for watching!

Yesterday I did my first live ATSB podcast  I have to give a small caveat - that I have done a couple of live webcasts.  I host my podcasts on a site called TalkShoe.com.  It was made for doing live podcasts and I've attended the VMware Community podcast more than a few times that is hosted on TalkShoe as well.  I guess I'm glad I finally did this because I should have done one sooner and hopefully, I'll do more. 

The topic of the podcast was our StoreVirtual VSA announcement yesterday.  I've been getting my fill of information on StoreVirtual over the last few days but there was actually something I learned during the podcast related to VMware and Hyper-V. 

I didn't want Kate (my colleague on the HP LeftHand team) to have all the fun today with our StoreVirtual VSA announcement - and frankly I think I got the better end of the deal.  Last week, I got to do an HP Storage Countdown video, focused on our HP StoreVirtual VSA (the product formerly known as HP LeftHand VSA), in Oceanside, California.  I was on my way to Anaheim and met my HP Storage colleague at the beach to do this video summarizing the announcement.  As Pooja says at the end, "check it out"!

This is a guest post from Kate Davis, the HP LeftHand worldwide product marketing manager.  Kate talks about how today starts the next phase of life for LeftHand VSA. As with many things in life, it begins with a name change – we now pronounce you HP StoreVirtual VSA – a storage platform, born out of and optimized for virtualization.  There's also a great podcast with Mark Peters of the Enterprise Strategy Group discussing virtualization trends.

I've wanted to do a live Around the Storage Block podcast for a long and finally decided to give it a go.  With VMworld around the corner, I thought an interesting topic to cover would be our HP LeftHand VSA.  My guests will include  HP LeftHand product marketing manager Kate Davis, a couple of long time HP LeftHand experts, Tim Doering and Dale Degen and a special guest (hint: he's known as @VMDoug). 

Here are the specific details you'll need to join:

• Day and time: We'll have our live ATSB podcast on Tuesday August 14 at noon EDT, 9 AM PDT.  For those of you outside of the U.S., I'm sure you can do time zone translation. 
• Phone number: U.S. toll number only: (724) 444-7444 Call ID 69339
• URL: You can listen online at http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=69339&cmd=tc.  Even if you plan to dial in, you might consider joining online as there is a chat feature. 

I hope you can join my first live ATSB podcast!

I started playing around with the idea and figured out how to do it.  I'm not a professional video editor so I haven't figured out how to use video inside of my video - instead I have images of each video that you can click on and it will open that video.  Here's my first attempt at it - this is a video summarizing the recent HP LeftHand P4000 demo videos I've done, covering four topics.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

I'm guessing this is best viewed directly on YouTube so check out the video there.

I want to point you to a survey that Wikibon is doing around storage and VMware.  I also talk about some of the integration we have with VMware.  If you're a VMware user (and am guessing almost all of you are), definitely check out this post. 

I get to announce a new product to you today and I have a short podcast and a video demo to help you get the details. 

The new solution is called HP LeftHand Recovery Manager.  Recovery Manager is a wizard driven software product that saves you time and  effort to recover files from Windows snapshots.  Recovery Manager helps you to find the snapshots, determine how many you want to keep available and then find files you want to recover.  I have a short podcast (about 4 minutes) explaining what Recovery Manager can do and a video demo (about 7 minutes).