If you read my blog recently, you know I was at Microsoft Management Summit last week.  I brought Andy McCaskey (SDRNews.com) and Jeffery Powers (Geekazine.com) to help with a live stream webcast we did.  We did a couple of interviews every hour and ended up with a lot of great information.  Andy and Jeff have been hard at work on the videos and are posting them as fast as they can and I wanted to share a few of them with them with you.

There are some interesting videos focused on the Serverquarium - the infrastructure that ran all of the Hands-on-Labs at MMS and a discussion about a new Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V Reference Architecture built around HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000.

Yesterday I told you about NAB coming up next week and mentioned I'll also be dropping in at Microsoft Management Summit.  I wanted to give you a bit more on what we have going there. 

First, I had mentioned that we'll be live streaming with Andy McCaskey (SDRNews.com) and Jeffery Powers (Geekazine.com) hosting interviews all day Wednesday April 10.  You can watch the live stream on Andy's website starting at 9:30 AM PDT wrapping things up at 5 PM PDT.

If you're coming to MMS, here are some things to check out while you're there:

• A session on Monday 2-3:30 PM, HP Private Cloud Management with System Center (Banyan C)
• Another session, Wednesday 10:15-11:30 AM Serverquarium Unwrapped - HP Cloud Solution for Microsoft that powers the MMS Hands-on-Labs (Banyan C)
• Tour the Serverquarium - this is in the same space as the Hands-on-Labs and I think its open every day at 8 AM.
• Stop by the HP Booth and see how HP and Microsoft partner with solutions like: HP StoreSystem, Insight Control for System Center, HP Cloud Solution for Microsoft, and much more!

I've done several podcasts now from short trip to the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) last week - today I have a video I did.  In the other blogs, I mentioned that the hands on labs at MMS were running on HP infrastructure, including the HP VirtualSystem VS3 for Microsoft and our 3PAR utility storage.  What I forgot to mention was the Database Consolidation Appliance.  It was also part of the hands on lab infrastructure.   What they had running in the Serverquarium was based on our HP BladeSystem, the P2000 MSA, and of course Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Hyper-V, and System Center.  

I also learned that we hosted 52,000 virtual machines over the 4 1/2 day event.  Dung Hoang who managed setting up the VS3 told me that he sat around for most of the day but had 10 minutes between labs to wipe the VMs off to get ready for the next set of labs.

As you'll see in my video, there was an area with about 200 HP Z200 workstations where attendees could sit down and do a self-paced lab at any time.  There were also instructor lead labs happening that attendees needed to register for.  I think Dung told me that there was up to about 400 of those happening at any one time - but my main point is that there were more HOLs than what you'll see in the room on the video.  Here it is:

I dropped in to Microsoft Management Summit last week for an afternoon but got a boatload of content while I was there.  This is the last of my VirtualSystem for Microsoft posts.  I have two podcasts - one with a couple of HP guys and the other with Mark Hassall. 

In the first podcast, I talked with Paul Gavin who is a Microsoft Virtualization Solution Manager at HP and Jose Betancourt, an HP pre-sales architect.  We hit a number of topics but focused on customer requirements for building a Microsoft-based private cloud. 



The second podcast is with Mark Hassall from Microsoft. Mark works in the Windows Server & Management Group and is responsible for the virtualization and management initiative working with HP. Mark and I talk about the work that HP and Microsoft are doing together around virtualization and management. 

I spent the week in Vegas at NAB but I was able to pop over to the Venetian on Wednesday and spend the afternoon at the Microsoft Management Summit.  I had a post earlier in the week called HP at Microsoft Management Summit.  In this post, I have a couple of podcasts focused on the HP VirtualSystem VS3 for Microsoft.

In the first, I talk to Maribeth Marcello, the worldwide product manager for the VirtualSystem VS3.  Maribeth and I talk about positioning of the VS3 and what customers should consider it. 

Here's the first podcast with Maribeth:

Next I talked to Dung Hoang - Dung is an engineer on the VirtualSystem team and was involved in building the MMS Hands-on-lab infrastructure that ran all the HOL during the event.  Dung had told me that they expected to have run 42,000 VMs in total and during the peak usage of HOLs, there were over 3000 concurrent VMs running on the VirtualSystem Monday morning just before lunch.

Here's the podcast with Dung.

This blog post has been re-published due to a technical issue.  You can find it here: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/HP-VirtualSystem-VS3-for-Microsoft-podcast-at-MMS/ba-p/111635

While I’m in Las Vegas at NAB, less than a mile away Microsoft Management Summit is also happening.  I’ll drop in there later this week but I wanted to share some news with you, hot off the press.  I have a podcast with HP 3PAR product manager Kiran Sreenivasamurthy talking about his presentation at MMS along with a part of the news.  In the podcast, Kiran talks to me about the newly announced integration we have of HP 3PAR with Microsoft System Center 2012. 

Today at MMS, Microsoft announced the general availability of System Center 2012.  HP also has a few things we're announcing.   You'll have to read the blog post to get the details but here's the podcast with Kiran: 

On January 17, Microsoft unveiled its private cloud strategy as well as a comprehensive update to System Center licensing and pricing.  Here’s why this is good news for our mutual customers.

Today I have a few topics I'm going to briefly touch on and thus the name of this article.  The topics I'll hit today are:

• HP/Microsoft announcement from last week
• HP Infrastructure Management Technical Webinar series