Posted on 06/12/2013 by Virtual Winfrastructure

EMC & Microsoft TechEd 2013 Recap

Last week was Microsoft TechEd 2013 and what a show it was! Microsoft announced SQL Server 2014 including in-memory OLTP (or project "Hekaton") in addition to features such as big data analytics. Microsoft also announced changes to their Windows Azure pricing and R2 releases for Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012.

What generated the most buzz at TechEd? Significantly reduced pricing for Microsoft Surface tablets (Pro and RT) resulted in very long lines so attendees could get their hands on these hot items and according to a few people I talked to…then turn around and put them on eBay for a profit (no one ever accused an IT professional of not being smart).

We at EMC had a great week! I was able to meet with many customers and partners! EMC hosted a small intimate dinner with some of our customers on site and I had a great time talking to everyone there! I also had the chance to hang out with some of The Krewe, a great group of guys who get together every year at Microsoft TechEd to hang out, trade stories and build relationships!

The EMC breakout session was PACKED with standing room only! I'm not surprised considering our speaker Txomin Barturen, he is both technical and an excellent speaker. His session (MDC-B391, Practical Implementation of Windows Server 2012 Storage Technologies) covered many of the new features found in Windows Server 2012 and how EMC supports and extends these features. For instance, with ODX or Microsoft's Offloaded Data Transfer EMC has been able to reach transfer speeds of 25 Gigabytes per second! Wow!

Finally, EMC gave away fedora hats with blinking lights that were a hit! We had a huge line at the booth all week and I saw people wearing these hats on Bourbon Street all week and even people wearing them on my airplane ride home! In other words, EMC was everywhere!

For a full overview of everything EMC at Microsoft TechEd, be sure to check out a couple of excellent video recaps by EMC's Sam Marraccini and Alex Almeida:

And for those of you in Europe who will be attending TechEd Europe in Madrid June 25^th-28^th, EMC will be there too so be sure to come by and see all of our latest demos or meet our on-site experts!

Posted on 06/10/2013 by Karen Griffith

Guest Blog: Microsoft TechEd 2013: An EMC Backup Perspective

Alexander Almeida

EMC Corporation

Sr. Technical Marketing Manager, EMC Elect 2013

Backup and Recovery Systems Division

Another Microsoft TechEd gone by, and speaking for the EMC Backup and Recovery Team, we had a blast! In between playing with and learning how to use our new Surface tablets we got at the show, we also had some really good conversations with you, the attendees, on the issues you are facing with Backup and Recovery in a Microsoft Cloud Ecosystem. Take a look at this video for some visual highlights from the show, along with our take on what attendees were looking for in a Backup and Recovery solution for Microsoft.

See you in Houston next year for TechED 2014!

Microsoft TechEd 2013: An EMC Backup Perspective

Posted on 06/06/2013 by Sam Marraccini

Inside The Partnership Episode #35: Microsoft Teched 2013; Keeping it Real, Keeping it Xtrem!

Continuing a long standing tradition, once again EMC is a platinum sponsor of Microsoft Teched. The platinum sponsorship landed the “EMC Theater” front and center in the exhibit hall. EMC customers were invited into the theater for a quick overview of the latest benefits of deploying EMC technologies with Microsoft applications. Granted, the high level theater presentation is well, high level… lots of clouds and buzz words. But with such a diversified technology portfolio, it’s difficult to represent any details in a “theater” setting.

EMC Microsoft Teched 2013 Sam Marraccini Adrian Simays

EMC Platinum again at Microsoft Teched 2013

The real value and real customer one-on-one conversations were happening behind the theater. As in past years, the EMC “booth” featured 4 workstations with product demonstrations and presentations, lots of details around EMC System Center Integration, Multi-Site Replication, Flash, VSPEX…. You can keep going. I spent some time with Adrian Simays, Alex Almeida, Mike Truitt and Txomion Barturen to get a feel for
some of those conversations, and Txomion’s Breakout Session (Practical implementation of Windows Server 2012 Storage Technologies). I also added a little FLASH to the conversation. Check out video Episode #35 for details. I did finally get my voice back

What was new this year? “The Genius Bar”. The Genius Bar offered a setting where EMC Subject Matter experts could conduct one-on-one customer conversation about their specific needs. Conversations covered the full capabilities of the EMC solution portfolio. There was a formal schedule of topics, but the conversation went wherever the customer needed it to. EMC had over 20 Subject Matter experts available for detailed conversations on literally EVERYTHING MICROSOFT at EMC.

In alphabetical order, here is a list of the detailed integration points covered at the Genius Bar. Need to get in touch with someone? Let me know sam.marraccini@emc.com

Adrian Simays	Microsoft Application Solutions, Better with EMC.
Alex Almeida	Leveraging EMC Backup for Tighter Backup Integration with Microsoft Applications
Brian Henderson	Top 5 Reasons Why VNX for Microsoft Applications and Databases
Brin Kjenstad	Microsoft as a EMC Customer
Carin Mosher	Multi-Site Replication for Exchange
Dave Butchart	Monitoring Your Storage Infrastructure with System Center Operations Manager
Dave Delisi	VSPEX for Microsoft Applicaions
David Feisthammel	System Center 2012 Integration with EMC Storage Integrator
Derrick Baxter	Exchange with EMC Storage Best Practices
Eyal Sharon	Proven Solutions and VSPEX
Mike McGee	System Center 2012 Management Integration: (SCVMM, SCOM, SCO)
Mike Truitt	EMC and Microosft Fast Track
Neil Salamack	AppSync: Simple, SLA Driven Protection for Exchange and SQL
Patrick Duggan	Real World Customer Examples and Use Cases
Phil George	EMC Backup and Recovery Optimized for Microsoft
Robert Wagner	VPLEX for Microsoft Failover Clusters
Ryan Kucera	EMC at the Microsoft Technology Center – Real Customers, Real Soluitons
Sam Marraccini	Leveraging Flash across the Microsoft Applicaion Stack – XTREM!!!!!!
Stefan Voss	Powering Microsoft Applications with VNX
Udgith Mankad	Windows Server 2012 ODX support and VMAX integration
Vinod Muralidhar	Isilon Overview and SharePoint BLOB with Metalogix

Thanks for watching and following www.InsideThePartnership.com

Follow me on twitter @SamMarraccini and check out my new blog at www.InsideFlash.com for a look at all things FLASH at EMC, and catch all of the videos over at www.youtube.com/SamMarraccini

Posted on 06/05/2013 by Karen Griffith

Guest Blog: Get off the Customization Treadmill and on to SharePoint 2013

.EMC Documentum

Are customizations holding you back from upgrading to SharePoint 2013? EMC has a new solution that can help, and will also accelerate your journey to the cloud.

Many sites resort to customizing SharePoint when its out-of-the-box features don’t fully meet enterprise requirements. Customizations can make it difficult to upgrade to a new version of the SharePoint platform, and they’re also time-consuming and expensive. You think you’re on the road to adding functionality to SharePoint, but find yourself instead on a treadmill that won’t let you move forward, whether on premise or in the cloud.

Common requirements for extending SharePoint include advanced content management, information governance, and business process management. In addition, you may also be customizing the platform to make it easier to manage. SharePoint administration costs can spiral out of control for large-scale and distributed deployments. Performance tuning, security settings, common and consistent governance policies, auditing, activity monitoring, and other administrative tasks can all become challenges as your SharePoint infrastructure starts to grow.

EMC, a platinum sponsor at this week’s TechEd, offers a number of products and services for managing SharePoint growth. Among these is EMC Documentum, a leading platform for enterprise-class content management, information governance, and process management. EMC recently released a new product that integrates these capabilities into SharePoint.

The new EMC Documentum Connector for Microsoft SharePoint allows you to rapidly deploy Documentum’s out-of-the-box content and process management functionality directly into SharePoint. This way, you can avoid customization altogether – reducing your development costs and simplifying SharePoint upgrades. In addition, by offloading content storage to Documentum, you can take advantage of its advanced security, scalability, and administration features to shrink your SharePoint infrastructure costs.
Documentum can also expedite your journey to the cloud. Documentum is available in EMC OnDemand, a proven private-cloud deployment model that simplifies the management of enterprise applications, reducing total cost of ownership by 30% to 60%. Documentum’s integration with Syncplicity, EMC’s enterprise sync and share offering, means your content can be shared securely through the public cloud with other employees, customers, partners, and suppliers on almost any device.

When it comes to extending SharePoint, Documentum is unique in offering a combination of content services, information governance, and business process management, along with a variety of flexible deployment options. To learn more, register for our upcoming Webcast: Collaboration Meets Control: EMC Documentum & Microsoft SharePoint Together, or visit emc.com/documentum.

Posted on 06/05/2013 by Brian

Why EMC VNX for Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint

We’re having a great week so far in New Orleans at Microsoft TechEd 2013!

Yesterday I had a chance to record a couple videos including this one which describes why customers are using VNX for Microsoft databases and applications.