Tech Day gives a peek into the future of storage

This week in Colorado Springs, a lot of information about the future of storage for networks and virtualization is being made available. In this TechRepublic blog post, IT pro Rick Vanover wraps up some of the information made available from the event.
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HP StorageWorks Tech Day is an invitation-only event for a select group of IT professionals that is going on now in Colorado Springs. I was invited, but unfortunately I could not attend the event this week. Even though I wasn’t able to give you the firsthand scoop, we are in good hands with Twitter and big personalities that make up the event. Attending Tech Day are some of my own A-list technical resources, including those from whom I seek guidance for my own IT practice. Among them are storage expert Steven Foskett, HP storage guru Calvin Zito, and virtualization expert Simon Seagrave. The crowd in attendance is a good mix of storage, virtualization, and IT administrators to present a well-rounded panel.

The goal of Tech Day is to get the word out for various HP storage technologies. And the guys are doing a great job of keeping the world in the loop with Twitter. Be sure to digest all the events by going to the #HPTechDay trending topic. Here are some of the takeaways that the panel has provided that I found interesting:

• Many storage systems will migrate toward standard x86 / x64 equipment, focusing toward standardized equipment for storage. This includes numbers as high as 80% or more of future storage controller systems will be based on standard equipment in the near future.
• The highest-end storage will likely remain on purpose-built equipment.
• Server architectures have advanced very rapidly, due to virtualization and other technologies. Storage systems will need to re-architect rapidly as well.
• While the HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) is a venerable player in the space, the newer top-end storage from HP is the SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP). I have worked with virtualized storage, and trust me, this stuff makes your life easy.
• HP’s acquisition of LeftHand Networks offers a new segment, a virtual SAN appliance (VSA). We should even soon see a VSA offered for Xen and Hyper-V platforms.
• Rich Brambley has taken some Tweetphotos during the event, just in case I wasn’t sad enough that I couldn’t make it.

There definitely is a lot of good information on the storage roadmap being exchanged at Tech Day. If you use Twitter, I recommend you check in on the trending topic as more information is sent from HP StorageWorks Tech Day.