Today was the first day of SNW in Santa Clara. The Dell team was there, working in the hands-on labs area (more on that tomorrow!) and giving presentations.

Will Urban had a session on VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) where he covered some of the basic considerations for moving from a test bed of 50 users to a more realistic user base of 1000 (and more). He talked about design considerations and components of VDI images – all stuff that has direct implications to your storage infrastructure. He showed slides from this Dell white paper. If I can find a linkable version of his slides, I’ll post!

One of the highlights of the day was the keynote from Steve Wozniak. You know, the guy who co-founded Apple. OMG he is an edugeek. I never knew he taught 5th grade. He said things like “in school intelligence is a measurement. But we need to apply creative different answers to be innovative in tech” and “ it takes long, long projects and lots of thinking to be innovative (like science projects)”. He also referenced Charlie Sheen and his stint on Dancing with the Stars. Woz was awesome. If I could have lunch with one person, it would be him.

I fell very privileged that I received my FCoTR badge from Mr. Foskett:

I also had a long conversation about our weird, small storage community with Greg Knieriemen of Infosmack fame.

Long day ahead tomorrow. We hope to see you at the Dell and Dell Compellent booths! We’ve been adding pictures and commentary to the Dell Storage Facebook page. And we should have lots of videos coming your way starting tomorrow.If you are at #snwusa – we also are running more hands-on labs be sure to check it out.

Oh and #storagebeers is tomorrow at 7:30 at Faultline Brewery. If you are in Santa Clara, I hope you show up and say hi!