Edit: Briefings and virtual briefings cannot be beat.
Originally posted July 19, 2011 on AIXchange
Last month I was fortunate enough to attend an IBM technical briefing covering Power Systems and Storage Systems.
This one-day conference covered an array of information. For starters, IBMer Ian Jarman offered some stories and anecdotes about Watson and the IBM Jeopardy! Challenge.
This talk was followed by two simultaneous breakout sessions. Rolf Kocheisen and John Purcell covered IBM Systems Director, showing attendees how to install and use the solution in a live demo. Meanwhile, Bill Wiegand’s presentation, “Simplify Storage Management with Virtualization,” examined storage virtualization solutions, including products like XIV, V7000 and SVC.
After lunch, the conference broke into five different tracks. The storage track featured seasons covering VMware on XIV (Pete Kisich), TSM for Virtual Environments (Greg Van Hise) and Data Deduplication with ProtecTIER (Neville Yates). The AIX and IBM i track covered AIX Performance (Steve Nasypany), Oracle RAC and Oracle 11g on IBM Power Systems (Rebecca Ballough), VIO introduction for IBM i (Allyn Walsh), and IBM Storage Systems on Power (Brian Sherman).
Later sessions covered: Systems Director Management Console (SDMC) (Gary Anderson), Shared Storage Pools and VIO Server Enhancements (Ron Barker), PowerHA for IBM i (Eric Hess), Cloud Computing 101 (Jaqui Lynch), “What’s new in PowerHA for AIX?” (Shawn Bodily), NIM Master Tuning and NIM Master Group Migrations (Steve Knudson), Upgrade Planning for POWER7 Hardware and IBM i 7.1 (Allyn Walsh), and WebSphere Performance and Tuning on Power (Surya Duggirala).
So why did I list all these sessions and presenters after the fact? To illustrate the breadth of information that was presented and the technical “firepower” that delivered it. If you’ve worked on IBM Power Systems for any amount of time, you surely recognize at least some of the names I shared.
The point is, even though this IBM technical briefing is past, there will be others. And if you get a chance to attend an event like this — which is free of charge, by the way — jump at it. It’s a day well-spent. I’ve heard people compare IBM tech briefings to drinking from a firehose — you get so much information that it can be overwhelming — but I’ll take my chances. (Others like to joke that IBM stands for Information Between Meals. IBM teaches you, feeds you, and then moves you along to the next session where you can learn more.)
So reach out to your local IBM reps. They’ll e-mail you with information on upcoming events, and they can also connect with IBM presenters to get you slides from previous sessions. They may even be able to help you bring an event like this to your area. For that matter, if you’re close enough to the IBM Briefing Centers in Rochester, Minn., or Austin, Texas, simply schedule a briefing for your company.
Remember, IBM and other AIX pros have produced so many freely available resources: conferences, blogs and documentation like IBM Redbooks. It’s out there, and all we need to do is ask for it or look for it.