The VMguy

Coming to a city near you!  A week ago I was fortunate enough to catch the VMware Tour bus at it’s stop at the Tampa VMUG meeting this month.  If you get the chance to see it, it is quite a cool piece of hardware. Painted red with the VMware logos stamped all over it, this truck was custom built for vmware.  The cab is a Peterbuilt with some modified hardware.  The cab is extended and contains a satellite TV for the drivers (when they are not driving the rig – obviously).  The trailer housing the mobile datacenter, is an extended version (like the moving companies use) but the driver told me that it was not a conversion, it was built in Kentucky specifically for VMware by Kentucky Trailers.  The side of the trailer opens up and has a retractable awning.  There are two flat screen TVs mounted inside the two openings on the trailer.  This is so the engineers can give presentations and show slides from the side of the truck.  The truck carries round tables and seating for over 50 people if need be.  Directly behind the cab is a 10,000 watt generator that can fully power the truck for demos(seen below).
There are two Air Conditioners mounted to the front of the trailer providing the cooling for all of the hardware in the trailer.  I did not get the BTU output of these coolers but I’m pretty sure that it’s more than enough.  On this 92 degree day in Tampa, the trailer was more than comfortable inside.  The coolers (shown below) were providing plenty of cooling for the demonstrations.What I thought was a nice touch was the condensation drain (as seen by the green hoses in the picture) was put into a 5-gallon bucket.  They do this so that people walking around the truck for pictures don’t have to step thru puddles.Inside the trailer, all of VMware’s products are represented or can be demoed.  There are a number of thin clients used inside the trailer.   These all connect via ethernet to the servers in the back of the trailer (the far back of the picture above).  The decor inside the trailer is a good representation of the VMware corporate headquarters decor.  Lots of natural wood tones and bright blues and greens.  There was a good amount of room to move around, even with the 20 attendees inside.In the servers racks in the back, there were 3 main cabinets that were visible.  The first two on the left contained Dell Blades, Equallogics Storage, NetApp storage and Xsigo Virtual IO (the silver bezels in the middle cabinet).  The last cabinet on the right was mirrored out so that you could not see what was behind it (notice the flash from my camera).  Upon further inspection, I was able to see what was in that cabinet from an angle.  It housed all of the Cisco UCS blades and EMC storage.  I was very confused by this.  Why would the VMware-Cisco-EMC coalition allow their hardware to be hidden from public view?  I asked around and found my answer: this stop on the VMware tour was sponsored by Xsigo Virtual IO, a fierce competitor with Cisco UCS and FCoE.  This information was a clear reminder that this truck was a marketing tool first and foremost.  The front of the trailer contains a conference room (the frosted door at the far end in the picture below) with whiteboards and conference phones, etc.  A rolling conference room to architect customer solutions if needed.If you get the chance, be sure to check out the truck.  It has all the VMware products ready to demo.  The engineers were on-hand to answer all of the questions that the attendees were throwing at them.  It’s really a great way to check out the VMware products in a very cool environment.  Two cool facts that I was able to learn during my visit: 1. The truck contains over 5 miles of ethernet cabling. 2. The truck has driven 13,500 miles so far and will top 20,000 before the tour is finished in February.  Make sure to check out the tour schedule and stop by and see it if you can.  Rock on VMware!