Ok, so I left the hotel bright and early this morning to get a head start on the day.  I mean, after all, free breakfast was to be had somewhere at the event... and tech guys will usually wake up for free food.

My first thought when the bus let out and I walked into the conference center... WHERE DID ALL THESE PEOPLE COME FROM?

I knew it was packed on Partner Day, and figured it would be busy as all get up, but my goodness.  The lines at the registration area were insane, and it was only like 7AM?  I knew right then and there, this was definitely going to surpass the estimated 6000 people that I heard about.  And indeed it did.  During the general session, they announced that over 7000 people were in attendance.  This was up from around 3600 people the year before in Las Vegas.  This was the reason that the convention was moved from San Francisco to L.A.  The convention area that was going to be booked in San Fran could only hold just over 4500 people... obviously, not going to cut it.  So they moved it here to L.A.

Something I didn't know about virtualization until today - it will help save the world from global warming, or maybe help out with the energy crisis!  Diane Greene brought out someone from PG&E who announced a rebate program where they would pay companies for reducing their power consumption by replacing servers with virtual machines - server consolidation.  There was a cap, I believe the amount was $4,000,000.  So, if your company hasn't started its server consolidation program yet, you might want to look into such a program.  Might as well try to earn a few bucks while consolidating?  I wonder if they'll retro people... hmmmmm.

Next was a demo covering Virtual Infrastructure, attempting to show an employee working and watching a live-motion video.  The scene was one from one of the all time great geek, techie movies - Office Space.  It made a point, but didn't make a big splash other than make me want to watch the movie again.

The session on Virtual Appliances seemed to work for me.  Virtual Appliances are getting a lot of buzz.  Yesterday I heard about VDI and Lab Manager, today, there was a lot of talk about appliances.  And Microsoft's announcement about their own appliance like offering only seemed to help push the buzz out even more.

I then had to bolt and missed the next panel for an interview... Later I hit the Lab Manager Technical Deep Dive.  I'll try to get into that if I can next time.