Glad you could join us - from what other bloggers have told me, what we do for our guest bloggers at an event like HP Discover is unique and first class. Glad you could join us! I'll be highlighting blog posts from you guys on my blog at http://www.hp.com/storage/blog

Hey Chad - this isn't entirely accurate. I saw this yesterday and didn't bother to read it given it's clearly just a bunch of meaningless "we do it all better than anyone" chest thumping. That said, number 7 is wrong. EMC isn't the only vendor to support stretch clusters and in fact I'm sure you know that HP has our multi-site P4000 LeftHand SAN as the only HCL supported stretch cluster and has been for a few years. I wouldn't expect you're marketing guys to fix this but it would be the right thing to do versus the "Only EMC" posturing that is wrong. (Obviously, I work for HP).

Calvin Zito - have worked in HP Storage since 1990 in various marketing and marketing strategy roles but of late blogging and on Twitter. My blog is at http://www.hp.com/storage/blog. We've interacted on blogs but have never met face to face - maybe some day. Going to VMworld?

Hey Vaughn - sorry, I've been busy this week at our HP Summit (analyst conference) and had no time to comment on this. The issue I think John is raising (and I still don't see it addressed) is your claim to be first with VSA. You very well know that HP LeftHand has had our VSA for several years. So to say you're first -- when in fact the NetApp VSA isn't on the VMware hardware compatability list -- is false. If you really want to fix the blog post to embrace that truth, then you should delete the bit that says "that NetApp is the only storage vendor that ships a production workload capable software-based virtual storage appliance (VSA)". Your latest comments to John about integration of VSA with all of HP's arrays is simply a red herring. Since our P4000 can span to multiple nodes (have heard of customers with more than 30 nodes), customers aren't asking us to integrate VSA with the rest of our arrays. And not only does our VSA include all the same features (thin provisioning, local and remote replication, etc) as our P4000, but we don't charge extra licensing fees to get any of that. I know you're a straight up guy and I've always appreciated that about you but you aren't first with a VSA and its not even close. Customers can try a full featured trial of our HP VSA. All they need is a VM (VMware or Hyper-V) to install it on and DAS drives. If you haven't already, you should check it out: http://www.hp.com/go/TryVSA.

Hi Walter, If it isn't obvious from my Twitter ID, I work for HP and my name is Calvin Zito. Thanks for highlighting the event we held in Barcelona. At HP, we've been focusing on social media for a while. Within the twitter storage community, I'm very plugged in and the hp.com blog I manage is one of the most read; see http://www.hp.com/storage/blog. Working with Ivy Worldwide, we pioneered the concept of the "Tech Day". With a Tech Day, we bring independent bloggers to HP and give them an inside, hands on look at HP. You can see a few blogs I've written about the first storage Tech Day we did here: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/bg-p/139/label-name/hptechday. We have done many of these kind of events and its just one example of what we are doing to raise HP's profile in social media. If you're interested in learning more about what HP is doing in social media, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. Calvin Zito, aka @HPStorageGuy

How nice of you to remember - I wasn't even on the VMware community map until after VMworld last year so I'm surprised and honored that you even remembered meeting. I was being flip about your customer party but since I know so many in your army, I'd love to drop in to your vGeekfest and say hi. How can I get an official invite instead of trying to crash the gates? I'm also looking forward to the Storage Super-Heavy Weight Challenge (Wednesday at 3 PM in Moscone South Room 301). Tom and Cody had reached out to me and offered HP a seat at the table with you and Vaughn. I know you and Adam have worked together in the past so I'm looking forward to that session. Hopefully, Adam can get something into the conversation between you and Vaughn's jabs. Regardless, should be fun! See you in about a week!

Hey Chad - looking forward to meeting you at VMworld (though we met ever so briefly last year when you stepped out of the podcast booth with Troyer). Interesting data but I'm not sure the data on server vendor is relevant. I just attended an HP partner event (Nth Generation) and they asked a similar question and the percentage using HP servers was well over 75%. Much of the other data is interesting so thanks for sharing it. BTW, I keep waiting for my invite to the EMC party at VMworld and I haven't got it yet! I know we have a CX somewhere around here....

Hey Vaughn - don't forget that HP will a part of the session too; Adam Carter will be on the panel with you and Chad. Calvin http://www.hp.com/storage/blog

Hey Vaughn - add HP to your list of deduplication vendors. In case you missed it, we announced HP StoreOnce this past week at HP Technology Forum. I won't take up a lot of space here talking about it but you can read, watch, and listen more about it on several articles I have on my blog: http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/bg-p/139/label-name/storeonce. And of course, I work for HP.

I know why the 10th grade grammar is required - because if you use a term like "dogpile", you expect that the English-speaking world will know what it means. I think dogpile is a vocabulary word in 10th grade throughout the English speaking world, I heard even in Scotland. Well done Mark - I'm asking HP corporate to replace our existing blogger guidelines with your Dummies guide. Thank so much for sharing your expertise with all of us. Juicy hugs!

Hey Chuck, Nice to hear such honesty from you since I was on the receiving end of many the attitudes and arrogance you described. HP and EMC were originally partners through the mid-90's - I managed the midrange of our HP portfolio. I was always shocked at the bravado of EMC reps calling on HP customers trying to stuff all of them into Symmetrix. Did our HP blog talking about LTO5 start you down this path (http://bit.ly/aXEU4x)? And of course you know I work for HP. And you'll be glad to know that I'm not at all Lonesome these days ;)

The "lonesome storage bloggers" at HP haven't been feeling at all lonely - lots of good stuff going on to leverage the 25+ year old server, networking, and storage businesses we've had. And it's so much easier to work with your server and networking partners when you all work for the same company. Looks like EMC finally woke up to the fact that you couldn't compete in the next generation data center without a blade-based server partner. Let me know how it works out for you. I just find this all ironic and funny Chuck - you've tried for so long to paint HP as a server vendor when deep down, you were scared to death of HP's portfolio and the threat that was to EMC's storage only business. And not to mention that we have a rock star running the server and networking business with storage to be added to the list in the future. Best of luck as you partner with the #5 server vendor - oh wait, your server partner isn't even in the top 10.