Joe Arnold's Blog

Tomorrow at VMworld Europe, we’re presenting Engine Yard Solo running on VMware’s vCloud. We are presenting real software that is running against real systems. It’s great to show working software. But as everyone knows who has ran a demo, what can go wrong, will go wrong. So to that end, we’ve been working with VMware’s seasoned demo team to help us out. They really know what they’re doing when it comes making sure that everything goes smoothly.

To that end there are two systems that host our demo. The primary system is a set of two boxes. The first box is running the vCloud APIs and VMware management software. The second box has two virtual environments. One runs the deployment environment where the Ruby on Rails application will be deployed. The second virtual environment runs Engine Yard Solo that works with vCloud. There is a second backup system that has all the virtual environments required for the demo running on a single box.

That way, if there are any issues with the primary demo environment, we can switchover to the backup system (although with a slight degradation in performance).

To drive the demo, there are two laptops setup; each connecting to both demo environments. In addition, a screen cast was created, just in case, that would mimic the actions that I would be performing. So if both real-live demo systems fail, we can switch over to avoid an awkward situation.

The VMworld demo team has set up KVM’s that run over cat-5. This makes it easy to control from the stage and the back of the house at the same time. The back of the the house is in complete control and controls what appears on the main screen. So they will have my back to take control if any issues arise.

I would say “Wish me luck!”, but I guess I won’t need it.

Tags: demo, engineyard, engineyardsolo, vcloud, vmworld, vmworldeurope