Disclosure Post: Promise, LSI, Intel, and Others

Lately, we have been putting a lot of time in to building up our lab infrastructure as part of our research and development for new business.

Because the R&D requires a heavy investment by us we reach out to the various manufacturers whose products we deal with to see if we can land any demo product to help defray some of those costs.

Those that have stepped up over the last couple of years include the following:

• Promise Technologies
• Loaned us a VTrak E610sD RAID Subsystem for our initial testing with the Intel Modular Server.
• We purchased that VTrak via the Promise Partner program.
• Extensive communications with key folks in the VTrak program.
• LSI
• Provided us with a pair of LSI SAS6160 Switches for our initial tests.
• We did not get too far with them due to business being quite brisk.
• Supplied a discount via Canadian distribution (Synnex Canada) for the purchase of a pair of our own LSI SAS6160 Switches.
• The pair we purchased about two months ago are now being tested.
• Provided us with a set of four 2M SFF8088/SFF8088 SAS Cables
• Extensive communications with key folks in the storage program.
• Intel
• Intel Modular Server demo product.
• Original sent 3 years ago to begin our pilot build of a Hyper-V Cluster.
• Demo IMS sent again last year to test with LSI SAS Switches and our own IMS.
• Intel supplied demo product.
• Intel Server System SR1695GPRX2AC
• Intel Xeon Processor X3470
• Above received in FY2010-11.
• Pair of Intel Xeon Processor E5-2650 CPUs
• Just received today June 15th.
• Extensive communications with key folks in the Intel Modular Server team.
• Great support via our IPD contacts.

Microsoft has provided us with great support and great product team access over the years. Being a Microsoft MVP has really helped open the doors to key folks and their knowledge.

Though the advent of some absolutely awesome blogs on the products we are focused on has reduced the need to ask a lot of those N00b type questions. :)

Microsoft provides awesome resources within its Partner Program including the Partner Learning Center and now the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

The MVA is an awesome resource for getting a lot of the N00b type questions answered with a lot of hands-on and visual walk-through processes. It is also an excellent resource for answering more advanced questions.

There are certainly other little SWAG and SPIFF bits that we have received over the years. The list above covers some of the major items that have come across our threshold.

Thanks to Promise, LSI, and Intel for the great support and direction.

Thanks to Microsoft for the great resources provided to us both within the MVP realm as well as via the Partner Program and so many other avenues.

A special mention and thanks to Eric Ligman as he has been absolutely amazing when it comes to Microsoft Licensing questions.

The best is yet to come!

Thanks to all y’all for your support and for reading!

Have a wonderful weekend … especially you Dads out there!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer