June, 2009
by Rick Pranger
The St. Louis Region held its quarterly CMG meeting on May 12 at the MetLife facilities in St. Louis. Almost 30 participants attended a full day of great presentations on many interesting topics, all sponsored by Metron-Athene. Even in these difficult economic conditions that group was able to provide topics that were relevant but also functional.
Our first presentation was "VMware Capacity Planning Techniques" presented by Rich Fronheiser of Metron-Athene. This presentation was intended for those who are currently running VMware and wanted to improve their Capacity Management capabilities.
Next was the sponsor's "Product Overview" by Stephen Soodul. Stephen has been taking his company's message on the road to other local CMG regions and probably has visited, or will visit, one near you. They are one of the leaders in Capacity Planning and Systems Performance Management, and you can read more about them and their offerings at their web site (http://www.metron-athene.com/).
As usual lunch was fantastic and the facilties at MetLife were tremendous.
Right after lunch was an informal group discussion on "Capacity Cost Saving Techniques" lead by Rick Pranger from Edward Jones. This was your typical relaxed conversation that the national CMG encourages. These discussions help foster learning and interaction among many different professionals. The discussions were great with a lot of interesting takes on ways to reduce bottom lines expenses being covered.
The last presentation was by Charlie Cler of IBM on "A Discussion on Processor Virtualization using AIX as an example." Charlie stepped in at the last moment to help fill a last second cancellation. Our thanks to Charlie! This was definitely a presentation that fit right in with the day's topics. The presentation had exceptional topics and discussion points that were applicable to other virtualization platforms, not just AIX.
An optional social gathering was held at a local restaurant after the meeting, which is always a good way to finish the day. As a reminder, the group is always interested in topics and ideas, so if anyone has something they would like to share, we are always listening. Feel free to email us at or visit the regions web site at http://regions.cmg.org/regions/stlcmg/index.html where all of our great presentations from this, as well as past meetings, can be found.