Tech Field Day Coverage
Our delegate panel includes independent writers and thought leaders, and we collect their coverage of the event, Tech Field Day presentations, and sponsoring companies here.
Cloud Field Day 7 (#CFD7): A Heads-Up
We were lucky to have Ather Beg joins us as a delegate for Cloud Field Day. He always brings keen insight and extensive industry experience to offer a truly unique voice around the delegate table, virtual or otherwise. In this post, he gives a look at each of the presenters and why their session may be of interest to a wider audience. There was VMware, no stranger to Field Day, doing two sessions on their VMware Cloud on AWS solution. He was also interested in Stellus’ key-value store approach to storage to provide exceptional performance using protocols like NFS. There was also a presentation from SolarWinds, as well as a look into the Pensando Distributed Services Platform. Be sure to check out all the presentation videos to get to speed with the latest from the event.
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Cloud Field Day 7 (#CFD7): A Heads-Up
Exorcising Network Ghosts With VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer
Is your networking haunted? Or do you feel like problems are happening and you can’t find them? Who you gonna call? Tom Hollingsworth looks at how VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer can help you bust the ghosts that haunt your network and prove that the problems are floating around somewhere else. While definitely a spooky topic, luckily Tom found VMware’s presentation from Networking Field Day to be anything but.
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Exorcising Network Ghosts with VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer
Tune in for Tech Field Day Virtual With Red Hat on April 29
We’re thrilled to be able to present Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat on April 29th! This will focus on Red Hat OpenShift and follow on the announcements from the virtual Red Hat Summit. Red Hat has a whole day of excellent presentations in store, from an overview of their portfolio and strategy, to Kubernetes multi-cloud management, networking, and more. Be sure to mark you calendar and catch the entire live stream!
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Tune in for Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat on April 29
Cloud Field Day 7 – All Virtual but Still a Tech Field Day Event in Every Way
While staying home in light of the COVID-19 pandemic means we can’t host in-person Field Day events, we’re glad to see such a strong positive response to our virtual events. Ed Horley joined us as a delegate for Cloud Field Day, and while he missed being able to hang out with his fellow delegates, all the classic Cloud Field Day hallmarks were still there. The event featured in-depth technical content and created meaningful conversations between the delegates and presenters. If you missed any of the sessions, be sure to check out the full videos on our YouTube channel!
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Cloud Field Day 7 - All virtual but still a Tech Field Day event in every way
Managing Massive Media
Chris Evans looks at the state of throughput for mechanical hard drives in this post. While spinning disks may be seen as a legacy technology by some, they are still used widely across many industries and applications. The problem comes when looking at random access to these, and the physical limitations imposed by how they operate. In this regard, random read performance has barely nudged for hard drives in over a decade. Western Digital discussed how they were trying to address these issues at Storage Field Day, and how they are using things like zoned hard drives to also help alleviate future concerns with increasingly dense SSDs. Because many of these approaches require a degree of application support, Chris think both system manufacturers and software-defined storage developers will have to take these approaches into consideration.
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Hardware Offloads, Not Everything Is X86
Alastair Cooke takes a look at why x86 isn’t the only option anymore for organizations looking to solve computing problems. This trend has been going on for a while, with GPUs finding new roles handling highly parallelized workloads in ML and AI. But he also highlights how NGD Systems is putting ARM cores inside SSDs to provide computation storage. He’s also looking forward to hearing about the Pensando Distributed Services Card at Cloud Field Day, which appears to offer hardware offloading for software-defined edge services, aimed at telcos. We can’t wait to hear what he thinks of their presentation!
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Hardware Offloads, Not Everything Is x86
Gluware
At Networking Field Day, Jeff Fry got to hear from Gluware who discussed how the provide a solution to keep network configurations in compliance with the desired state. After the presentation, he tried out there Intelligent Network Automation Test Drive. He found it to be an effective way to overcome some of the hurdles in the current state of network automation, helping to mitigate both vendor specific automation tools, and the skills gap between CLI proficient network engineers and those that employs scripts. Jeff thinks a lot of organizations should give Gluware a look, as they have tools for deployment to audit, to security, and beyond.
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Coming Together During COVID-19, With Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT
Tech Field Day founder and organizer Stephen Foskett appeared on Live Now to discuss how technology companies and events are adapting to the current COVID-19 self-isolating landscape. He finds the industry is dividing into two camps: those that are scaling back on events and other efforts as they get up to speed, and other that are already used to working remotely and operating at full speed. It’s an interesting discussion in how IT as a whole is reacting to this unprecedented situation.
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Coming Together During COVID-19, with Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT
What Is Data Resilience?
At Tech Field Day, Zerto gave the delegates on overview of their data resilience platform, before updating them on the latest and greatest with their Zerto 8.0 release. For Rich Stroffolino, this idea of data resilience is the key to Zerto’s success. Instead of keeping things like disaster recovery and data protection as separate teams, Zerto made a compelling case why it’s all part of the same resilience story for any organization. They showed how their solution is certainly capable of dealing with disaster recovery events, but also designed to handle operational recovery, for the every day disasters that can still have a big impact. This approach is wrapped around an elegantly simple approach based around their continuously updated journal to power all their services.
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A Measure of Automation With Juniper Networks
You may be automating all the things, but are you verifying and measuring the outcomes of your automation? You need to be sure before you move forward on your journey. Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at Juniper Networks Contrail Insights and how it can help you make sure you’re automating the right things. Juniper did a deep dive on Contrail Insights at Networking Field Day, showing how a journey to automation is a matter steps. For Tom, Contrail Insights might not be the most exciting step in that journey, but arguably one of the most important.
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A Measure of Automation with Juniper Networks
Disaggregated Routing Software With DriveNets
In this piece, Rowell Dionicio considers the state of whitebox networking. While being around for about six years, it’s not something that he’s personally seen really gaining a lot of traction. But after seeing DriveNets present at Networking Field Day, he thinks the age of whitebox networking might be now for Service Providers. DriveNets wants to bring a disaggregated network approach to Service Providers, using their software-based Network Cloud to scale whiteboxes and software. Rowell digs into how this disaggregation can work financially for SPs, and how DriveNets is up to the technical challenge as well.
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Disaggregated Routing Software with DriveNets
Cloud Field Day 7: Delivering Cloud Migration, Modernization and Business Continuity With VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is a familiar presenter at Field Day events, and we’re thrilled to have them return to Cloud Field Day this year. This year, their presentation will focus on how VMware helps customers migrate, extend, protect and modernize their applications and how to help them continue their business operations without any disruptions. Much of this will be presented through the lens of VMware Cloud on AWS with technical deep-dive content how organizations can accelerate their migration and modernization journey. We can’t wait to see the session, so be sure to mark your calendar.
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Cloud Rich Updates in Zerto 8.0
Is the cloud a part of your data protection strategy? Or are you hoping that your box of backup tapes can swim? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at the latest updates from Zerto in their 8.0 software release, especially those that focus on the cloud. He got to hear about them from our Tech Field Day coverage, where Zerto did a deep dive on their platform and latest release. Protecting data with the cloud isn’t an emerging use case anymore, it needs to be a vital part of any businesses data resiliency plans. Zerto 8.0 building a lot of features and sophistication to make that possible.
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Cloud Rich Updates in Zerto 8.0
New Features With NSX-T 3.0 – Federation and Kubernetes on vSphere
Mariusz Kaczorek heard a lot from VMware at the most recent Tech Field Day event. In this post, he breaks down the latest features and updates for NSX-T 3.0. This includes a number of important updates, with networking support for vSphere with Kubernetes and cloud-scale networking with NSX-T Federation. With Mariusz, with NSX-v set to end support in 2022, NSX-T 3.0 offers a promising replacement with better load balancing, multi-site networking and security across various platforms.
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New features with NSX-T 3.0 - Federation and Kubernetes on vSphere
Meet Field Day Delegate – Glenda Canfield
For Tech Field Day events, we pride ourselves on trying to include new voices into our delegate pool. This is vital to not only bring in the latest technical expertise to ask incisive questions of our presenting companies, but also to provide new perspectives around the delegate table, virtual or otherwise. Our latest Tech Field Day event saw Glenda Canfield join us for the first time. Be sure to check out her recent interview with Gestalt IT. They dig into how she got her start in IT, what she does in her spare time, and what she’d be working on if she wasn’t in IT. We can’t wait to hear from Glenda at more events in the future.
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Meet Field Day Delegate - Glenda Canfield
Dell EMC SmartFabric Director- Weaving a Tapestry of Green
Are you ready to build your digital transformation project? Need a new network to make it work? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at Dell EMC SmartFabric Director and how it can help you building out your next new project. He got to hear about SmartFabric Director at Networking Field Day, and thinks that it shows Dell EMC is on the right track for large existing infrastructures that are looking to make leaps toward digital transformation initiatives to get a handle on how to make that happen.
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Dell EMC SmartFabric Director- Weaving a Tapestry of Green
vSphere 7 and Kubernetes – Should Customers Wait?
On this video from Keith Townsend, he talks with CTO Dose co-host Joep Piscaer about vSphere 7 and his impressions of the Kubernetes integration. Project Tanzu Grid is the updated branding for Project Pacific. They break down if VMware’s initial release lived up to the not inconsiderable hype. They also discuss if customers should be quick to latch onto Tanzu, or wait for further development. Watch as Keith and Joep recap their impressions from VMware’s Tech Field Day presentation.
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vSphere 7 and Kubernetes - Should Customers Wait?
Meet Field Day Delegate – Jason Beshara
Jason Beshara is joining us for Tech Field Day Roundtable with Aruba! He is a Solution Architect with a demonstrated history of working with and designing advanced RF solutions. Jason is skilled in wireless LAN design and troubleshooting within enterprise, healthcare, education, LPV and heavy industrial verticals. Be sure to check out this interview with Gestalt IT to see how Jason got started in IT, where he sees the industry going in the near future, what he does outside of IT, and more. It’s great to get a well rounded understanding of new delegates to our events. It makes seeing them around the table and hearing their questions all the more illuminating.
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Meet Field Day Delegate - Jason Beshara
What’s New in Zerto 8.0
At Tech Field Day Mariusz Kaczorek got to hear the latest updates from Zerto. The company showed off the latest features of Zerto 8.0, their latest release of their Zerto IT Resilience Platform. This adds a number of key features to the platform. On the cloud side, Zerto 8.0 adds Continuous Data Protection to Google Cloud as well as cloud backup with AWS Storage Gateway. On the storage side, the release now supports VMware vVols. Combined with many other feature enhancements, Mariusz sees Zerto as offering a compelling platform-agonostic platform to protect your data across hybrid and multi cloud environments.
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vSphere 7 and Kubernetes – CTO Advisor Episode 118
In this CTO Dose Keith Townsend is joined by co-host Joep Piscaer to discuss vSphere 7 and his impressions of the Kubernetes integration, something Keith got to hear about in depth at Tech Field day . They discussed Project Tanzu Grid as the updated branding for Project Pacific, VMware’s effort to integrate Kubernetes into vSphere. They look at if VMware’s initial release lived up to the hype, and whether customers should adopt it right away, or wait for further development.
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