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.
Aid Complex Troubleshooting With Distributed Tracing – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Distributed tracing is the dark art of tracking a transaction that passes through several microservices for troubleshooting purposes. Why was the transaction slow? Hard to say, especially when the failure is intermittent. Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks explain the problem and how SolarWinds Application Performance Monitoring suite is tackling it with Pingdom, Loggly, and AppOptics. Especially AppOptics, something they heard a lot about during SolarWinds’ Cloud Field Day presentation.
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Aid Complex Troubleshooting With Distributed Tracing - Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Riverbed Wasn’t Built in a Day
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Riverbed’s network security posture. At a recent Tech Field Day presentation, the company gave an overview of how they are addressing the increasingly complex world of security, and used the metaphor of the Roman Empire to frame their response. History buff Rich Stroffolino was fascinated by that framing, and breaks down the implication in this piece.
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Riverbed Wasn't Built In a Day
Moving Workloads With VMware HCX – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
After hearing from VMware at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss moving VMware workloads with the VMware HCX. Do admins want this? Don’t they really want to move work between Kubernetes clusters instead? Or is that even the right question? It kind of was, but it kind of wasn’t. Kubernetes & containers are not simple drop-in replacements for VMware & virtual machines. Therefore, HCX has use cases, and they explain what they think they are.
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Moving Workloads With VMware HCX - Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Day Two Cloud 047: Highlights and Analysis From Cloud Field Day 7
In this episode of the Day Two Cloud podcast, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss some of the presentations from Cloud Field Day. They looked at the big presentations from VMware, SolarWinds, and startup Pensando in the episode, specifically focusing on VMware Cloud on AWS, monitoring cloud performance with SolarWinds, and Pensando’s SmartNIC to offload a server’s network processing. Having two great hosts discussing the latest cloud goodness makes for a good podcast.
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Day Two Cloud 047: Highlights And Analysis From Cloud Field Day 7
VMware Makes Kubernetes Even More So With Tanzu
In this post, Justin Warren considers how VMware has gone about integrating Kubernetes into its establishing management platforms, something he heard all about at Cloud Field Day. This is an inherently complex task, if for no other reason than the Kubernetes landscape is still changing and updating rapidly. Any kind of integration would seemingly have to take that on as well. For Justin, a lot of the strength of VMware’s position with virtualization is that it is a known quantity that organizations have a continuing investment with over time. Adding in Kubernetes with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid doesn’t strictly play to that strength. For Justin, the key will be for VMware to simplify the solution over time as it learns how customers actually use Kubernetes.
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VMware Makes Kubernetes Even More So With Tanzu
VMware Embracing Terraform: Infrastructure as Code
Chris Grundemann was a little surprised when he heard VMware’s Narayan Bharadwaj mention Terraform during the opening presentation of Cloud Field Day. In fact, what he said is that VMware is “embracing Terraform in a pretty big way” as part of their focus on Infrastructure as Code. This struck Chris for two reasons. One, you wouldn’t be off-base to think of Terraform as a competitor to several VMware products. And two, because of the things that it makes possible. He digs into more of the specifics in this post.
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VMware Embracing Terraform: Infrastructure as Code
Automating Disaster Recovery Is Risky Business – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks think through VMware’s DRaaS offering, pondering the pros and cons of automation disaster recovery & business continuity. Sounds great, but are users testing regularly? What’s the failback process after the disaster is over? VMware went into detail during their Cloud Field Day presentation, and Ethan and Ned break it down in this episode of Day Two Cloud.
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Automating Disaster Recovery Is Risky Business - Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Broadcom
Jeff Fry definitely found a lot to be excited about from Broadcom’s presentation at Networking Field Day. The company’s components are at the hard of much of the modern networking stack, and at the event, they had numerous engineers and chip designers on hand to give some technical deep dives. The company provided an overview of their three chip classes, designed for service providers, hyperscalers, and enterprises. Be sure to check out their presentation video to get all the technical details.
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Build Your Network Apps on Pensando’s Cloud of SmartNICs – Day Two Cloud Video
Pensando Systems definitely made a big impression at Cloud Field Day. The company is a startup that threatens to be a juggernaut if past performance of the founders is any indicator of future results. Pensando’s made an ARM processor and paired it to a NIC and orchestration platform. Put the NIC in your servers and manage the NIC fleet centrally. Use the platform to create networking applications offloaded from the x86 CPU, all for less than a 30W power draw. Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss the implications of what they saw at the event, and who will be Pensando’s customers.
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Build Your Network Apps On Pensando's Cloud Of SmartNICs - Day Two Cloud Video
Voices in Data Storage – Episode 39: A Conversation With Russell Reeder
On this episode of Voices in Data Storage, the inimitable Enrico Signoretti spoke with Russell Reeder. They discuss Infrascale’s presentation at Storage Field Day, and the state of the storage industry at large. Be sure to subscribe to his feed, and check out the full video presentation from Storage Field Day!
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Voices in Data Storage – Episode 39: A Conversation with Russell Reeder
Pensando Systems at Cloud Field Day 7
It’s always exciting to get a new presenting company at an event like Cloud Field Day. Pensando Systems joined the Field Day presenter alumni with their recent presentation, and definitely made an impression on the delegates. While the event was virtual for their debut, it actually fostered a lot of great interaction both from the delegates and our wider audience on Twitter. Be sure to check out their full presentation video to find out how they built a Distributed Services Platform that gives cloud providers the ability to build industry-leading cloud services and gives enterprises the unique ability to drive cloud-like agility, security and operational simplicity across their entire infrastructure with unmatched scale and performance.
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Pensando Systems At Cloud Field Day 7
Ensuring Code Quality With Arista
Are you having issues with code quality? Do you feel like things keep getting worse when you install the latest patch? Maybe the process behind the scenes is broken. Perhaps you need to look at what a good example of code development looks like. Tom Hollingsworth reviews the process from Arista after their presentation at Networking Field Day.
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Ensuring Code Quality with Arista
VMC on AWS Is More Cloud Like All the Time – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
After hearing from VMware at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance consider VMware Cloud on AWS now that a couple of years have gone by since the service launched. Is it really cloud yet, or just VMware in a colo alongside AWS? It’s really both. They dig into it on a recent episode of the Day Two Cloud Podcast. Be sure to check it out, watch VMware’s presentation from the event, and let us know what you thing!
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VMC On AWS Is More Cloud Like All The Time - Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Monitoring Application Performance From the Inside Out With Solarwinds AppOptics
Are you relying on old tools to monitor your modern applications? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at why you should examine the way you keep an eye on your applications and how your users experience them. At Cloud Field Day, he saw that this is where SolarWinds comes into play. They have spent a great deal of time creating the best tool to handle monitoring of your application from the inside out. Their AppOptics solution does more than just monitor the response time of your pages. It digs deep into the services that compose the application to find out what’s actually going on when users run complicated queries or connect to a node that is having some performance issues.
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Monitoring Application Performance from the Inside Out with Solarwinds AppOptics
Meet Field Day Delegate – Pieter-Jan Nefkens
We’re thrilled to welcome welcome Pieter-Jan Nefkens to the delegate ranks, as he’ll be joining us for Security Field Day for the first time. Pieter-Jan is a network consultant and owner of Nefkens Advies. He has also been a Cisco Champion since 2017. He sat down for an interview with Gesstalt IT, and provided some background into how he got his start in tech and security, as well as where he sees the industry going. Be sure to check it out before you see him in the Field Day presentations!
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Meet Field Day Delegate - Pieter-Jan Nefkens
Daily Check-In for May 4, 2020
Ned Bellavance has been checking in on his YouTube channel every weekday at 11am ET while we’re all working from home, and he recently talked about what he saw from OpenShift at Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat. He focuses on OpenShift Cluster Manager, which can be used as a SaaS service or deployed on-prem. He looks at how this fits into typical organizational uses of Kubernetes, where organizations might run into problems, and some of the advanced features available to on-prem deployments.
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Daily Check-in for May 4, 2020
One Tier to Replace Them All
Data centers often need to deploy and manage multiple types of storage devices to provide the needed performance and storage tiers. Meeting an organization’s storage capacity and storage performance requirements can be a juggling act with multiple storage devices. VAST Data’s Universal Storage Solution can simplify this complexity using a single device providing a single cost-effective Flash tier. Vast Data made a big splash showing this off at Storage Field Day, so be sure to dig into this article for background before watching their full presentation video.
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Meet Field Day Delegate – Ben Mason
We’re thrilled to have Ben Mason joining us as a delegate for Security Field Day. Ben is an Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP), a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE), and a CrowdStrike Certified Falcon Administrator (CCFA). In addition, he volunteers at the HART Homeless Animal Rescue Team of Maine. Be sure to check out his interview with Gestalt IT to get a little more background, and be sure to look out for him during all the Security Field Day live streams.
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Meet Field Day Delegate - Ben Mason
Cloud Field Day 7 – VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is not an unfamiliar site at Field Day events, and most recently, they graced us with a presentation at Cloud Field Day. Ed Horley was a delegate for the event and got to hear a lot about VMware Cloud on AWS. For Ed, it seems like VMware has deftly navigated the often daunting challenges of adopting their established enterprise business model into the public cloud. The solution extends the ability to run cloud workloads to the scale and flexibility that AWS provides while also providing native hooks and features from AWS that extend what an enterprise can leverage from both VMware and AWS. It’s an impressive achievement that has a lot of value for organizations with deep VMware investments.
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Cloud Field Day 7 - VMware Cloud on AWS
The Programmability Voyage With Barefoot Networks
Hardware alone isn’t the key to longevity. We learned that lesson with the Voyager program. How do those lessons parallel with ASIC design today? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at the Barefoot Networks presentation from Networking Field Day 21. They extended this metaphor to their own use of software to extend their Tofino chips using the P4 programming language. While they might not see the same 50 year life span as the Voyager vessels, it’s an approach that can better adapt to business needs as they change over time.
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