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.

#SFD18 Introduces Us to VAST Data

Matt Leib digs into the public launch of VAST Data, which happened during their Storage Field Day presentation last month. The developed their Universal File System based on the belief that all data across storage tiers can be handled by their single architectural environment. Part of this is done by aggressively using Intel Optane as a write cache for metadata, complimented by JBOF NVMe connected by ethernet or Infiniband to server environments. By disaggregating storage from compute, the company also adds scale beyond the rack to the equation as well. For Matt, it was an impressive debut.

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#SFD18 introduces us to VAST Data

SFD18-Western Digital

Western Digital offered something different at Storage Field Day, being a provider of the storage that most other presenters use in their products. Highlights include details about 96-layer 3D NAND production, and HDD advancements including Helium, and using technologies like MAMR, HAMR and SMR to push density,

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SFD18-Western Digital

NetApp Insight 2018 Product Announcements

In this post, Ray Lucchesi runs down the major announcements from NetApp Insight 2018. NetApp Kubernetes Service allows for running managed Kubernetes on the public cloud or on NetApp HCI hardware. MAX Data comes out of NetApp’s Plexistor acquisition and offers a two-tier, local file system that can make use of DRAM, NVDIMMs, or 3D Xpoint memory as an ultra-fast Persistent Memory Tier and ONTAP storage as the Storage Tier. Ray thinks NetApp has been on a high lately, and these announcements show the company has no signs of slowing down.

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NetApp Insight 2018 product announcements

Are CIO’s Missing the Metadata Bus?

Storage Field Day saw the return of Keith Townsend to the delegate ranks. In this post, he takes a look at what NetApp presented at the event. They showed their Network Data as a Service, which indexes all of the metadata stored in the system, allowing for basic analytics and an easily searchable data lake. Given NetApp’s breadth across Tier 1 and backup storage platforms, Keith sees some intriguing possibilities.

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Are CIO's Missing the Metadata Bus?

Cohesity Is (Data)Locked In

Cohesity presented at Storage Field Day last month, and Dan Frith was there to get the secondary storage deep dive from the company. The features that you get with Cohesity are well known, so Dan focuses on what really piqued his interest: Cohesity’s archival features and ransomeware protection.

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Cohesity Is (Data)Locked In

PathSolutions Helps Put the Data of Your Network to Good Use

In this post, Ken Nalbone looks at the network collection and correlation capabilities of PathSolutions. They were a presenter at Networking Field Day, highlighting their TotalView platform. By combining monitoring from across the data center with proactive alerting, Ken found it an intriguing solution.

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PathSolutions Helps Put the Data of Your Network to Good Use

Storage Field Day 18 – Fifty Shades of Disclosure

Max Mortillaro attended Storage Field Day last month as a delegate. At the event, he got to experience a dense schedule of presentations from emerging and prominent IT storage companies. Be sure to check out the full video coverage of the event to see the same great content that Max got to experience.

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Storage Field Day 18 - Fifty Shades of Disclosure

Leveraging Backup to Advance Your Decision Making

Keith Townsend looks into what he saw from Cohesity at Storage Field Day. The company revolutionized the scale-out backup appliance by fitting it into an overall vision for unified secondary storage. At the event, they showed off their App Store, allowing for devs to deploy software services directly on the platform. This can allow for machine learning and analytics to be run directly on secondary data.

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Leveraging Backup to Advance Your Decision Making

SnapRoute – Is There Something New Happening in Networking?

SnapRoute launched their Cloud Native Network Operating System at Networking Field Day earlier this month. For Ed Horley, this marks a significant shift in thinking. It classifies networking as just another compute object with specific characteristics, one that is utilized to serve a workload. This takes networking from something apart, and sets it at the same level of the rest of the software-defined data center. It’s an interesting approach, and Ed digs into the implications in this piece.

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SnapRoute - Is there something new happening in networking?

Datera Shows the Value of Data in Use

Justin Warren saw something unique from Datera’s presentation at Tech Field Day last month. For him, it was particularly useful because it focused on the cost of change. Datera’s storage solution focused on lowering that cost of change, allowing for greater experimentation and innovation by organizations.

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Datera Shows The Value of Data In Use

I Once Caught a Fish This Big!!

Tech Field Day bon vivant Al Rasheed was at Cisco Live Europe this year, so naturally he was invited to be a delegate at the Tech Field Day Extra presentations being held at the same time. There he got to hear from Cisco about developments with IoT networking, and what the company is doing to protect this massively expanded threat surface. For Al, these kind of solutions are vital, but just as importance is to consider if the convenience of an IoT device is worth the security risks in the first place.

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I Once Caught A Fish This Big!!

Catch Up (Fast) – IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

It’s been almost a full calendar year since Chin-Fah Heoh last heard from IBM at Storage Field Day. They returned again last month to give an update on IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. While still a relatively nascent offering, SPP is starting to gain industry recognition, and adding must-have features for the backup and recovery market. For Chin-Fah, the pricing is there to appeal to the SMB/SME market, and he sees potential in it with regional cloud service providers as well.

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Catch up (fast) – IBM Spectrum Protect Plus

Achieving a New Level for Data Storage and Cloud Fluidity

Matt Leib has seen Pure Storage at a few Field Day events. In this post, he builds off the previous discussions the company had around NVMe to illustrate how the companies forward thinking approach to an all-NVMe portfolio enables greater density at the scale required for the largest enterprises.

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Achieving a New Level for Data Storage and Cloud Fluidity

Netrounds

Richard McIntosh was impressed with what he saw from Netrounds at Networking Field Day earlier this year. Using a series of network agents, they offer testing, monitoring, and troubleshooting, reporting back to a Control Center in a nicely put together GUI. They showed a demo using their API to deploy seven agents in seven countries with reporting starting to Control Center in under a minute. That kind of active monitoring is invaluable for modern networks.

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Netrounds

A Glimpse at Two Approaches to Segment Routing

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Cisco Service Provider provided a unique opportunity speak to an even more specialized audience than a typical Field Day event. Ethan Banks certainly found it interesting. Cisco went into detail about hardware support for Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6), as well as support in IOS-XR 6.1. Cisco seems to be driving this standard, with a message around network simplification. Be sure to get Ethan’s full take in the piece.

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A Glimpse At Two Approaches To Segment Routing

BLOG – NFD20 – Kemp Technologies

Rodrigo Rovere got to hear from Kemp Technologies at Networking Field Day earlier this year. The traditional load balancing company presented on a more holistic vision for application delivery. This includes their 360 Vision solution, a cloud offering that can take in information from various load balancers and ADCs. The goal of all of this is to provide better predictive analytics, correlation, and monitoring for customers.

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BLOG - NFD20 - Kemp Technologies

VAST Data Must Be Something Special

It’s always a unique experience when a company comes out of stealth at a Field Day event. At Storage Field Day last month, the delegates, including Chin-Fah Heoh, got to be part of the public unveiling for Vast Data. Aside from having a very amiable tech evangelist, Chin-Fah was impressed by their unique architecture, which uses stateless compute nodes running the Vast Universal File System in containers, which connect to Databoxes that store metadata via Intel Optane. Their data reduction was just as impressive, and left Chin-Fah with a very positive impression about this emerging company.

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VAST Data must be something special

Monitoring Customer Data With Machine Learning

Justin Warren wrote up this piece looking at how IT companies are using machine learning to better monitor customer data. He specifically cites HPE’s InfoSight and NetApp’s Active IQ interesting examples, the latter of which he saw at Tech Field Day last month. He notes that collecting and processing information across customers allows Active IQ to notice systemic issues earlier.

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Monitoring Customer Data With Machine Learning

Voices in Data Storage – Episode 9: A Conversation With Stephen Foskett

In this episode of Voices in Data Storage, Enrico Signoretti interviewed Tech Field Day founder Stephen Foskett. Enrico has now seen the event from both a presenting company side, and as a delegate. The two talk about current trends in storage and go into detail about the Tech Field Day event series.

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Voices in Data Storage – Episode 9: A Conversation with Stephen Foskett

Storage Field Day 18 – Day 0

Dan Frith is no stranger to Storage Field Day, but it’s still always a treat when he decides to cross the ocean and join as at the event. In this post, Dan previews the events, includes a full schedule, and even links to the video. Be sure to check out our full event playlist to see all the same presentations as the illustrious Mr. Frith.

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Storage Field Day 18 – Day 0