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.
Cisco Catalyst Wifi, Take Two
In this post, notable Canadian and Networking Field Day delegate Rob Coote digs into the Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller from Cisco, positioned as their next-generation wireless platform. At Networking Field Day, Cisco highlighted three key improvements from previous Aironet products: Always-on, security, and the ability to deploy anywhere. Rob think the overall popularity of Catalyst 9k switches should provide a good basis for the success of the wireless platform.
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Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Jeff Wilson
Aruba has been getting ready for Security Field Day by introducing the delegates in a series of interviews. In this post, Jamie Easley spoke with delegate Jeff Wilson. They discussed how the iMac G3 got him into IT, the importance of code integrity, and overlooked security risk. Be sure to look out for Jeff during Security Field Day’s live stream this week.
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Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Jeff Wilson
Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Kori Younger
Jamie Easley with Aruba is doing profile posts about the delegates for Security Field Day. This time around, he’s talking with Kori Younger. They discussed how she got interested in technology, advocating for women in the industry, and how to raise better awareness of cybersecurity.
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Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Kori Younger
Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Christopher Kusek
Jamie Easley with Aruba has been writing a series of posts introducing many of the Security Field Day delegates. This time, he’s talking with Christopher Kusek. They discuss how he got his start in security, his best tips for business and personal security, and his favorite security memes.
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Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Christopher Kusek
What is Cisco ACI?
Gian Paolo Boarina heard a lot about Cisco ACI at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe this year. This has come in handy since he’s been migrating traditional switches to Cisco ACI fabric. In this post, he looks at what exactly is ACI from the perspective of a different roles, including networking, security, and DevOps. Overall in working with Cisco ACI, Gian has found he’s needed less time configuring switches, and more time focusing on business intent.
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Routers Getting Routered – Silver Peak SD-WAN
At Networking Field Day last month, Silver Peak made the argument that their SD-WAN appliances should replace routers in an enterprise deployment. As a delegate at the event, Orhan Ergun was impressed by their Unity Orchestrator SD-WAN controller, which provided a single tool for statistics , advanced reporting, configuration and maintenance. That combined with a very flexible feature set and zero-touch provisioning made Orhan think Silver Peak won’t have a problem fulfilling their router replacement promise.
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Routers Getting Routered - Silver Peak SD-WAN
BiB 067: Custom APIs For Business Logic With BlueCat Gateway
Ethan Banks posted a new episodes of the Briefings in Brief podcast highlighting BlueCat Networks, which he saw at Networking Field Day last month. This episode highlight BlueCat Gateway, a way for businesses to make custom APIs specific to their business for BlueCat’s DDI platform. This lives as an easy to deploy Docker image, with a community-driven GitHub repository to share successful workflows. For Ethan, this kind of community engagement is critical for success of an API-driven solution.
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BiB 067: Custom APIs For Business Logic With BlueCat Gateway
Automating the Mundane with Silver Peak
Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at what Silver Peak presented at Networking Field Day. The SD-WAN company doesn’t just stop at basic SDN automation. SDN has long been used for automatic VLAN provisioning for ports, but Silver Peak showed how their automation can handle even more mundane tasks, like an RMA process. This takes it off the plate of admin busy work, and frees up productivity.
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Automating the Mundane with Silver Peak
DNS: More Than Just Name Resolution
Kevin Blackburn was a delegate at Networking Field Day last month, and clearly was intrigued by what he heard from BlueCat Networks. During their presentation, the company showed how DNS can be more than simple name resolution. This involves using it for threat protection and utilizing as a store of a single source of networking truth. For Kevin, this was some next-level DNS.
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DNS: More Than Just Name Resolution
Apstra’s Intent-Based Networking
Pete Welcher continues his excellent look at the presentations from Networking Field Day last month, focusing on Apstra in this post. As Pete points out, the company was ahead of the curve, trumpeting Intent-Based Networking before it became a buzz word. He reviews their vendor-neutral approach, and how quickly the company demonstrated deploying and configuring AOS.
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Apstra's Intent-Based Networking
When Is It Not Always DNS?
During their recent Networking Field Day presentation, BlueCat Networks posited that DNS is unreliable because it was never designed to actually be reliable. Tom Hollingsworth looks at the security implications of this, and the merits of BlueCat’s unified DNS, DHCP and IPAM platform.
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BiB 064: Is Riverbed’s SD-WAN Product Too Late To Matter?
Ethan Banks hosted another episode of Briefings in Brief, looking at the Networking Field Day presentation from Riverbed. The presentation focused on Riverbed’s was on their SD-WAN solution. With a rich legacy in the WAN optimization market, Ethan thinks the company is well poised to transition customers to these SD-WAN solutions. He also looks at how their SteelHead SD and SteelConnect SDI appliances fit within their portfolio.
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BiB 064: Is Riverbed's SD-WAN Product Too Late To Matter?
Silver Peak is Serious about SD-WAN
Silver Peak’s presentation at Networking Field Day last month got Pete Welcher thinking. He thinks the company made a well timed jump from WAN appliances to SD-WAN, with their Unity EdgeConnect being their unified SD-WAN offering. Their presentation made the case for replacing traditional WAN routers with SD-WAN devices. Pete looks at some of the technical benefits and drawbacks to that approach.
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Silver Peak is Serious about SD-WAN
Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Paul Snyder
In preparation for their presentation at Security Field Day next week, Aruba’s Jamie Easley wrote up a post to get to know one of the delegates for the event, Paul Snyder. They discussed how Paul got into IT security, what the industry can do to attract more security professionals, and what are some of the overlooked security issues in modern enterprises.
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Meet the Security Field Day Delegates: Paul Snyder
BiB 063: Can An SD-WAN Device Replace A WAN Router?
On this episode of Briefings in Brief, Ethan Banks looks at what Silver Peak presented at Networking Field Day last month. The SD-WAN company focused their Field Day presentation on how their solutions can be replacements for conventional WAN routers. Ethan looks at if WAN routers are the ancient devices Silver Peak presented, and if an SD-WAN device is a suitable replacement.
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BiB 063: Can An SD-WAN Device Replace A WAN Router?
MPLS for the masses: The need for simplicity and standardization, at least in networking (The wheel has already been invented)
Nicola Modena found a kindred spirit when he heard Apstra present at Networking Field Day last month. Both share an appreciation for removing the superfluous and using the right tools and in the right way. Their Apstra Operating System was made to create and manage multivendor Clos IP Fabrics. As part of this, Apstra included a number of standard configuration models that fit within this ethos. After talking to Apstra, while their customers are at liberty to modify these configuration, the vast majority leave them in their essential state.
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NetApp Data Fabric: A la Hybrid Cloud! – An update from NetApp Insight 2018
Chan Ekanayake attending Tech Field Day Extra at NetApp Insight 2018, and in this post shares his thoughts on NetApp’s announcements around Data Fabric. At Insight, the company showed how Data Fabric is moving beyond simply being a hybrid cloud solution. Now Data Fabric can provide data portibility across across Edge to Core to Cloud platforms. NetApp also extended the data services available to Data Fabric solutions. Chan thinks the strategy for NetApp is sound, the devil will be in continuing to execute. But he sees NetApp’s willingness to invest and differentiate with software will only serve to their advantage going forward.
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NetApp Data Fabric: A la Hybrid Cloud! – An update from NetApp Insight 2018
BiB 062: Globally Scalable Microsegmentation With Illumio
Ethan Banks posted a recent Briefings in Brief episode discussing what was presented by Illumio at Networking Field Day last month. This marked Illumio’s return to the event, and they used their presentation to highlight their Policy Compute Engine Supercluster. This provides a a cluster of Policy Compute Engines, which can be used for massive scale that would otherwise choke a single controller. Ethan was impressed the company did a live demo showing the Supercluster in action with 225K workloads across three AWS regions. Make sure you check out their demo yourself with our full video coverage.
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BiB 062: Globally Scalable Microsegmentation With Illumio
Illumio PCE Supercluster Launch: Behind the Scenes
Illumio returned to Networking Field Day earlier this week, with the launch of PCE Supercluster, providing centralized policy management and global application visibility at scale. In this video, the team takes a look at what went into planning that announcement, including organizing a quarter million workloads demo.
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Illumio PCE Supercluster Launch: Behind the Scenes
BiB 061: Understanding DriveScale Composer Architecture
The Briefing in Brief podcast from Packet Pushers is a great way to stay up to date on the latest company-specific news in a really concise package. In this edition, Ethan Banks looks at what DriveScale presented about at Tech Field Day, specifically the DriveScale Composer. This allows organizations to compose any compute to any disk or flash, in a scalable way. This is all RESTful API driven, allowing you to compose your infrastructure, but stopping short of being an application orchestrator. All of this with full multi-tenant support, and designed to insure data integrity in the event of an outage.
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