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.
Tech Field Day: Day 1
Paul Snyder was one of the delegates invited to the inaugural Security Field Day earlier this month. This was his first time at a Field Day event, he found it to be one of the best professional experiences he’s ever had. He found the event separates itself from others in the industry, because the delegates have total candor and freedom to express how they truly feel about the presenting companies. Maintaining this independence is critical for maintaining constructive dialogues.
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INFINIDAT Neutrix Cloud 2.0
Andrea Mauro gives an overview of Neutrix Cloud, a sovereign public cloud storage service offered by Infinidat. While this can be integrated with Infinidat’s Infinibox on-premises storage, it fundamentally provides file systems and block volumes across all the major public clouds, using a unified set of APIs across them all. Since seeing the solution at Storage Field Day earlier this year, Infinidat has added a number of features, including a web GUI, cross-regional replication, and integration with Amazon Voice Services.
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Some Random Thoughts From Security Field Day
Tom Hollingsworth just finished up the inaugural Security Field Day. As the organizer, Tom has some unique perspective, getting an inside look at both the presenting companies and delegates. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of takeaways from the event, but these initial thoughts by Tom are an interesting look at security from a more IT generalist perspective. The big thing here is that security isn’t about tools, it’s about embracing a way of thinking, and realizing that failure is a likely outcome over time.
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Some Random Thoughts From Security Field Day
Voices in Data Storage – Episode 3: A Conversation with Leo Leung of Oracle
In this episode of Voices in Data Storage, Enrico Signoretti spoke with Leo Leung, Oracle’s Senior Director of Product & Strategy for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. They discussed how Oracle’s cloud offerings have really impressed, specifically their presentation at Tech Field Day earlier this year. This isn’t simply a play to have traditional Oracle legacy apps in the cloud, but a play to offer high performance instances for cloud native applications.
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Voices in Data Storage – Episode 3: A Conversation with Leo Leung of Oracle
Hopeful with a Dash of Skepticism: Cisco 9800 Wireless Controllers
Phil Gervasi is still haunted by memories of the Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller. So it was with that in mind that he looks at Cisco’s new WLCs they presented at Networking Field Day, the 9300 and 9800 series. Phil thinks these can be successful due to their IOS-XE programmability and their ability to be deployed in racks or in the cloud as virtual appliances. Phil doesn’t think Cisco is repeating the issues of the 5760, and wants to start building them out in a lab soon.
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Hopeful with a Dash of Skepticism: Cisco 9800 Wireless Controllers
Apstra’s NFD19 Experience: Part 2
Carly Stoughton reviews what she presented on for Apstra at Networking Field Day last month. This presentation started with a architectural overview of Apstra Operating System. She then went on to show how AOS Server provides pre-built building blocks, allowing you to build out a data center is AOS in under six minutes. All of this can be customized and configured to fit an organizations needs.
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Apstra’s NFD19 Experience: Part 2
Elastifile Cloud File Service Now Available on Google Cloud
Chris Evans looks at the significance of Elastifile now offering a managed scale-out file service for Google Cloud, calling it nothing less than a coup for the company. He goes into the background on Elastifile’s Cloud File Service, which he first saw at Storage Field Day in 2017. By being a native first-party service with GCP, Elastifile gets the benefits of using native APIs, have billing done through Google, and have Google manage their scaling. Having native integration on GCP makes Elastifile “a winner” for Chris.
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Elastifile Cloud File Service Now Available on Google Cloud
Kentik Adds Value, Gets Cloudy
Kentik is no stranger to Networking Field Day, and recently did a presentation at our event last month. Pete Welcher was a delegate at the event and shares his thoughts on what he saw from them in this post. They showed off their cloud-based big data approach to analyzing flow data from internal sources and the cloud. Kentik is now able to ingest AWS and GCP flow records, with support for Azure coming in 2019. Pete was impressed by the amount of data this agentless approach can obtain.
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Kentik Adds Value, Gets Cloudy
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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