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.
Nyansa; A Clearer Picture From a Data Gathering Powerhouse
Mitch Dickey looks at what Nyansa presented at Mobility Field Day earlier this month. The company provides an analytics platform that “delivers a crazy amount of data and insight into your network.” Mitch looks into how the company presents and makes sense of all the data they collect, how they approach putting agents on client devices, and how they handle IoT devices. Overall, Mitch thinks they can be a player in the analytics market, provided the company molds how they present the data collected to their clients, and not overwhelm them with noise.
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Nyansa; A Clearer Picture From a Data Gathering Powerhouse
Secondary storage is the new primary
Enrico Signoretti sees IT as a whole suddenly recognizing the importance of secondary storage in their environment. As primary storage, centered around structured data, has largely become commidified, having high capacity but low quality object stores for secondary storage is becoming inadequate. This is especially true given the growth rate of unstructured data, which become even more of a problem as regulatory requirements increase. Enrico things a company like Komprise, which he saw at Storage Field Day last week, is the result of recognizing the importance of secondary storage. Komprise uses both analytics and user generated policy to do stretegic data planning, manage migration, move data to cheaper storage tiers when appropriate, and more.
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Secondary storage is the new primary
Mist Unveils AI-Driven Wi-Fi
In this post, Rowell Dionicio looks at the WiFI advances shown by Mist Systems at Mobility Field Day earlier this month. The company offers a cloud-managed WiFI service with a constant stream of updates, bug fixes, and new features through their dashboard at scale via microservices. He also got to see Marvis, Mist’s AI-driven Virtual Network Assistant. This can be used with troubleshooting, including being smart enough to open tickets with Mist automatically.
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CTS 139: Aruba Networks Demos OWE at MFD3
On this episode of the Clear to Send podcast, Rowell Dionicio discusses what he saw from Aruba at Mobility Field Day earlier this month. Specifically, the company demoed an improvement to unsecured wireless networks, called Opportunistic Wireless Encryption. This would enable users to connect without a password, but not allow any other connected users to see that traffic. Although not a mandatory part of the WPA3 specification, Aruba think OWE will be vital in securing the unsecured.
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CTS 139: Aruba Networks Demos OWE at MFD3
Solving 802.11ad challenges
In this post, Amy Arnold look at how the Aruba AP-387 point to point unit overcomes some of the challenges traditionally associated with 802.11ad. At Mobility Field Day earlier this month, Aruba showed how the AP uses both 60Hz and 5GHz radios, and aggregates the throughput in the AP. This combined with self aligning properties on the 60Hz radio combines to bring vastly improved consistency.
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Copy Data Management has a new player
Matt Leib got to get an inside look at Dell EMC’s new IDPA and DPS offerings. This opportunity gave deep insight into the Data Protection Appliance market, making it all that more interesting. Matt found his Tech Field Day delegate experience to be vital in cutting through company FUD. Even after all that, he still found what Dell EMC is doing to be impressive.
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Copy Data Management has a new player
AirCheck G2 gets a v3
Sam Clements got a deep dive into the new v3 firmware for NETSCOUT’s AirCheck G2 at Mobility Field Day earlier this month. The update adds a number of important features, including improved packet capture, Live-Link improvements to reduce dependence on Windows-only apps, and the ability to do over the air updates. For Sam, this makes already valuable AirCheck G2 even better.
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Tech Stand UP Episode 8 – SFD17 – Initial Thoughts on Komprise Podcast
On the latest Tech Stand UP episode, Luigi Danakos, Aaron Strong, and Joe Houghes discuss what they saw from Komprise at Storage Field Day last week. They discuss how Komprise’s Observer can be a tool to help users and businesses stay in compliance in a post-GDPR world.
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Tech Stand UP Episode 8 - SFD17 - Initial Thoughts on Komprise Podcast
MFD3 – Link-Live Updates
For Jonathan Davis, one of the highlights of NETSCOUT’s presentation at Mobility Field Day was seeing updates on Live-Link in their latest device firmware. These updates to the LinkRunner G2 and AirCheck G2 now allow the devices to be updated without the need of a Windows POC. For Jonathan, this is a welcome shift, and part of these devices becoming much more useful after the latest firmware.
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Clarity and Confusion- Fortinet and Arista at Mobility Field Day 3
For Lee Badman, seeing Fortinet at Mobility Field Day was an eye opening experience. He’d known of the company for some time, but had them pigeon holded as a security device company. While the company bundles their solutions under security banner, Lee found their solutions offer be well rounded. This baked-in approach contrasted with Arista Networks. For Lee, their presentation on the wireless assets from their recent Mojo Networks acquisition still needed some work to tell a complete story.
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Clarity and Confusion- Fortinet and Arista at Mobility Field Day 3
Storage Field Day 17 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure
Having Dan Frith along as a delegate for a Field Day event means two things. He’s written a steady stream of posts giving detailed and insightful looks at the presenting companies. But he’s also written his regular disclosure/event journal about things he did outside of the event presentation themselves. We’ve come to expect this kind of rigor from Mr. Frith. He does not disappoint here.
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Storage Field Day 17 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure
Managing VMware Proactively with Runecast
Gabe Maentz was a delegate at our recent Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld US, and got to see the latest from Runecast. In this post, Gabe looks at Runecast Analyzer, which is designed to help VMware admins keep their environments secure and up to best practices. On a technical level, Runecast Analyzer is a single VM that aggregates various sources to synthesize a single repository of information. From this Analyzer can look at your specific configuration and proactively alert you when if finds something applicable.
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Managing VMware Proactively with Runecast
MFD3 – AirCheck G2 V3.0 Announcement
At Mobility Field Day, Jonathan Davis got a first look at the updated 3.0 firmware for the AirCheck G2. This update adds a lot of important features to the wireless testing device, including better VLAN support, iPerf testing improvements, a better Location tool, and the ability to assign statuc IP addresses to the devices ethernet port. Overall Jonathan found the device to add some exciting capabilities to the wireless engineer’s toolkit.
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MFD3 – AirCheck G2 V3.0 Announcement
Data Point: Why Automation Won’t Replace Humans
Ivan Pepelnjak thinks network engineers don’t need to worry about automation replacing them in the near future, given that a forward looking company like Tesla has failed with their complete automation efforts. Instead, he points that network engineers should train themselves to do higher value jobs for organizations, which seems to be a good hedge against automation. He points out some recent Networking Field Day videos on the topic as well.
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Data Point: Why Automation Won’t Replace Humans
Aruba Takes The Lead With WPA3
WPA2 is more than a little long in the tooth, having been around for about as long as 802.11g. Jim Palmer outlines what Aruba presented on the new WPA3 security standard, and their efforts to push Opportunistic Wireless Encryption into the specification as well. It led to a lively discussion at Mobility Field Day last week.
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Aruba Takes The Lead With WPA3
Storage is not just a bunch of disks, said SoftNAS
Raff Poltronieri wrote up a look at what SoftNAS presented at Cloud Field Day last month. He breaks down the company’s take that storage is “not just a bunch of disks”, and how SoftNAS Cloud provides a data control and management platform to manage large amounts of data in the cloud.
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Storage is not just a bunch of disks, said SoftNAS
Storage Field Day 17 – Day 0
Dan Frith is coming back out to Silicon Valley for another Storage Field Day experience. This is Dan’s eighth Storage Field Day, and we always appreciate him crossing an ocean to attend. Make sure to follow along with the presentation on our live stream, and engage with Dan and the other delegates using #SFD17.
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Mobility Field Day 3 – A Delegate
It’s always great to hear about people’s first Field Day event experience. In this post, Jim Palmer talks about some of the behind the scenes of being a delegate at Mobility Field Day. It was a packed event and Jim was impressed by his fellow delegates around the table.
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Mobility Field Day 3 – A Delegate
Forti What?
One thing immediately struck Scott Lester from Fortinet’s Mobility Field Day presentation. The company has a swiss army like product portfolio that provides everything you need for a modern enterprise network, with the added benefits of no complex licensing tied to it. This particular presentation focused on their FortiGate as a wireless controller.
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Power to the Max
Arjan Timmerman reviews what he saw from Dell EMC at Storage Field Day this summer. They focused on their highly available tier zero PowerMax storage array. Arjan outlines that even though this product comes from a long lineage, it’s able to offer cutting edge performance.
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