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.
Cumulus – Not Your Average Networking
Cumulus Networks presented at Networking Field Day recently with their partner Mellanox. Larry Smith reviews what he saw from the company. Cumulus takes a core Debian Linux OS, and optimizes it to allow network engineers to configure in CLI without having to learn specific Linux commands. The benefit of a Linux core is amplified because the OS supports almost any automation tool a network admin will need.
Read More:
Cumulus - Not Your Average Networking
WekaIO – Not The Matrix You’re Thinking Of
Dan Frith turns his gaze here to WekaIO a presenter at Storage Field Day earlier this month. While not the first time seeing their file system, Dan was nonetheless impressed with the purported performance and data services offering. While not a one size fits all solution, Dan thinks its a good option for those needing performance focused, massively parallel, scale-out storage solution with the ability to combine NVMe and S3.
Read More:
WekaIO – Not The Matrix You’re Thinking Of
Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: Rubrik
Ahead of attending Cloud Field Day next month, Chris Evans wrote up a preview of one presenter, Rubrik. Chris thinks the company has succeeded in making data protection more interesting by integrating it with other secondary storage requirements in a single platform, via their Cloud Data Management platform. Chris is interested to learn more about their evolving cloud strategy, especially after their recent acquisition of Datos IO.
Read More:
Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: Rubrik
Storage Field Day 15: Dropbox the high availability in a “pocket”
At Storage Field Day, Lino Telera got to hear from Dropbox. They presented about their Magic Pocket architecture, which allowed them to transition from depending on AWS, saved them $75 million over two years, and increased performance. Lino gives a great overview of the architecture here. Perhaps most surprising to him was the work Dropbox put into optimizing their networking across their entire platform.
Read More:
Storage Field Day 15: Dropbox the high availability in a “pocket”
Cohesity: A secondary storage solution for the Hybrid Cloud?
Chan Ekanayake has followed Cohesity since 2015, but got to drink from the secondary storage firehose during their presentation at Storage Field Day. Chan likes their solution and company direction, but thinks the key to their success ultimately depends on pricing.
Read More:
Cohesity: A secondary storage solution for the Hybrid Cloud?
Game of Threats with Cisco AMP
At Cisco Live Europe, Dominik Pickhardt heard from the Cisco Security group. The presentation focused on updates for AMP for Endpoints. For Dominik, Cisco distinguishes themselves with integration for other AMP systems, as well as newly announced support for iOS.
Read More:
Game of Threats with Cisco AMP
NetApp Data Fabric Cloud Field Day 3 Preview
The CTO Advisor himself, Keith Townsend, will be heading out to Cloud Field Day next month. Presenting at the event will be NetApp. In this CTO Dose, Keith discusses what to expect from them at the event, focusing on the company’s proclaimed transition to a data company.
Read More:
NetApp Data Fabric Cloud Field Day 3 Preview
What’s really define an HCI solution?
At Tech Field Day last month, NetApp’s Adam Carter presented how the company conceptually approached the idea of Hyperconverged Instrastructure. Andrea Mauro wrote up his thoughts on the presentation. For him, its less important whether NetApp’s solution fits into the HCI buzzword, but rather what is the actual value of the solution.
Read More:
What’s really define an HCI solution?
Tech ONTAP Podcast: NetApp at Storage Field Day 15
On the most recent episode of NetApp’s Tech ONTAP Podcast, Tech Field Day founder Stephen Foskett and Storage Field Day delegate Glenn Dekhayser discuss what they saw from the company at their most recent Field Day presentation.
Read More:
Tech ONTAP Podcast: NetApp at Storage Field Day 15
Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: NetApp
Chris Evans is hearing out to Silicon Valley next month to take part in Cloud Field Day. In this piece, he previews what to expect from NetApp. He’s looking forward to hearing more about the company’s transition from a storage company to data management. This is based around Data Fabric, which Chris calls “an under-told stor[y]”.
Read More:
Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: NetApp
StarWind VTL? What? Yes, And It’s Great!
At Storage Field Day, StarWind presented on using Virtual Tape Libraries to backup to object storage. For Dan Frith this makes a compelling case for SMBs who aren’t in a position to rearchitect their data protection, but want to modernize their backup targets.
Read More:
StarWind VTL? What? Yes, And It’s Great!
The Challenge of Scale
Josh De Jong go his idea of scale adjusted after hearing Dropbox present at Storage Field Day. In his previous SMB experience, 20-30TB had been a large amount of storage. Moving into the enterprise, multiple petabytes became more of the norm. But at Dropbox, they referred to 30PB as a “toy system.” Josh overviews many of the problems and solutions Dropbox showed to operate at such scale.
Read More:
Mitigating the risk of Cloud Lift & Shift
Keith Townsend isn’t a fan of straight cloud lift and shifts. But if you must, he outlines how VMware Cloud on AWS and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can help mitigate some of the issues. Keith will get to see more from Oracle’s approach on this at Cloud Field Day next month.
Read More:
Mitigating the risk of Cloud Lift & Shift
CFD3 Prep Post: Druva
Justin Warren is getting ready for Cloud Field Day next month, taking a look at Druva in this post. The company offers an alternative to legacy backup and recovery, based on AWS, and can specifically backup SaaS-based applications. He’s definitely looking forward to learning more about how their solution specifically works on a day-to-day level.
Read More:
Cohesity Basics – Auto Protect
There was a lot to digest from Cohesity’s Storage Field Day presentation. Dan Frith highlights their Auto Protect feature, which allows you to add a source and have Cohesity automatically protect all of the VMs in a folder or cluster, including any new VMs added to that source. Dan found it a great feature, although he wished it was turned on by default.
Read More:
Cohesity Basics – Auto Protect
Datrium @ Storage TechFieldDay
Datrium’s Andre Leibovici posted about their recent Storage Field Day presentation on his blog. The company presented on the latest updates to their DVX solution. Andre shares some delegate coverage and full video from the event.
Read More:
Datrium @ Storage TechFieldDay
The True Meaning of HyperConverged
The definitions of words can sometimes be tricky in the enterprise. For Alastair Cooke, the problem comes when we force a term to conform to an arbitrary set of mechanical elements, rather than around business need. This was brought to mind during Tech Field Day, when NetApp presented about their philosophy behind HCI, which is far more about the simplicity of operating an environment designed purely to run VMs, than simply adding storage to a server box.
Read More:
The True Meaning of HyperConverged
The Risk of Shared Service Level Agreements
While watching Storage Field Day, Chris Evans heard IBM present about their SLA policy within their backup software. In this post, he clarifies how a service-level agreement differs from service-level objective, and why the distinction matters in the enterprise.
Read More:
The Risk of Shared Service Level Agreements
Dropbox – It’s Scale Jim, But Not As We Know It
Dropbox’s recent presentation at Storage Field Day certainly left an impression with the delegates, and Dan Frith is no exception. The company reviewed their Magic Pocket architecture, which enabled them to move infrastructure back on-premises from the public cloud. For Dan, the big takeaway here is that this was an innovative solution for Dropbox, but the level of investment and development is definitely not for every organization with massive scalable storage needs.
Read More:
Dropbox – It’s Scale Jim, But Not As We Know It
An update on Oracle’s Cloud
Keith Townsend recently attended Oracle Ravello Blogger Day, and got to hear from the engineers and product manager building their public cloud platform. He gives an overview of Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure, and the possibilities of their HVX hypervisor. Oracle will be presenting at Cloud Field Day next month, and Keith can’t wait to ask about their support for traditional layer-2 datacenter networking.
Read More: