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.
Avere Systems is Acquired by Microsoft
A new year, a new acquisition by Microsoft. The Redmond software company acquired Avere Systems, with plans to integrate their hybrid cloud solutions into Azure. Chris Evans shares his thoughts on how this acquisition might effect the competitive landscape.
Read More:
Avere Systems is Acquired by Microsoft
Keeping An Eye On Containers with Ixia CloudLens
Containers have a number of benefits in modern IT, but monitoring them can quickly become problematic. Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at Ixia’s CloudLens solution, a container monitoring solution built into a container! This allows it to be highly portable and easily configured with other containers for monitoring.
Read More:
Keeping An Eye On Containers with Ixia CloudLens
That’s a Wrap: An ExploreVM Look Back at 2017
2017 seems to have been a year of milestones for Paul Woodward. He completed season 1 of his new ExploreVM podcast, launched his YouTube channel, wrote a record number of blog posts, and saw readership increase by over 300%! He also attended a number of IT events, finishing the year by attending Tech Field Day in September. We’re looking forward to seeing more of Paul’s impressions from Tech Field Day, and what he has in store for 2018!
Read More:
That's a Wrap: An ExploreVM Look Back at 2017
Performance Analysis of SAS/SATA and NVMe SSDs
Chris Evans reviews a performance analysis paper, breaking down the performance gains of NVMe vs SATA NAND disks in databases. This includes a look at real world applications. It shows the benefit of the reduced complexity and overhead of NVMe compared to SATA on otherwise identical storage media. As Chris notes, the lower CPU utlization and wait times have led to companies like E8 Storage and Excelero to develop new storage architectures. And in the HCI space, Scale Computing and X-IO are finding new ways to use the compute.
Read More:
Performance Analysis of SAS/SATA and NVMe SSDs
Its time for Network Field Day 17
Greg Ferro is no stranger to Networking Field Day. We’re happy to have him along for our first event of the year. He’ll beheading out to Silicon Valley to hear presentations from the latest and greatest in networking. In this piece, Greg breaks down where each of the presenting companies are positioned at the start of 2018 and what he hopes to hear from them. Make sure to watch along with Greg on our live stream!
Read More:
Its time for Network Field Day 17
Highlights from HPEDiscover 2017 Madrid
Lino Telera was at HPE Discover 2017 and share some of his thoughts. He saw their latest solutions around IoT, edge computing, and storage (from their recent Nimble Storage acquisition).
Read More:
Highlights from HPEDiscover 2017 Madrid
Dell EMC VMAX All-Flash: A proven solution for mission-critical systems
Max) Mortillaro shares a great piece inspired by Dell EMC’s recent Storage Field Day presentation on their VMAX All-Flash array. He starts out by outlining the how and why organizations define what exactly are mission-critical applications. This naturally leads into a discussion of VMAX All-Flash, which Max describes as “a perfect fit for mission-critical systems”. He digs into how this third iteration of VMAX adds some useful new features for those organizations that need highly available Tier-1 storage.
Read More:
Dell EMC VMAX All-Flash: A proven solution for mission-critical systems
XtremIO X2: easier scaling, fewer cables and metadata aware replication
After seeing Dell EMC’s presentation at Storage Field Day last year, Jon Klaus shares his thoughts on their XtremIO X2 storage array. Jon sees several interesting features compared to its predecessor. Among other features, Jon liked the improved flexibility when scaling storage, including offering XtremIO X2 Bricks with only partially populated disks. This makes it easier for new customers to adopt. XtremIO X2 also offers improved 5:1 data reduction, which can be achieved without a performance penalty due to its “inline everything” architecture.
Read More:
XtremIO X2: easier scaling, fewer cables and metadata aware replication
2017 – A Personal Reflection
It’s been a busy year for Matt Crape. He presented at the Veeam Online User Group, got his VCP7-DTM certification, and was a guest on some podcasts. In this post, he lays out some goals to make 2018 a similar success. We enjoyed having Matt attend three Field Day events in 2017!
Read More:
Cape Networks
Haydn Andrews had a chance to review the Cape Networks sensor and monitoring tools which they presented at this year’s Mobility Field Day. Other than lack of 802.11ac support, Haydn found it the simplicity of their overall approach impressive.
Read More:
vBLE Implementations with Bob Friday of Mist Systems
Robert Boardman and the crew at WiFi of Everything recorded an interview with Mist Systems co-founder and CTO Bob Friday. They discuss vBLE, and get a live demo of their beacons in use in the Mist Systems offices.
Read More:
vBLE Implementations with Bob Friday of Mist Systems
What is your netflow strategy?
Network flow data will only increase as network traffic grows within organizations. Nick Buraglio shares a review of various solutions on how to address and monitor flows, from Solarwinds, Splunk, Arbor, and more. In the end, his takeaway isn’t that one solution is inherently superior. Rather that there are a number of options for budgets and scale, so there’s no reason not to have something
Read More:
What is your netflow strategy?
Enterprise Data as a Service (DaaS): the new paradigm of Actifio
Actifio presented at Tech Field Day earlier this year in Silicon Valley. We were lucky to have Raff Poltronieri as a delegate, and he’s shared his thought about what he’s saw. He looks at their Sky Platform 8.0, and how it gives organizations the agility needed to let business drive IT.
Read More:
Enterprise Data as a Service (DaaS): the new paradigm of Actifio
NETSCOUT LinkRunner G2; Part 2, Hittin The Switches
In his continuing look at NETSCOUT’s LinkRunner G2, Mitch Dickey runs down some of the device’s native monitoring capabilities, specifically the AUTOTEST function. This provides a detailed overview that quickly gets essential network connection information to the network engineer.
Read More:
NETSCOUT LinkRunner G2; Part 2, Hittin The Switches
Ixia CloudLens to dive in the public cloud traffic
Ixia presented at Tech Field Day earlier this year, giving a deep dive into their CloudLens visibility platform. Raff Poltronieri wrote up his thoughts on the solution, finding it an interesting option for cloud agnostic monitoring and visibility.
Read More:
Ixia CloudLens to dive in the public cloud traffic
Has NVMe Killed off NVDIMM?
Chris Evans looks at the impact here of NVMe on the nascent NVDIMM market. Without needing to reorganize architectures and with OS support already in place, Chris sees NVMe has having a number of advantages. He still sees a place for NVDIMMs in the data center, but perhaps its place is much smaller than previously assumed.
Read More:
Tech Field Day 15 @Riverbed (#TFD15) (with images, tweets)
Michael Sheehan put together a Storify page around Riverbed’s presentation at Tech Field Day earlier this year. This gathers together the best tweets, pictures and posts from the event, displayed in a chronological timeline. Make sure to watch full video of their presentation a follow along!
Read More:
Tech Field Day 15 @Riverbed (#TFD15) (with images, tweets)
Avere Systems’ Latest Edge Filer Handles the Most Demanding Hybrid Cloud Workloads
James Green was first introduced to Avere Systems at Storage Field Day last year. In this piece, he looks at the company’s FXT 5850 edge filer. The FXT-series allows organizations to separate performance from capacity for hybrid and on-site workloads.
Read More:
Avere Systems’ Latest Edge Filer Handles the Most Demanding Hybrid Cloud Workloads
VMAX All Flash: Enterprise reliability and SRDF at <1ms latency
Jon Klaus gives an overview of Dell EMC’s all flash VMAX storage array, which he saw at Storage Field Day earlier this year. This brings sub 1ms latency and high IOPS to the already reliable line.
Read More:
VMAX All Flash: Enterprise reliability and SRDF at <1ms latency
NETSCOUT LinkRunner G2; Part 1, Nuts and Bolts
Mitch Dickey is no stranger to NETSCOUT, having seen them at Mobility Field Day earlier this year. In this post, he digs into their latest network analysis tool, the LinkRunner G2. A stablemate to the AirCheck G2, the Linkrunner features a full Android OS to provide a variety of hardware and software analysis tools for modern networks.
Read More: