Riverbed’s Xirrus offers more than just connectivity

Matt Crape got to hear from Riverbed at Tech Field Day last month, where they demonstrated how they are integrating their Xirrus assets post acquisition. Matt found their approach to secure wireless deployment makes them stand out in a crowded market.

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Riverbed's Xirrus offers more than just connectivity

I will be at Commvault Go and Storage Field Day 14!

Max Mortillaro will be back for a pair of events in November. He’s excited to attend Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO as well as attending Storage Field Day. He’s looking forward to a deep dives from Commvault, various Dell EMC divisions, comparing storage approaches from E8 Storage and Infinidat, and getting deep into object storage from Scality. It’ll be a busy month for Max!

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I will be at Commvault Go and Storage Field Day 14!

DockerCon 17 EU – Through the eyes of a VMware guy

One of the great things about Tech Field Day is that it exposes smart people to companies and ideas that they might otherwise never get a deep dive into. This was the case with Ian Sanderson, a self-professed “VMware guy”, attending Tech Field Day Extra at DockerCon EU 2017. Ian quickly found out why containers get a lot of buzz, he sees them now as less virtualization-lite and more as a specialized application delivery system. It got him thinking how he could apply containers to solve problems, even as he was still getting familiar with the technology.

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DockerCon 17 EU - Through the eyes of a VMware guy

OpenFaaS: Serverless for Containers Made Easy

Rich Stroffolino takes a look at what the OpenFaaS project presented at Tech Field Day Extra from DockerCon EU 2017. The project provides a framework to easily implement serverless functions in a container framework. The project now includes support for Docker Swarm and Kubernetes, and creator Alex Ellis even provides walkthroughs on how to roll your own cluster using Raspberry Pis.

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OpenFaaS: Serverless for Containers Made Easy

Taking Complexity Out of the Distributed Enterprise—Tech Field Day 15

Michael Sheehan shares his thoughts on Riverbed’s presentation from Tech Field Day last month. The talk centered around the companies solutions for the business edge, which is where they see IT shifting. They demonstrated how their SteelFusion edge solution can deliver a “cloud-like” experience for deploying and managing on the edge, providing simplicity while still being centrally managed by a data center.

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Taking Complexity Out of the Distributed Enterprise—Tech Field Day 15

NFD16 day two – Cisco Project Starship a.k.a. Intersight

Gian Paolo Boarina takes a look at the debut of Cisco Intersight, which he saw at Networking Field Day last month. This allows for admins to manage remote servers via a Cisco SaaS portal, including UCS B-Series servers, C-Series servers, and HyperFlex. Gian sees as allowing MSPs and system integrators to more easily scale, as they can monitor and manage their servers through a single dashboard.

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NFD16 day two - Cisco Project Starship a.k.a. Intersight

Is the Data-Driven Network Next Step in Networking?

First we had software-defined network as the buzzword de rigueur. More recently intent-based networking has increasingly crept into marketing parlance. But Terry Slattery thinks he might have found a new network paradigm at work, one that has so far escaped buzzwordification. He postulates the data-driven network, which would use real time big data analytics on raw network traffic, and then use the results to optimize the network. Terry cites Cisco Tetration, Arista Networks, Apstra, and Veriflow Systems as example, all of which he saw at Networking Field Day last month.

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Is the Data-Driven Network Next Step in Networking?

Why the hybrid IT control plane is destined for the public cloud

Cloud growth is exploding, but analysts have shown that compared to a traditional data center, it can be much more expensive in the long haul. That’s why Keith Townsend things a hybrid IT approach will allow organizations to leverage the agility of the cloud without the cost associated with a complete migration. Keith takes a look at some SaaS-based data center control planes from Platform9, Skyport Systems, and HPE to compare their strategies for hybrid IT management.

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Why the hybrid IT control plane is destined for the public cloud

Can Violin Systems Successfully Rise from the Ashes of Violin Memory?

On his Storage Unpacked podcast, Chris Evans spoke to the CEO of Violin Systems, Ebrahim Abbasi. They discuss the future of the company coming out of their legacy with Violin Memory, and discussed focusing on tiering, scale-out and software-defined offerings for new product. Chris breaks down how he sees Violin Systems leveaging each of these in the competitive all-flash market.

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Can Violin Systems Successfully Rise from the Ashes of Violin Memory?

How to deploy SkySecure hyperconverged infrastructure

Skyport Systems offers a HCI solution that allows for true cloud-management for on-site applications and workloads that can’t be moved to the cloud. Brandon Carroll looks at how the company has built a secure system from the ground up, starting with their hardware that is tamper resistant and has no management interface on the appliance itself. This article walks through how to fully deploy Skyport’s solution while maintaining and verifying inherent security.

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How to deploy SkySecure hyperconverged infrastructure

Datacore Tech Field Day 15 Reap

The CTO Advisor, Keith Townsend, put together a full video recap series looking back at Tech Field Day presenters from last month. In his final video, he looks at DataCore Software, who debuted their MaxParallel for SQL Server at the event.

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Datacore Tech Field Day 15 Reap

Riverbed Tech Field Day 15 Recap

In his video recaps of last month’s Tech Field Day, Keith Townsend looks at what Riverbed presented. He came away impressed by their solution to project VMs to remote sites.

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Riverbed Tech Field Day 15 Recap

Actifio Tech Field Day 15 Recap

For Keith Townsend, Actifio was a returning presenter to Tech Field Day, having first seen them in 2014 at Storage Field Day. In his video review, Keith looks at how the company has been successful in their data as a service business model.

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Actifio Tech Field Day 15 Recap

Scale Computing Tech Field Day 15 Recap

The Tech Field Day delegates at last month’s event saw the benefits of nested virtualization courtesy of Scale Computing’s announced partnership with Google Cloud. This effectively allows them to offer DRaaS using Google’s backend. Keith Townsend gives his thoughts on it as part of his excellent video review of the event.

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Scale Computing Tech Field Day 15 Recap

Ixia Tech Field Day 15 Session Recap

The latest Tech Field Day saw a return of Ixia, who originally presented at Networking Field Day last November. Keith Townsend reviews what he saw in their presentation, essentially an authorized man-in-the-middle to capture traffic for analysis. Keith reviews how their SSL approach fits into the broader visibility landscape.

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Ixia Tech Field Day 15 Session Recap

Cloud Field Day2: The S3 storage under control with Scality

Scality presented at Cloud Field Day this summer. Lino Telera reviews what he saw at their presentation, looking at their software-defined storage solution that provides a scale-out filesystem that can access and move data across multi-cloud deployments.

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Cloud Field Day2: The S3 storage under control with Scality

Kentik Finds Truth in the Traffic

Pete Welcher did his homework before seeing Kentik’s presentation at Networking Field Day last month. He watched their prior presentations and was familiar with the company’s offerings. After all that, the company managed to impress Pete with their latest appearance. Read the full post for his detailed impression, but overall, Pete liked that Kentik allows for quick usability with built-in queries and reports, with actual anomaly detection, rapid reporting, and data collection across appliance silos.

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Kentik Finds Truth in the Traffic

Skyport Tech Field Day 15 Recap – YouTube

As part of his video review of Tech Field Day from last month, the CTO Advisor Keith Townsend takes a look at Skyport Systems. Keith found it a very opinionated solution, taking a view that the cloud will be pervasive, leaving only the most mandatory elements in the datacenter. Their approach then is to provide a secure, cloud managed on-site infrastructure.

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Skyport Tech Field Day 15 Recap - YouTube

Cisco Tech Field Day 15 Session Recap

Keith Townsend put together a video series looking at the presenters from Tech Field Day last month. He gives his thoughts on the overall event, and dives into what he saw from Cisco, particularly their ACI solution.

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Cisco Tech Field Day 15 Session Recap

Scale Computing HC3 Cloud Unity – Whats that about then?

Ian Sanderson takes a look at Scale Computing’s HC3 Cloud Unity, which uses Google Cloud’s new nested virtualization feature to offer a DRaaS solution ideally suited for SMBs. By being able to run Scale’s hypervisor on Google’s cloud hypervisor, it lets you move over your VMs to the cloud when disaster strikes without any reconfiguration hassle.

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Scale Computing HC3 Cloud Unity - Whats that about then?