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.
Spartans and Servers and Storage, Oh My!
James Green explores the IT lessons found in the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, bottlenecks can be a big deal. He uses this example of a serialized approach to combat to show why parallelism is important both in ancient combat and for I/O in the modern enterprise. A modern example of this is DataCore Software’s just released MaxParallel for SQL Server which parallelizes workloads to optimize them for multiple CPUs. It’s a really fun metaphor and a great read!
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Spartans and Servers and Storage, Oh My!
Netscout Aircheck G2 V2 and Test Accessory
NETSCOUT’s V2 update for the Aircheck G2 has received a lot of buzz and for good reason. The update expands the functionality of the already valuable, including support for captive portals, iPerf testing, and direct packet capture. Haydn Andrews had the opportunity to test out the new update, and was pleased to see the capabilities added to an already essential piece of the wireless toolkit.
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Netscout Aircheck G2 V2 and Test Accessory
Scale Computing is Simplifying DRaaS
Matt Crape looks at Scale Computing’s HC3 Cloud Unity Platform, which offers disaster recovery as a service backed by Google Cloud. Scale is able to offer this thanks to Google’s newly announced support for nested virtualization, effectively letting you run a hypervisor within a hypervisor. Matt sees this as a viable path for SMBs to actually adopt a DR plan. Scale’s HC3 Cloud Unity makes it affordable, managed by their familiar interface, and easily moves over workloads in the event of an outage.
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Scale Computing is Simplifying DRaaS
A tale of two storage companies – NetApp and Vantara (HDS-Insight Grp-Pentahoo)
Ray Lucchesi heard competing visions from storage companies in transitions recently. At Insight, NetApp presented themselves as the data service provider for IT and a willingness to embrace the cloud. The newly created Hitachi Vantara’s philosophy is based around the move to IoT. Ray lays out each company’s goals, it’s problem with customers, and who is ultimately right in with these divergent approaches.
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A tale of two storage companies – NetApp and Vantara (HDS-Insight Grp-Pentahoo)
Intent-Based Analytics: What is it?
After their presentation at Tech Field Day last month, Apstra’s Sasha Ratkovic shares a post defining intent-based analytics. Their solution is based around formally defining a single source of truth from which you can reason about the presence of change. This allows for analytics based on that criteria, rather than a constantly fluctuating current state.
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Intent-Based Analytics: What is it?
It’s Time for Hard Drives to Join Tape In The Archive Tier
Mechanical hard drives are wonders of engineering. Despite proclamations of potential capacity limits, we’ve seen companies innovate to produce increasingly dense drives. But Chris Evans makes a compelling case here why spinning disks should be relegated to archiving going forward. This is because while throughput has increased much more slowly than capacity, we’ve actually seen latency get 50% worse in the last ten years. Combined with increased viability of cloud storage, Chris sees hard drives as viable for archive only.
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It's Time for Hard Drives to Join Tape In The Archive Tier
DataCore MaxParallel for SQL Server – Whats that about then?
DataCore Software debuted their MaxParallel for SQL server solution at Tech Field Day last month. This uses parallel processing to allow multicore systems to begin working on I/O requests without waiting for other cores to be complete. For SQL Server, this results in X quicker response and 60% more transactions processed. At the event, Ian Sanderson found out that this doesn’t specifically target SQL workloads, but instead uses a Least Recently Used caching mechanism to evict old data across the board.
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DataCore MaxParallel for SQL Server - Whats that about then?
Extreme Networks Has Good Footing to Lead Network Fabric Evolution from Hype to Reality | wirednot
Lee Badman is fairly bullish on Extreme Networks’ approach to network fabric architecture. Their approach starts with a whitepaper that actually outlines what such an architecture can actually be used for in an organization. Combined with their recent acquisition on Avaya, which Lee saw in detail at Wireless Field Day back in 2014, he thinks Extreme Networks makes the best case for a network fabric approach. They have a the track record, vision, and technical resources that are rarely found in competitors.
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Extreme Networks Has Good Footing to Lead Network Fabric Evolution from Hype to Reality | wirednot
More Gee Whiz for the Netscout AirCheck G2
For Lee Badman, it’s less of question of if a wireless professional would want a NETSCOUT AirCheck G2, but whether they have one yet. With their V2 firmware update for the device, NETSCOUT added a number of useful features, including native packet capture, detecting and characterizing interferers, and iPerf testing. Lee is looking forward to getting a hands-on review sometime soon.
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More Gee Whiz for the Netscout AirCheck G2
Commentary: High Level Data Filtration
Dr. Rachel Traylor looks at Ixia’s approach to real-time network visibility. This uses high level data filtration from a database of known bad actors to quickly eliminate large chunks of data from their analysis engine. This allows them to not have to process the entire firehose of network data and gives each successive analysis layer additional efficiency.
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Commentary: High Level Data Filtration
Back In The Saddle Of A Horse Of A Different Color
Do CCIE’s dream of CLI’s? For Tom Hollingsworth, he sees less value in keyboard based inputs of individual network devices, and now focuses on a more architectural level. He uses Aruba’s 8400 ArubaOS-CX as an example of a hard shift away from CLI, it’s still available under the covers, but the switch has been seemingly designed to require minimal keyboard input, while allowing for mass configuration and automation.
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Back In The Saddle Of A Horse Of A Different Color
A Thank You to Tech Field Day
Paul Woodward reflects back on the experience of his first Tech Field Day in this post. He found the three days of presentations surrounded by delegates from across the globe to be an exhilarating experience. We’re looking forward to seeing his thoughts on the presenting companies as part of #Blogtober!
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Inefficiencies of large systems
Inspired by DataCore Software’s Tech Field Day presentation, Keith Townsend reflects on the inefficiencies of large organizations, using Microsoft as an example. Microsoft is filled with skilled engineers, but often can’t be responsive to customer requests for giant projects like SQL server. This is where DataCore can come in with their I/O filter, which provides parallel streams to the storage sub-system, ultimately giving applications more I/O bandwidth.
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Inefficiencies of large systems
Seeing Tetration in action – NFD16
At Networking Field Day last month, Amy Arnold saw a presentation on Cisco’s Tetration. The platform uses machine learning to proactively create security policies based on current flow information. Amy was impressed to see that this not only has the ability to predict security policies based on current flows, but that the system can integration with services like Splunk or Phantom to communicate with devices to isolate traffic.
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Seeing Tetration in action – NFD16
Hybrid cloud platforms look to liberate VMware, Azure tie-in
In this piece, Cloud Field Day delegate Tim Crawford was quoted on what he saw on Rovius Cloud from Accelerite at the event. Tim find the solution, which is built on the former CloudStack platform, easier to use and manage compared to OpenStack.
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Hybrid cloud platforms look to liberate VMware, Azure tie-in
How to get started with OpenConfig and YANG models
Most people agree that automation is the way of the future in enterprise networking, but getting to that point is much more problematic. Brandon Carroll gives an introduction on how to do this in open networking environments with OpenConfig. This vendor-neutral approach uses the data modeling language YANG to create a single model for your automation. This allows admins to not have to dig into individual CLI interfaces for each network device. Brandon’s only drawback to this approach isn’t technical, but rather organizational. Once an IT staff embraces automation, the technical merits become obvious.
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How to get started with OpenConfig and YANG models
Security From The Ground Up With Skyport Systems
Making a system secure is a unique challenge unto itself. But having the option to historically verify that your system has remained secure requires a fundementally different approach. That’s what Skyport System did with their ground up architecture. This allows for a complete cloud management on-site servers architected to always be able to verify security. In this post, Matt Crape gives his thoughts on their solution.
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Security From The Ground Up With Skyport Systems
AirCheck G2 gets a v2
NETSCOUT dropped a big update for the AirCheck G2 in the 2.0 firmware update. This added iPerf testing and interference detection stood out as major additions of the release for Sam Clements. Sam’s big takeaway: The G2 is an overbuilt hardware platform and it’s refreshing to see that Netscout is taking advantage of that extra horsepower.
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G2… V2!
According to Brennan Martin, the 2.0 firmware update for the AirCheck G2 is a killer update. iPerf performance testing is the standout new feature, letting users check upstream and downstream throughput via a new accessory. The additional of a built-in web browser now lets you enter login credentials, making captive portals no longer something to dread. NETSCOUT added a lot of new features, make sure to check out Brennan’s thorough breakdown for all the details.
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The Aruba 8400 Switch is the Future of Enterprise Core Switching
In his look at Aruba Networks’ 8400 chassis switch, David Varnum sees it opening “a frontier to new ways we interact with core switching hardware.” The switch has all the speeds and feeds you could want in a modern piece of hardware, but David sees it shining with its ArubaOS-CX. Aruba developed the OS to be database-driven, leverage Linux, fully programmable, resilient, and supportable. Combined with an analytics engine built into the base license of the switch, David found it an impressive offering from Aruba.
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The Aruba 8400 Switch is the Future of Enterprise Core Switching