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.
Gigamon Remakes Itself For Cloud
Justin Warren profiles what he saw from Gigamon at last month’s Cloud Field Day. He thinks the reason the company has returned to profitability is twofold. For one, more organizations have recognized the need for visibility and security, which Gigamon has consistently executed on with its solutions. Secondly, the company’s host-based agent approach to cloud monitoring gives organizations the visibility they can’t get simply from an API. As long as organizations don’t shift from packet monitoring to distributed application tracing, Justin sees Gigamon’s Visibility Layer as a compelling product.
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Gigamon Remakes Itself For Cloud
Wearing the Cape
At Mobility Field Day, Brennan Martin got to hear from Cape Networks, and thinks their intelligent client-side WiFi monitoring is excellent. He’s impressed by the abilities to consistently run tests without tying up valuable human capital. Their monitoring can even work during a network or power outage, thanks to onboard hotspot and battery power.
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VMworld 2017 preview: Current state of VMware
In this VMworld US preview, Keith Townsend reviews the current state of VMware. This includes a look at where the company has stumbled or needs keep on eye on, like Cloud and containers, and areas where they are prominent or leading the category, like networking and security. It’s a thorough rundown to set the stage for the major announcements at VMworld.
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VMworld 2017 preview: Current state of VMware
Lofty Goals for The Campus Core: Aruba 8400 Series and OS-CX
Brandon Carroll shares his thoughts on Aruba’s new 8400 Switch series, which he saw at a Networking Field Day Exclusive event. Brandon thinks Aruba has done a good job on the hardware side of designing a switch for Campus Aggregation & Core L2/L3 Ethernet deployments. The switch is powered by the Linux based OS-CX, which allows for full programmability and features a well thought out web GUI.
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Lofty Goals for The Campus Core: Aruba 8400 Series and OS-CX
Disclosure: #CFD2 Edition
While it’s easy to focus solely on the presenting companies during an event like Cloud Field Day, the delegates truly make it a special experience in IT. In this post, Justin Warren gives is usual disclosure of the food and activities he received during the event.
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Tech Field Day – I’ll Be At TFD Extra at VMworld US 2017
VMworld US is almost upon us. We’ll be hosting a number of Tech Field Day Extra presentations at the event, with companies like NetApp, Kingston, Druva, and Pluribus Networks. Dan Frith will be there as a delegate and we’re looking forward to seeing what he thinks.
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Tech Field Day – I’ll Be At TFD Extra at VMworld US 2017
HPE Nimble Storage at Cloud Field Day – Enterprise Storage
HPE presented on their recently acquired Nimble Storage portfolio at Cloud Field Day. Theresa Miller like what she saw from their cloud-based SAN-like option for cloud storage. Fundamentally, she’s not sure this will be an option for many companies just starting their cloud journey, but rather thinks it has a ready market with many of the existing big cloud companies.
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HPE Nimble Storage at Cloud Field Day - Enterprise Storage
Are We Really Concerned with Public Cloud Vendor Lock-in?
Fear of public cloud lock-in is real for many companies. Eric Shanks looks at why this is, why this fear is historically overblown, and also what the advantages of keeping your options open actually are. He then reviews how three companies he saw at Cloud Field Day last month, Scality, Platform9, and Nirmata, address the lock-in question.
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Are We Really Concerned with Public Cloud Vendor Lock-in?
Blogging and Vendor Blowback
Jake Snyder shares a post about the difficulty of being a blogger while working in enterprise IT.
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X-IO Axellio and Edge Computing: an NVMe-enabled emerging architecture model?
Max Mortillaro follows up on his preview post about X-IO’s Axellio Edge computing platform. Max clarifies that this is meant to be an OEM solution designed to be a standalone application platform. He likes the ability to use 72 dual-port NVMe SSD drives, but the real secret sauce is the extra I/O via PCIe. It makes Max think that maybe the concept of edge computing requires a fundamentally new platform, one that Axellio exemplifies.
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X-IO Axellio and Edge Computing: an NVMe-enabled emerging architecture model?
Cloud Field Day and ServiceNow
ServiceNow presented their orchestration and automation platform, which works across a variety of legacy and emerging business systems at Cloud Field Day last month. Adrian Bridgwater share his thoughts on their presentation. While he admits that selling a platform can be a difficult proposition, Adrian sees it as giving the tools to customers to “eradicate the bad business processes that existed in the pre-cloud era”.
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Cloud Field Day and @ServiceNow
Cloud Field Day 2 – “Going Forward” with Rubrik
Lino Telera says, “the ability to protect data across cloud systems and instant recovery SQL server represent the coolest parts” of Rubrik’s Cloud Field Day presentation. Lino goes on to discuss Rubrik’s history and purpose as well as elaborate on those topics. He also calls Rubrik a “protection platform for all seasons,” both in normalcy and in disaster. Lino is excited by what Rubrik is doing, but sees many improvements that could be made in the future.
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Cloud Field Day 2 – “Going Forward” with Rubrik
Rubrik at Cloud Field Day – Backup your Cloud Today
Theresa Miller discusses meeting with the Rubrik team at Cloud Field Day. There, Rubrik presented on their cloud backup products, a topic Theresa sees as very important for any company making the transition to cloud. A solid long-run recovery and backup strategy is vital and is what Rubrik is aiming to provide with the Rubrik Cloud Cluster. Theresa seems optimistic about this product and looks forward to what Rubrik will offer in the future.
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Rubrik at Cloud Field Day - Backup your Cloud Today
Datrium Technology Update
Pietro Piutti was impressed by the fresh and unique approach of Datrium at Tech Field Day in May. Now he is looking at their two major technology updates. The first of these announcements is that Datrium will be extending its support beyond VMware. By doing so, Datrium positions themselves as the one single converged platform that can serve vSphere, RHV/oVirt, and Docker workloads. The second and arguably bigger announcement is Split Provisioning, the possibility independently to scale Compute Nodes (up to 128) and Data Nodes (up to 10). These two milestones represent a huge advancement allowing customers to deploy multi-hypervisor infrastructures with different size options, from a small “one-rack” deployment up to a large one for Service Providers use cases.
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NetApp at a Crossroads
In light of their Cloud Field Day presentation, Eric Shanks knows that NetApp is at a crossroads as a company. Their traditional image as a storage vendor will have to shift as NetApp begins to adapt the cloud and move into more cloud focussed products. Eric says, however, that this will be particularly difficult for a company as large as NetApp to accomplish swiftly. After all, they cannot simply abandon all of their older products and revenue streams. But with new hires and determination, NetApp is looking to be a player in the cloud market and despite anything else, NetApp will be a very different company in the next few years.
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Network Break 148: HPE, Big Switch Partner; Brocade Spins Out SDN Startup
In this episode of the Network Break podcast, the Packet Pushers talk about much of this week’s IT news including HPE and Big Switch teaming up in the data center, Google’s routing initiative Espresso, Brocade spining out its OpenDaylight SDN controller to a startup, Aruba revealing more details of its brand new core switch, and more. Ethan Banks expands specifically on Aruba, as he just saw them present at a Networking Field Day Extra event.
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Network Break 148: HPE, Big Switch Partner; Brocade Spins Out SDN Startup
CTS 088: Cape Networks At MFD2
Rowell Dionicio discusses Cape Networks presentation at Mobility Field Day on the Clear To Send podcast. He gives a brief overview of Cape’s history and their move to Silicon Valley, defines their product’s uses and interface, and talks about their new features to further enhance the capabilities of their wireless sensors, including Rolling packet capture and Splash Page Support. Rowell is excited by Cape’s story and growth in recent years and looks forward to their future.
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CTS 088: Cape Networks At MFD2
NetApp and Rubrik, a David and Goliath situation? Part Three
In the final installment of his Cloud Field Day comparison between Rubrik and NetApp, Ben Kepes comes to the conclusion that both companies are in a good, but different, position to guarantee their future. Rubrik has none of the constraints around existing revenue streams, sales force motion or customer expectations that NetApp has, making it a much more agile player, while NetApp has deep relationships with the world’s largest enterprises giving it a leg up in the industry. Despite this, Ben ultimately decides that “if NetApp realizes both the opportunity and the threat, this battle is theirs to lose – they have the pedigree, the existing market share, the cash reserves and the brand recognition to pull one out of the bag and guarantee their future.”
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NetApp and Rubrik, a David and Goliath situation? Part Three
Preview: Networking Field Day Exclusive with Aruba (HPE) – The 8400 core switch
The world of campus networking might not be the most exciting of late. But at a Networking Field Day Exclusive event with Aruba, Kevin Myers found a lot of interesting things about their 8400 core switch. Aruba touts it as offering increased automation and visibility into the campus core. For Kevin, he was initially impressed with the switch’s data center grade ports and speeds, encryption availability, and support for Aruba’s Virtual Switching Framework. Now that Kevin’s got a deep dive on the 8400, we’re looking forward to seeing more of his impressions soon!
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Preview: Networking Field Day Exclusive with Aruba (HPE) – The 8400 core switch
Cloudified Snapshots done two ways
Mark May shares his thoughts on what he saw from Dell EMC at Storage Field Day in June. He particularly focuses on their Unity storage array and how it integrates with their Cloud Tier appliance. This allows for moving data from the storage array into the public cloud. Mark really likes the ability to take snapshots of Unity, but writing the data to S3 storage. He compares this to Pure Storage’s approach, which he saw at a Storage Field Day Exclusive event at Pure Accelerate. Pure allows you to write snapshots to AWS in its native format, as opposed to converting it to an object store. Both are interesting approaches to extending storage arrays into the cloud.
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