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.
Networking Field Day 16 Summary
Derik Winkworth shares Apstra’s reflections on their Networking Field Day presentation. At their second event, Apstra focused on how their AOS platform can be applied to developer roles to enable true intent-based networking. Make sure to watch both of their presentations to get up to date on the exciting possibilities.
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Networking Field Day 16 Summary
NFD16 – Gigamon and Splunk (with a Dash of Phantom)
At Gigamon’s Networking Field Day presentation last week, the emphasis was on how hard security is in the modern data center. The company showed how with their platform and partners like Splunk and Phantom, they can radically simplify this process and bring true visibility to your network traffic.
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NFD16 – Gigamon and Splunk (with a Dash of Phantom)
TFD15 Primer: Scale Computing
Preparing for Tech Field Day next week, Matt Crape put together a preview of Scale Computing. Matt sees why the company has found success in the HCI SMB market. They offer the novelty of relatively upfront pricing and package their HCI without excessive licensing costs. Matt’s interested to hear an update on how they plan to tackle other markets, as well as respond to other companies moving into their traditional SMB strength.
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Kingston – NVMe Overview at VMworld 2017 – Tech Field Day Extra
It was great to hear from Kingston Technology at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld. They presented extensively on NVMe, including their DCP1000 PCIe card capable of 1.25 million read IOPS. Roger Lund shares their slide deck from the event.
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Kingston – NVMe Overview at VMworld 2017 – Tech Field Day Extra
Ravello expanding HVX platform to bare metal
Mike Preston shares his thoughts on the announcement of Ravello on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. He first saw Ravello prior to their acquisition by Oracle, at Virtualization Field Day in 2015. He’s glad to see the solution getting support after the acquisition. With this release, Ravello can run VMs on Oracle Cloud with hardware support, including running their HVX hypervisor on bare metal. Mike ran some benchmarks and saw impressive initial performance with this offering.
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Ravello expanding HVX platform to bare metal
Pluribus Networks Netvisor & Adaptive Cloud Fabric @ VMworld 2017 – Tech Field Day Extra
Roger Lund shares some thoughts on the presentation from Pluribus Networks at Networking Field Day last week. Make sure to checkout the slide deck from the presentation, and see how Roger thinks Pluribus can pivot into the wider SDN world with their Adaptive Cloud Fabric.
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Pluribus Networks Netvisor & Adaptive Cloud Fabric @ VMworld 2017 – Tech Field Day Extra
Cisco Launches Intersight: Cloud Managed UCS and HyperFlex
Cisco unveiled Intersight at Networking Field Day, their SaaS platform for unified UCS and HyperFlex management. Rich Stroffolino wrote up his thoughts on the announcement. For him, it shows a commitment by Cisco to services and expanding their customer base as their path to the future.
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Cisco Launches Intersight: Cloud Managed UCS and HyperFlex
Techfield Day 15 Preview: Actifio
The CTO Advisor himself, Keith Townsend, will be at Tech Field Day next week. He’s looking forward to getting an update from Actifio. Since he last saw them at Storage Field Day in 2014, the company has moved from what Keith calls a copy-data focus to secondary data. With the recent investment boom in the segment, Keith is interested to hear more about their updated strategy.
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Techfield Day 15 Preview: Actifio
Network Field Day 16
Gian Paolo Boarina returned from his first Networking Field Day event having seen presentations from eight different companies. The topics ranged from network visibility, to analytics, intent-based networking, SDN, and more. We’re looking forward to hearing Gian’s impressions of each!
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NFD16 delegate
We were very excited to be able to have Gian Paolo Boarina join us at Networking Field Day last week. We’re looking forward to seeing his reactions to the presenting companies after his first event. It’s always interesting to get the perspective of someone drinking straight from the firehose for the first time.
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NFD16 day one – Veriflow
Gian Paolo got a look at Veriflow’s formal verification of networks at Networking Field Day last week. This works by collecting control plane information, not actual data or flows, to build a normalized model of how the network should be operating. This can be used with their policy tools to create an intent-based networking solution. Gian was impressed (calling it “a great product), but would like to see integration with Netflow/IPFIX data to validate the models on their roadmap.
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TFD15 Primer: Datacore
DataCore Software is presenting at their first Tech Field Day event next week. Matt Crape found this a little surprising since the company has been around for almost twenty years, and has been a player in the storage virtualization market with SANsymphony since 2011. At first look, Matt found running on Windows Server to be an odd choice for SANsymphony, but ultimately makes the case that the ecosystem support makes sense for the product. Since SANsymphony gets the drivers support of Windows, what you’re left with is a robust, extensible, software-based solution.
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Actifio, the Swiss Army knife of data
Raff Poltronieri last heard from Actifio last year at Tech Field Day in Boston. Next week he’ll have a chance to get caught up with them in Silicon Valley. Raff found it extremely versatile when he first saw it last year, and this time around, he’s looking forward to a deeper look at their Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. He’s also interested in some use case applications, particularly disaster recovery.
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Actifio, the Swiss Army knife of data
Veriflow – The Formal Future
Daniel Kuchenski got a crash course in formal verification from Veriflow’s recent Networking Field Day presentation. Using a collector VM, Veriflow sends the operational state of networking devices to their verification engine. This formally verifies that the network is operating as intended. Veriflow recently released CloudPredict, which allows you to extend this modeling to AWS. All told, it was one of Daniel’s favorite presentations from the event.
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NetApp SolidFire HCI – Scale what you want, when you want
Mike Preston is less concerned whether NetApp’s recently announced hyperconverged infrastructure solution is “true” HCI as much as he cares if their blend of software and hardware can help him solve problems. To that effect, Mike gives his thoughts on the overall solution. He found the solutions uniquely scalable, which when combined with SolidFire QoS and “automation sauce” makes for an intriguing offering, no matter how you classify it.
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NetApp SolidFire HCI – Scale what you want, when you want
A new Tech Field Day is approaching
It’s always exciting to have Raff Poltronieri return for another Tech Field Day event. He’s excited to meet the three new delegates in attendance, and offers some basic words of advice for the event. He and all the other delegates can look forward to drinking directly from the IT fire hose from the presenting companies next week!
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A new Tech Field Day is approaching
Startup Veriflow Adds New Intent-Based Capabilities To Its Network Verification Software
At Networking Field Day, Veriflow demonstrated bringing intent-based network verification to the enterprise. Drew Conry-Murray looks at these features, which include using formal verification to build software models to see if your on-site and cloud networks are performing as you intended. Drew likes the fact that its designed for networks as they exist, not positing hypothetical networks an engineer has no way of building within an organization. Ultimately, using these software models puts the onus on organizations to use them effectively for managing networks.
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Startup Veriflow Adds New Intent-Based Capabilities To Its Network Verification Software
Tech Field Day 15 Preview: Scale Computing
Keith Townsend is looking forward to hearing from Scale Computing at next week’s Tech Field Day event. He was introduced to the company at Storage Field Day back in 2014, and the landscape for virtualization and HCI has changed substantially in the interim. Keith is interested to hear how the company plans to move into the larger enterprise market, a departure from their previous SMB market focus.
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Tech Field Day 15 Preview: Scale Computing
Vendor Brief: Rubrik
Aside from being the king of swag at industry trade shows, Chris Bradshaw reviews what makes Rubrik worthy of industry buzz. At VMworld, he got to speak with co-founder and CEO Bipul Sinha and Jerry Rijnbeek, Director of Sales Engineering. By owning the entire backup stack, Rubrik is able to quickly allow organizations to implement backup protections and get back to operations in the event of an outage.
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Highlights from My First VMworld
Make sure to checkout Becky Elliott’s post detailing her highlights from her first VMworld. The event can be an overwhelming experience even for seasoned vets, but Becky came through the experience excited to do homework based on the sessions attended and, most importantly, a Tech Field Day delegate!
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