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.
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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Cloudified Snapshots done two ways
Through the Mist; Predictable, Reliable, and Measurable Wifi from Mist Systems
When hear about a company for the first time, it can sometimes be frustrating to deal with the morass of buzzwords thrown about. More often then not, these are the noise that must be dealt with before the actual company message can be understood. Recently, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been conspicuous culprits. But the reason these terms are so conspicuous is because if they are properly utilized, they can revolutionize a product category. According to Mitch Dickey, Mist Systems is actually applying the technologies to improve Wi-Fi and location services. They’re doing this with intelligent packet capture, which automatically starts when their services detect a problem. Mitch thinks this proactive approach is game changing for mobility.
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Through the Mist; Predictable, Reliable, and Measurable Wifi from Mist Systems
Flash Diversity: High Capacity Drives from Nimbus and Micron
Chris Evans runs down some new high capacity drives from both Micron and Nimbus Data. Chris first got a look at some very different drives from Nimbus all the way back at the first Storage Field Day. The difference is rather stark, back then he saw some 800GB drives developed by Nimbus themselves. Today, Chris is looking at something more in the 50TB range. Micron’s 9200 series is no slouch either, topping off at 11TB in capacity and offering 270,000 random write IOPS.
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Flash Diversity: High Capacity Drives from Nimbus and Micron
ServiceNow and the challenge of going broad
After Cloud Field Day, Ben Kepes reviews ServiceNow, a company that has come along way from its San Diego Roots. Traditionally, ServiceNow has been seen as an IT helpdesk system vendor, but now, ServiceNow has begun pursuing its aims to become a vendor that offers tools to enable organizations to digitize their more general enterprise workflows. Ben believes that ServiceNow is in a position where they are large enough to invest resources in this project, but small enough to remain agile, a combination that sets them up for a bright future.
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ServiceNow and the challenge of going broad
What the heck is tail latency?
Mark May elaborates on the problem of tail latency, as presented on by SNIA at Storage Field Day. According to SNIA, these spikes in latency can be up to ten times as bad as average latency. Mark says that this problem could be fixed by building smarter software that can tag an IO with a retry policy hint, allowing it to favor response time over data recovery. According to SNIA, over 2% of IO may be suffering due to tail latency. Mark knows this is a real problem and hopes it can be fixed in the near future.
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What the heck is tail latency?
CTS 087: AirCheck G2 w/ Netscout at MFD2
In this episode of the Wireless Network Engineering Podcast, Rowell Dionicio discusses the many features of NETSCOUT’s AirCheck G2, which he saw presented at Mobility Field Day. This includes the auto test, channel utilization, and profiles features. He also mentions NETSCOUT’s Link-Live, a cloud service that stores all your tests from various NETSCOUT devices, something Rowell found very useful.
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CTS 087: AirCheck G2 w/ Netscout at MFD2
Accelerite’s Rovius Readies Your Hybrid Cloud
Writing about Accelerite’s Cloud Field Day presentation on their product, Rovius, Ethan Banks has very mixed feelings. He is a huge fan of how easy to use Rovius is and how easy Rovius makes it to consume a variety of clouds, but he is worried how it will function in complex failure scenarios. Ethan knows these issues are on Accelerite’s minds and hopes that they will prove themselves in the near future.
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Accelerite's Rovius Readies Your Hybrid Cloud
Architecting IT | Scale Computing Moves Deeper Into the Enterprise With All-Flash HCI
Chris Evans looks back on Scale Computing, who he saw present at Storage Field Day in 2014, as they introduce their first all-flash system. Chris begins by stating that Scale Computing, “is one such company that has continued to demonstrate technical innovation and a continuing evolution in their platform,” and then goes on to discuss Scale’s all-flash system as well as their new software.
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Architecting IT | Scale Computing Moves Deeper Into the Enterprise With All-Flash HCI
Catching Up With Netscout on Their Flagship WLAN Support Tool
Lee Badman reviews NETSCOUT’s Mobility Field Day presentation focussed on their new AirCheck G2. Lee is a fan of the AirCheck’s versatility and portability and considers it one of the best tools for any WLAN pro. This time around, he was impressed by Chris Hinsz presentation and the NETSCOUT offices, as well as the tips and tricks that Chris Hinsz showed for the AirCheck.
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Catching Up With Netscout on Their Flagship WLAN Support Tool
NetApp and Rubrik, a David and Goliath situation? Part Two
As part of his series comparing and contrasting NetApp and Rubrik, Ben Kepes talks about Rubrik’s meteoric rise to fame from backup vendor startup to data management powerhouse. Ben believes that Rubrik “has amassed cash, a stellar crew and, perhaps most importantly, a unique point in time when change is ramping up.” This has led Rubrik to a position where they can build something of real substance, and Ben looks forward to what they have in store.
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NetApp and Rubrik, a David and Goliath situation? Part Two
Nirmata’s Cloudy Control-Plane Is The Catalyst For Container Calm
Ethan Banks saw a presentation from Nirmata recently at Cloud Field Day. Here, he recaps Nirmata’s product, customer base, and everything else you would like to know about the company. Ethan also says that Nirmata “is in the right place at the right time” with their orchestrator of orchestrator product, especially as ease of use and speed of application deployment become critical to businesses.
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Nirmata’s Cloudy Control-Plane Is The Catalyst For Container Calm
Personal Transformation
Inspired by his time at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks compares the journey of companies like Gigamon re-tooling themselves and their products for the cloud to the transition that individuals will have to make as well as cloud becomes more pervasive. He says that people need to learn the public cloud environment and start to swap out their hardware revenue for revenue made with the cloud instead.
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Cloud Field Day 2– DevOps agility with Nirmata
Lino Telera discusses Nirmata’s Cloud Field Day presentation as well as his own tests of their product. Lino, as others have, calls Nirmata an “orchestrator of orchestrators” and mentions that Nirmata’s integration with Kubernetes is great for devops. He sees Nirmata’s product as easy to use with excellent support and is interested in where they will go in the future.
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Cloud Field Day 2– DevOps agility with Nirmata
Cloud Field Day 2: Event Summary
Bryan Krausen recaps Cloud Field Day, giving a quick review of each company’s presentation and relaying his thoughts on the event as a whole. He enjoyed most of the presentations, but found that each of the three days of the event had a different theme, from startups to industry giants. Bryan is thankful to have had the opportunity to attend Cloud Field Day and looks forward to more Field Day events in the future.
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Cloud Field Day 2: Event Summary
Ubuiquiti is On Fire, I Tellya
Lee Badman tells the story of Ubuiquiti, a company he believes is progressing consistently in both technology and market share without being bogged down by one-up competition with other vendors and buzzword filled campaigns. The lure of Ubiquiti, as Lee states, is that “they seem to sell a respectable balance performance and reliability (an area where not all vendors shine) at ridiculously low prices.” Lee knows that Ubiquiti is a networking company worth watching and looks forward to what they have in store for the future.
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Ubuiquiti is On Fire, I Tellya
ServiceNow at Cloud Field Day – Not just for IT Anymore
After Cloud Field Day, Theresa Miller sees ServiceNow moving beyond just the helpdesk and into platforms that “simplify and automate business processes in a way that empowers the business user.” She sees this as a good step for ServiceNow in opening themselves up to be more business centric and not just limiting themselves to a helpdesk focused platform. Theresa believes that ServiceNow’s toolset could be a great addition to any organization that would see value from business automation of their many tasks.
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