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.
Tech Field Day 2017: Storage Management, the Cloud and Data Protection, Oh My!
ClearSky Data definitely made an impression with the delegates during their Tech Field Day presentation last month, and it looks like the feeling was mutual. Courtney Pallotta with ClearSky wrote up their impressions from the event, and the company enjoyed getting feedback from our expert delegates. Make sure to check out the full videos of their presentation to get caught up.
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Tech Field Day 2017: Storage Management, the Cloud and Data Protection, Oh My!
Storage Field Day 13 – Day 0
Dan Frith is on the ground in Denver for Storage Field Day. In this post, he shares the schedule of presenting companies he’ll be seeing over the next few days. Make sure to follow along on our live stream to watch with Dan!
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Let’s Talk About Paessler
Paessler presented at Tech Field Day Extra from Interop ITX last month, giving an overview of the PRTG monitoring solution. Robert Boardman has been using PRTG in his home lab, and was anxious to get more details during the presentation. While being Windows only is a bit of a limitation, Robert really enjoys PRTG’s self-contained nature, its fully customizable sensors, and that it allows for distributed monitoring.
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NSX – The Network Redefined
Justin Cohen takes a look at VMware NSX, which he saw a lot of at Networking Field Day in April. This is a comprehensive review of the network virtualization solution, best summed up by Justin: VMWare does for the network what it did for servers. It’s not quite as simple as that, and Justin does a good job of showing what VMware is doing different to account for the realities of networking. It’s a good read, and gives a thorough overview of the solution.
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Troubleshooting Lessons Learned
Pete Welcher shares his lessons in troubleshooting, in this case it was the dreaded complaint of “the Wi-Fi is bad”. He breaks down how he approached two different scenarios with different companies. Both ended up using Netbeez’s client-side monitoring solution to help get regular and accurate upload and download speeds, which saved both human time, and increased accuracy. Make sure to checkout Pete’s post for an in-depth look into his techniques.
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Troubleshooting Lessons Learned
Advice to Vendors: Know Your Identity
Technology is easy, identity is hard. That’s what I got after reading this piece by Matt Crape, and I completely agree. Most companies are iterating in their respective markets. There’s nothing wrong with that, as refinement is essential to business consistency. But when a market gets crowded, it’s important for a company to know what they specifically want to do, and how their identity can lead to differentiation. This is especially important when presenting to people that know the industry and technology well, such as our Tech Field Day delegates!
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Advice to Vendors: Know Your Identity
Datera Elastic Data Fabric
Rich Stroffolino takes a look at Datera’s Elastic Data Fabric, as presented at Storage Field Day in March. With this solution, Datera hopes to provide a way to make on-site storage as flexible and automated as public cloud offerings, and to provide easy ways for organizations to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy.
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Announcement: Tech Field Day Master Classes Live Online June 27
Tech Field Day Extra presentations are a great way to get focused technical discussion in the often hectic world of larger conferences and events. This year, Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US, things are getting even more interesting. Cisco will be feating Distinguished Speakers at the presentations, so make sure to check back for the live stream to catch every one.
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Announcement: Tech Field Day Master Classes Live Online June 27
Turbonomic 5.9 – Now with more Cloud
Turbonomic’s Tech Field Day presentation certainly left an impression on the delegates, including Matt Crape. Previously, he hadn’t seen what made the company’s application assurance platform stand out. Now, he sees it as a valuable operations tool to not only monitor, but actively manage application performance, with a tightly focused set of tools. The recent additions that support hybrid cloud, including the costs of migrating workloads, only make it more valuable.
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Turbonomic 5.9 - Now with more Cloud
Nothing but ClearSky Ahead
Tim Smith gives a look at what he saw from ClearSky Data at Tech Field Day. The company has an interesting approach to storage, providing it as a managed service remotely, over private fiber. This is able to achieve production level speed and capacity. Tim thinks it could be the perfect way for companies firmly invested in on-premises or private clouds to dip their toes into more public waters.
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Turbonomic 5.9 adds visibility into YOUR cloud!
As Mike Preston has sought to expand his knowledge and experience with AWS, he’s come to realize there’s a large visibility gap into its disparate services and offerings. With Turbonomic’s 5.9 update, Mike thinks he’s found a way to bridge that gap. This brings their application assurance platform into the hybrid cloud world. This includes how performance and overall cost would be effected by cloud migration, all in real time. For a minor release number, Turbonomic has added some important features.
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Turbonomic 5.9 adds visibility into YOUR cloud!
Pure Storage Accelerate/Storage Field Day 13 – PreFlight
Matt Leib has made sure his seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright positions, and he’s ready to take off for a full week of events next week. He’ll be at a Tech Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate 2017, then heading for a full slate of presentations at Storage Field Day. Make sure to check back for live streaming and full video after the events!
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Pure Storage Accelerate/Storage Field Day 13 – PreFlight
A look at Paessler PRTG
After seeing their presentation from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe, Jasper Bongertz decided to give Paessler PRTG a an extended look and write up his thoughts. It’s an impressively comprehensive rundown of the solutions monitoring capabilities. He walks through the setup processes, which is notably faster and easier than other open-source alternatives. He really likes how easy it is to setup monitoring sensors, which don’t require any complex configuration. In the end, although PRTG isn’t free like other alternative, the time you save may still make it the better value in the long run.
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Update: June 2017
Dustin Beare is deep in the throws of preparing for his CCIE exam in September. That’s not stopping him from getting excited for Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live US. He’ll be getting a full firehouse of presentations from Cisco throughout the day, so make sure to check back with Dustin for updates. And here’s wishing him luck in September!
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SFD13 Primer – Dell EMC
Max Mortillaro continues his excellent primer series on the presenting companies coming up at Storage Field Day next week. In this post, he takes a look at what to expect from Dell EMC. He reviews the company’s place in the market, and how the merger of Dell and EMC was not exempt from bumps along the way. Max is interested in hearing more about VxRail and XtremIO. Make sure to watch along on the live stream during the event to stay up to date on their entire presentation!
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Turbonomic Announces Version 5.9, Adds Support for Hybrid Cloud
Turbonomic released version 5.9 of their application assurance suite, and Dave Henry runs down the new features. These include support for hybrid cloud management and automation, performance boosts to their analytics engine, and a move to an HTML5 interface. Dave thinks the release is timely as more organizations look to move to hybrid cloud, but notes that support for public cloud providers, while it includes the big players, isn’t comprehensive.
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Turbonomic Announces Version 5.9, Adds Support for Hybrid Cloud
Why Do Technology Vendors Invest In Open Source?
James Green looks at the motivations behind companies investing in open source projects. NetApp has made major strides in this over the past 18-months, and presented extensively on it at Tech Field Day.
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Why Do Technology Vendors Invest In Open Source?
SFD13 Primer – SNIA
Max Mortillaro takes a look at SNIA ahead of their Storage Field Day presentation next week. He finds the breadth of the organization impressive, touching on everything from standards to community engagement. At their presentation, SNIA will focus on their standard for storage management, SwordFish, and persistent memory related activities. Make sure to check out the live stream to watch along with the delegates, and send it question via Twitter with #SFD13.
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More Isn’t Always Better
At Turbonomic’s Tech Field Day presentation, James Green was impressed by their focus and vision for how their application assurance solution should work. Instead of collecting metrics that simply generate noise, Turbonomic focuses only on those which effect application performance. Their monitoring is a byproduct rather than a feature in and of itself. He thinks this focus allows them to make their offering rather unique.
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Back to the Storage Future with Intel’s SPDK
Rich Stroffolino gives an over of Intel’s SPDK, which includes a storage driver that bypasses the kernel for lower latency and better scaling with NVMe storage. Intel’s software approach to performance optimization perhaps signals a performance plateau based on hardware advances alone.
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