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.
4.5M IO/sec@227µsec 4KB Read on 100GBE with 24 NVMe cards
Excelero Storage launched at Storage Field Day last week. Ray Lucchesi was in the audience, and got to see some interesting performance numbers from their NVMesh, their software defined block storage for Linux. Ray is definitely enthusiastic about what he saw, with good reason. Excelero showed off getting 4.5 million 4K random reads and 2.5 million 4K random writes on $13,000 worth of hardware, all with 0% target CPU usage. Check out the rest of Ray’s piece for the details.
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4.5M IO/sec@227µsec 4KB Read on 100GBE with 24 NVMe cards
Storage Field Day 12!
Adam Bergh created a rundown of all the presentations in advance of Storage Field Day. He highlighted not just the companies, but also the other delegates invited to the event. Adam was clearly excited, and it was a pleasure having him with us in Silicon Valley. Make sure to check out the full video coverage for each presenter if you missed any of the live stream during the event!
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The Engineering of Elastifile
Chin-Fah Heoh was at Storage Field Day last week. He’s written up his thoughts on what Elastifile presented, and came away “impressed to the max”. He thinks the company has put some in-depth computer science research behind their product, a truly distributed file system for object storage. The key to this is their internally designed consistency algorithm, Bizur. Check out the rest of the piece for a more in-depth look and the implications of their solution.
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Building Reliability
Tom Hollingsworth looks at the issue of network reliability. At Aruba Atmosphere, he saw some impressive reliability features, including a live non-disruptive controller upgrade during one of the presentations. Tom found it impressive, but thinks a lot of the focus on reliability, is perhaps not seeing the forest for the trees. For Tom, maybe the idea of creating incredibly robust networks that absolve users from error, Tom calls for more limitations and responsibility for people working on and using them. A little knowledge goes a long way to absolving an organization from the expense of designing an implementing the “foolproof” network.
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Ryussi MoSMB – High performance SMB
Chin-Fah Heoh saw a presentation from first time Storage Field Day company Ryussi, and they were talking about their MoSMB product, a proprietary SMB stack. Chin-Fah wondered what benefits it has over SAMBA, which has a long legacy and is free. Unlike SAMBA, MoSMB is designed for high availability and more demanding workloads. It also has support for enterprise grade applications like MS SQL and MSCS. Chin-Fah thinks there’s definitely an eager market for an enterprise-grade network file share system, and MoSMB seems up to the task.
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Ryussi MoSMB – High performance SMB
Nimble, HPE and 20-Year Old Architectures
Chris Evans looks at the recently announced HPE acquisition plans for Nimble Storage. He looks at both companies positions in the storage market, and the challenges and opportunities the acquisition will enable. For Chris, the key to the overall storage market is to increase customer share on relatively thin margins. If nothing else, Chris sees Nimble Storage as a way for HPE to gracefully retire 3PAR and provide a competitive offering in the space.
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Nimble, HPE and 20-Year Old Architectures
Vault7 Lessons – Zero Trust
Whenever you begin a piece about network trust with a quote from a Nicholas Cage film, you’re doing something right. Justin Cohen uses a quote from Con-Air as a springboard to the benefits of a zero trust network policy. He looks at how increased use of encrypted traffic requires a new methodology to secure networks, as it effectively kills deep packet inspections. Justin looks at solutions from Cisco and Illumio, which can be used as solutions in this new zero trust world.
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Selected as NFD 15 Delegate
Justin Cohen is heading back to Networking Field Day in April. He went to his first one in August, and found it awesome to get hit by the networking fire house from all the presenting companies. We’ve already announced that TELoIP and IP Infusion will be presenting, with more companies to be announced soon. Make sure to check back, and set a reminder to check out all the live streamed videos!
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Storage Field Day (#SFD12) – Presenting Companies
Chanaka Ekanayake is going to his first Storage Field Day, and he’s excited by the list of presenting companies. We hope he’s enjoying the event. Remember that you can watch along with Chan right here, we’ll have live streams of all presentations.
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Storage Field Day (#SFD12) – Vendor line up
Uila: Visions of the Future
Uila presented at Tech Field Day last month, and Teren Bryson wrote up a look at their data center analysis solution. While there’s no dearth of overall analysis tools, Uila really impressed Teren by offering visualizations that he called “nothing short of stunning”. This information is gathered by virtual smart taps, which is able to intelligently provide application visibility.
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Storage Field Day 12 – Day 0
Dan Frith wrote a preview for Storage Field Day this week, including a link to all times of the presentations, and a link to the live stream. And if that’s not enough, there’s even a picture of some delicious moussaka!
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HPE is buying Nimble Storage
Andrea Mauro wrote up a reaction to the announced plans for HPE to acquire Nimble Storage. Andrea thinks HPE already had a solid storage portfolio, so he found it very surprising. Ultimately he thinks the key to this acquisition might be Nimble’s non-storage products. This includes InfoSight and their Nimble Cloud Volumes. For Andrea, these seem to offer something that HPE currently doesn’t have in their portfolio.
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Cisco Wants You to Use APIs and It Shows
Gabriele Gerbino attended Cisco Live Europe and at a Tech Field Day Extra presentation saw how Cisco is trying to simplify campus networks with Digital Network Architecture. He reviews how Cisco is bringing automation features specific for campus networks to their enterprise switches, and what the practical implications are.
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Cisco Wants You to Use APIs and It Shows
SD-WAN Series Part 3: Silver Peak EdgeConnect
Eyvonne Sharp continues her excellent video series looking at SD-WAN. This time she’s talking about Silver Peak, who presented at Networking Field Day last month. Notably, due to their end-to-end control, Silver Peak is able to identify applications based on the very first packet received.
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SD-WAN Series Part 3: Silver Peak EdgeConnect
LoRaWAN: Cisco’s Sensor Solution for IoT
Rich Stroffolino looks at some of the interesting ideas coming out of Cisco Live Europe. For their approach to IoT, Cisco is utilizing LoRaWAN, which allows for low power sensors to last up to 10 years on an embedded battery. For systems that only require infrequent send and receive, it’s a compelling idea.
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LoRaWAN: Cisco's Sensor Solution for IoT
Touching the physical world: Veeam Agents for Windows & Linux
Andreas Lesslhumer looks at Veeam’s efforts to become as renown in the physical server space as they are in the virtual one. With the Veeam Agent products for Windows and Linux, Andreas sees them making significant strides. The Windows Agent allows users to restore backups directly to Hyper-V or Azure, has source-side encryption, and full support for Windows Server 2016. Andreas gave it a spin, and so far it’s proven easy to install and as capable as you’d expect from Veeam.
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Touching the physical world: Veeam Agents for Windows & Linux
Confirmed: I’ll be a Delegate at Storage Field Day 12
Dave Henry is coming to Storage Field Day next week, and we can’t wait! He published a blog post, running down the presenting companies he’s most excited about. If you want to watch along live with Dave, check back on March 8-10 for live streamed coverage. And ask any questions on Twitter with #SFD12.
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Confirmed: I’ll be a Delegate at Storage Field Day 12
Viptela: SD-WAN for Enterprise
Peter Welcher wrote a piece on what he saw from Viptela from November’s Networking Field Day. Unlike other SD-WAN vendors specifically targeting service providers, Viptela is squarely focused on the enterprise. Peter seemed really impressed not just by Viptela’s robust routing capabilities, but also their security. Their solution easily allows for rekeying, and includes tamper proofing. If someone gets a hold of an edge device, they won’t be able to use it to backdoor into your network. Seems like a lot of really well thought out solutions!
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Viptela: SD-WAN for Enterprise
PQ Show 106: Whitebox, SD-WAN & More – An NFD14 Wrapup
It’s a Networking Field Day delegate super show on the latest episode of the PQ Show podcast! Greg Ferro, Drew Conry-Murray, Eyvonne Sharp, and Kevin Myers all give their impressions from Networking Field Day from January. SD-WAN, Whitebox networking, analytics, and orchestration are all on the table. Give it a listen and check out our video coverage for more details.
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PQ Show 106: Whitebox, SD-WAN & More - An NFD14 Wrapup
Platform9 Simplifies Cloud Infrastructure
At Tech Field Day, Platform9 presented on their unique cloud solution. Rich Stroffolino came away impressed. It’s essentially a service for easing the setup and maintenance of a private or hybrid cloud. This can make the deployment of OpenStack and Kubernetes done in a matter of minutes, with none of the maintenance headaches to worry about down the line.
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