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.
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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Platform9 Simplifies Cloud Infrastructure
Cisco and Apple Now Support Better Wi-Fi, QoS for Apps
Rich Stroffolino reviews the results of Apple and Cisco partnership after roughly a year. The two major announcement help add QoS to iOS apps, and improving wireless performance. The Fast Lane technology allows administrators to setup whitelists for specific apps. These apps mark outgoing packets with QoS qualifiers that will be recognized on a Cisco network, and otherwise won’t impede performance. Wi-Fi roaming is improved by using native Cisco Access Point intelligence on top of the already supports 802.11k/v protocols. Overall, its a promising initial set of announcements from the collaboration.
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Cisco and Apple Now Support Better Wi-Fi, QoS for Apps
Thoughts on Consumer and Industrial IoT
Massimiliano Mortillaro shares some thoughts on the current state of IoT. From the enterprise side, he likes the fact that we’re leaving the pure hype phase of the segment, something that couldn’t be said in 2016. At Cisco Live Europe, he saw some very practical implementations, particularly Cisco’s LoRaWAN technology, which enables devices to operate up to 10 years on an embedded battery. He also considers some of the security and, perhaps most importantly, ecological considerations of the coming age of IoT. It’s a really interesting overview of the space, and will get you thinking about how to prepare for the coming IoT deluge of devices.
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Thoughts on Consumer and Industrial IoT
SD-WAN Series Part 2: Riverbed SteelConnect
Eyvonne Sharp posted a second video in a series on SD-WAN. This time, she goes into her thoughts on Riverbed’s SteelConnect. She sees this as an elegant implementation, integrating the SD-WAN assets from Ocedo into their existing WAN optimization portfolio. Eyvonne was also really impressed by their policy configuration tools, which have simple on-off switches and allow for easy rollback. It’s a great look at the product, and we can’t wait to see more in the series!
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SD-WAN Series Part 2: Riverbed SteelConnect
Nyansa Measures Network Performance Using Mobile Devices As Sensors
Drew Conry-Murray shares his thoughts on Nyansa, who presented at Networking Field Day last month. The company has an interesting approach to analytics, they use measure user experience by using mobile device endpoints as sensors, effectively turning any phone, laptop or tablet into a sensor. These on-prem metrics are then sent to Nyansa’s cloud for further analytics and to establish baseline network performance. This can be used to easily assess problems when they deviate from these baselines, and also let you see how performance of your network stacks up to others in your vertical.
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Nyansa Measures Network Performance Using Mobile Devices As Sensors
Revisiting Cisco HyperFlex, One Year After
Max Mortillaro take a look back on Cisco’s hyperconverged infrastructure solution, HyperFlex, a year later. It’s all the more important to the company, since HPE’s acquisition of SimpliVity. Max got an update at Tech Field Day Extra during Cisco Live Europe last week. Over the year, Max has moved from neutral on it to “neutral+”. Overall, he’d like to see more commitment to their development cycle if this is going to be their sole HCI play going forward. He sees their roadmap as competitive, but they’ll need to tighten up their release cycle to deliver this to their customers on a timely basis. HCI is a crowded space. Cisco’s HyperFlex shows a path to compete with all the big players, but Max thinks they’ll need to consistently deliver on their roadmap.
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Revisiting Cisco HyperFlex, One Year After
ZeroStack Aims to be a ‘Self Driving Cloud’
Rebecca Fitzhugh was at Tech Field Day earlier this month, and heard from ZeroStack. They’re offering what they envision as a self-driving private/hybrid cloud service. Rebecca really liked their clean interface, as well as their robust partnership with AWS. She’d like some more details on assigning high availability to certain VMs, but ultimately, she found their solution intriguing.
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ZeroStack Aims to be a ‘Self Driving Cloud’
Cloudian Announces HyperStore 4000 – Gets Super Dense
Dan Frith offers his take on Cloudian’s HyperStore 4000. Dan sees it as an interesting product in object storage. Instead of focusing on being “cheap and deep”, Cloudian focused on making this a smarter kind of storage. This allows governments and business to have a greater ability to verify data locality and visibility. For organizations with very sensitive restrictions on locality, HyperStore 4000 seems designed with you in mind.
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Cloudian Announces HyperStore 4000 – Gets Super Dense
Cisco DNA Series: DNA Goes Virtual
Cisco updated their DNA strategy, and Justin Cohen has a nice write up of all the implications. For Justin, this is a complete network virtualization in a box solution. Cisco has updated hardware that’s more than capable of doing this, with the released ENCS 5400 Series, which can be a combined ISR and a UCS server. Combined with flexible licensing and deployments, Justin thinks this shift in DNA could really shake things up.
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Cisco DNA Series: DNA Goes Virtual
Storage Field Day – I’ll Be At Storage Field Day 12
Dan Frith is excited to be heading to Storage Field Day in a couple of weeks. He’ll be heading out to Silicon Valley for the event March 8-10. He found the presenting companies to be a good mix of new faces and ones he’s eager to get updates from. He’s got the complete schedule posted, so make sure you check back here for live streaming during the event. If you miss that, don’t worry, we’ll have full video afterwards.
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