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.
Unwitting Accomplices in Your Career
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Eric Shanks takes a look back at the places and people that led him to presenting at VMUG, blogging about Enterprise IT, and being a delegate for Tech Field Day. We’re always thankful a thoughtful piece from Eric!
Read More:
Unwitting Accomplices in Your Career
Networking Field Day 13 – Sneak Preview
Tony Mattke wrote a nice preview of Networking Field Day, held just last week in Silicon Valley. He runs through all of the presenting companies, and tells us what he was looking forward to seeing. Give it a read to whet your appetite, then check out all of the video coverage here!
Read More:
Networking Field Day 13 - Sneak Preview
Friday Shorts – VMware, Veeam, Docker and Community
Mike Preston gives a brief sum up of his experience at Tech Field Day last week. Plus, Mike is a little perplexed by the popularity of Docker and containers, good thing he saw them present at the event! Mike always provides great coverage, so stay tuned for more.
Read More:
Friday Shorts – VMware, Veeam, Docker and Community
Learning “better SD-WAN” from a Non SD-WAN vendor!
After attending Networking Field Day in August, Faisal Khan came away impressed by ThousandEyes. He thought their network monitoring solution was more impressive when considered with SD-WAN, even though the company isn’t exactly pitching the solution that way. ThousandEyes can monitor a router to router span, as opposed to most SD-WAN vendors which only do end to end. Faisal runs down some of the use cases where this proves to be a superior solution. A really interesting take on what ThousandEyes is offering!
Read More:
Learning "better SD-WAN" from a Non SD-WAN vendor!
The struggles of travelling
In this piece, Matt Crape reflects thoughtfully on what it means to travel for events, how it impacts family and work-life balance. How do you measure the value of traveling to the event, and what you lose by being away from home and family? Matt does a really good job of keeping this all in perspective, laying out both the pitfalls and the benefits. We’re very grateful for his time, and thrilled that Tech Field Day was a worthwhile event!
Read More:
Throw Your Isilon in the Data Lake
Eric Shanks gives a rundown of the Dell EMC Isilon presentation he saw last week at Tech Field Day 12. He goes into what exactly the Dell EMC Isilon solution is, essentially a single namespace for an enormous storage pool. He then goes on to rundown some of the market segments Isilon would market to, as well as some of the notable features. One feature stood out to Eric, the “Smart Lock” feature, which allows you to prevent files from being changed, essentially protecting sensitive data from potential malicious agents. Plus he even tells you how to try it out on your own.
Read More:
Throw Your Isilon in the Data Lake
Container-based ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent…
Tim Miller tried out a Docker container install of a ThousandEyes image. While there were some issues with the actual Docker configuration, Tim was impressed with the service and support by Thousand Eyes, he had a customer service representative install Fedora over the phone just to try to replicate the issue. Tim got the ThousandEyes container up and running and is looking forward to trying it out in a longer trial.
Read More:
Container-based ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent...
NFD13 Forecast – Cloudy With a Chance of Software
Bob McCouch gives an overview of what he was looking forward to for Networking Field Day held last week. The two themes he saw for NFD: The Cloud and Software-centricity. Bob was really excited to get some more information on SD-WAN from VeloCloud and Viptela. Check out the full video coverage on the event page to get the latest from these and all the other presenting companies.
Read More:
NFD13 Forecast – Cloudy With a Chance of Software
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: Dell EMC
Matt Crape gives a preview of what he expected from Dell EMC for their Tech Field Day presentation last week. With such a big portfolio, it was hard to determine what exactly he expected to see. Read his post, then check out all the videos from Dell EMC’s Isilon presentation right here!
Read More:
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: Dell EMC
Cohesity Provides All of Your Secondary Storage Needs
Tech Field Day delegate Eric Shanks reviews what he saw from Cohesity. They’re offering a holistic offering in what they’re defining as secondary storage. Eric seemed impressed with how the Cohesity appliance handled backups, particularly not keeping numerous redundant copies in storage. He also liked that Cohesity can target any S3-compliant cloud service for backups as well. Overall, the simplicity of their offering seemed to appeal the most.
Read More:
Cohesity Provides All of Your Secondary Storage Needs
Riverbed SteelConnect: A Formidable Networking Solution!
Brandon Carroll wrote up his thoughts on the Riverbed SteelConnect, as featured at Tech Field Day Extra at ONUG in October. He seemed impressed with its ease of install and initial configuration. He further walks through the SteelConnect Manager, which features some impressive social media integrations for use as a login service provider. His overall take away: very simple yet very powerful.
Read More:
Riverbed SteelConnect: A Formidable Networking Solution!
Cohesity Presents at Tech Field Day 12
It was a pleasure to hear from Cohesity and their future for secondary storage at Tech Field Day last week. Linda Sim from Cohesity shares some of the excited reaction from hosting our delegates, as well as sharing videos of the event. Check out the event page for video coverage of all of the presenting companies!
Read More:
Cohesity Presents at Tech Field Day 12
Rubrik – A Refreshing Approach to Backups
We’ll miss Max at Tech Field Day but it’s great that he got a chance to catch up with Rubrik at VMworld. Here’s his “state of the union” for Rubrik in preparation for their Tech Field Day 12 presentation. Overall, he seems impressed by the company’s ability to deliver a simple and easy to deploy backup product, using their “Rubrik brick” appliances to allow for simple, transparent, efficient, and scalable backups.
Read More:
Rubrik - A Refreshing Approach to Backups
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: StorageOS
If you’re all about containers, you should check out Matt Crape’s preview of StorageOS, presenting at Tech Field Day later today. StorageOS tackles the problem of persistent storage in containers. Their solution uses their own container to deliver block storage capabilities, essentially combining disparate storage, and presenting it to a container via their software abstraction layer. Matt delves into some of the benefits of this solution, so be sure to click through for the piece. Be sure to check back here after StorageOS presents for video and additional coverage!
Read More:
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: StorageOS
DellEMC will make it’s first appearance at a Field Day event since merger!
You may not have heard, but two small bespoke vendors named Dell and EMC merged in a deal that finalized in September. They both have presented at Tech Field Day events in the past, but this is the first time we’ll see them present to our delegates with their powers combined! They’ll be presenting about their Isilon offering on Wednesday. Check out Mike Preston’s piece about the DellEMC merger, and what he’s looking forward to at Tech Field Day.
Read More:
DellEMC will make it’s first appearance at a Field Day event since merger!
Looking forward to Networking Field Day
Scott McDermott is coming back for Networking Field Day and gives an overview of all the companies presenting at this event. Most exciting is a recent update to his post, Forward Networks just came out of Stealth Mode on November 14th, and they’ll be giving a highly anticipated presentation on the November 17th! Check out Scott’s post for what he’s looking for out of each of the presenting companies, and make sure you check back on the 17th and 18th for all the live stream action!
Read More:
Looking forward to Networking Field Day
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: DriveScale
Fresh out of stealth mode in May, DriveScale will be presenting for the first time at Tech Field Day tomorrow. Matt Crape wrote up a great piece to get you up to speed with where the company is at prior to their presentation. The company’s solutions puts an abstraction layer over existing compute and storage systems to allow administrators to reallocate resources, either via a GUI interface, or via RESTful API calls. It seems like an interesting solution Big Data needs, especially since it runs on commodity hardware. Tune into their Tech Field Day presentation on Wednesday for all the juicy details!
Read More:
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: DriveScale
Cohesity bringing secondary storage to Tech Field Day
In this piece, Mike Preston gives a great preview of what he’s looking forward to from Cohesity later today at Tech Field Day. Aside from the company’s temporary proximity to the Stanley Cup, he’s interested in the company’s secondary storage solution. In particular, he likes that once backup data resides within Cohesity’s appliance, users can perform comprehensive search , as well as quickly create environment copies. Another highlight was the 3.0 release by the company to bring physical Windows and Linux support, allowing physical servers to use the solution along with already supported VMs. We’ll have the latest videos and updates from Cohesity after their presentation to our delegates, make sure to check back soon!
Read More:
Cohesity bringing secondary storage to Tech Field Day
Rethinking Micro-segmentation
Matt Haedo runs down the change in network security from focusing on rigid perimeter boundaries to micro-segmentation, which eliminates implied trust on all devices. He then looks at current solutions for micro-segmentation, which mostly either enforce policy in the network device, or in the hypervisor kernel. Finally, he looks at what makes Illumio’s approach to micro-segmentation different, which pushes enforcement to the endpoint, relying on its native enforcement policy. Matt seemed impressed by what he saw from Illumio at Networking Field Day in August. Check out the rest of the piece for his full rundown!
Read More:
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: Docker
If you’ve heard about Docker but want to know more, Matt has a post to get you up to speed. He runs down all the latest announcements from DockerCon 2016, and get you ready for the company’s presentation at Tech Field Day next week. Lucky for you!
Read More: