News Archives - Tech Field Day

Packet Pushers Discussion of Cisco’s SDN Strategy

A group of independent thought leaders from the Networking Field Day/PacketPushers crew gathered at Cisco Live US 2012 to discuss the company’s Open Networking Environment (ONE) announcement. This announcement centered on a strategy for software-defined networking (SDN), and this was the focus of our discussion as well.

A group of independent thought leaders from the Networking Field Day/PacketPushers crew gathered at Cisco Live US 2012 to discuss the company's Open Networking Environment (ONE) announcement. This announcement centered on a strategy for software-defined networking (SDN), and this was the focus of our discussion as well.

The group of independent bloggers consisted of Greg Ferro, Ethan Banks, Russ White, Derick Winkworth, Tom Hollingsworth, and Stephen Foskett. Joining the group was Omar Sultan, Senior Manager at Cisco.

This wide-ranging discussion touched on the following topics:

Contrasting Cisco's ONE strategy with SDN and OpenFlow in general
APIs, OpenFlow, and XML
What will people do with SDN in the future?
Distributed and autonomous versus centralized
Standards: IEEE vs. IETF, de facto and interoperability
VXLAN and the Nexus 1000V - Is 1000V SDN?
Operational and organizational impacts
Systems engineering
Thinking of networks as flows

The conversation will continue in July with two more "Virtual Symposium" discussions with Cisco. We will cover Network Programmability and Virtual Machine Networking. Watch for more!

Quest Software Presents at Storage Field Day 1

Quest Software presented at Storage Tech Field Day 1 on Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Quest Software presented at Storage Tech Field Day 1 on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our SFD1 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Video: Quest Software presents at Storage Field Day 1

Quest Software begins with their vision and company mission, then discusses their various enterprise backup and recovery products. The majority of the discussion focuses on NetVault XA, their next-generation backup product and global dashboard concept. This new platform unifies Quest’s data protection technologies, aligns backup and recovery directly to the organization’s service continuity needs, and delivers a customized experience for users in multiple roles. NetVault XA version 1.0 will be available in the second half of 2012, and will be incorporated into the planned releases of NetVault Backup, NetVault SmartDisk, and vRanger.

Presenters:

Walter Angerer, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Data Protection
Bob Maeser, Vice President, Research and Development, Data Protection

Find Quest online:

Web: Quest.com
Twitter: @Quest

Coraid Presents at Storage Field Day 1

Coraid presented at Storage Tech Field Day 1 on Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Coraid presented at Storage Tech Field Day 1 on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our SFD1 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Part 1: Coraid Introduction and Architecture

Video: Coraid Introduction and Architecture

Coraid CEO Kevin Brown introduces the company and its history:
- Founded by Brantley Coyle (Cisco PIX and NAT)
- Coraid's 10-year history, growth, funding, and management
- Financial value of the Coraid solution

Next, Carl Wright, Executive VP of Sales for Coraid, talks about the product architecture:
- Positioning Coraid in the FC and IP storage market
- Migration of high-end features down from high-end systems
- The Coraid global namespace
- ATA over Ethernet appears as a SCSI controller to hosts
- Simplicity of a connectionless datagram protocol
- LUN configuration is stored on the drives for flexibility and resilience
- Virtual software RAID
- Automation and one-click provisioning

Part 2: Storage Protocols Compared to AoE with Coraid

Video: Storage Protocols Compared to AoE with Coraid

Robert Przykucki (Director, Product Management at Coraid) compares enterprise storage protocols:
- Physical configuration of Coraid arrays
- History of networking and storage
- Protocol stack comparison: AoE, Fibre Channel, FCoE, and iSCSI
- The iSCSI data path: Connection-based and serial
- The AoE data path: Connectionless and parallel

Part 3: Coraid Use Cases and Technology Deep Dive

Video: Coraid Use Cases and Technology Deep Dive

Mark LaRosa (Principal Architect) discusses use cases for the Coraid storage solution:
- Customer story: DLA - Coraid AoE SAN plus ZFS NAS
- Customer story: i-cubed - high-throughput GPFS

Next, Mark and Carl Wright go into greater depth on the Coraid technology:
- Whiteboard demo of Coraid LUN and RAID configuration with a few simple CLI commands
- Mixing drive types in the Coraid environment (SATA, SAS, SSD)
- LUN masking and access control
- How the architecture enables automation and mass-scale

Find Coraid online:

Web: Coraid.com
Twitter: @Coraid

Drobo Presents at Storage Field Day 1

Drobo presented at Storage Tech Field Day 1 on Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Drobo presented at Storage Tech Field Day 1 on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our SFD1 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Part 1: Tom Buiocchi introduces Drobo to the Storage Field Day delegates

Video: Tom Buiocchi introduces Drobo to the Storage Field Day delegates

Drobo CEO, Tom Buiocchi introduces the company (formerly known as Data Robotics) and outlines the company's agenda for Storage Field Day 1. He announces a major 1 Petabyte customer win while placing the company firmly in the SMB market segment.

Part 2: Drobo Chalk Talk - The Technology Behind BeyondRAID

Video: Drobo Chalk Talk - The Technology Behind BeyondRAID

Eric Pounds (Director, Product Management) and Rod Harrison (Chief Architect) of Drobo details the technology behind BeyondRAID, their core data management technology. They hit on the following key points during this discussion:

How Drobo presents a single pool of storage
How BeoyndRAID creates thousands of "zones" of storage on disk drives
How these zones are built and re-built
Drobo's "data-aware" thin provisioning technology

Part 3: How Drobo BeyondRAID Handles SSDs

Video: How Drobo BeyondRAID Handles SSDs

Continuing their discussion of BeyondRAID technology, Erik Pounds (Director, Product Management) and Rod Harrison (Chief Architect) of Drobo discusses the following key points:

Logical storage tiering with hard disk drives and SSDs
How Drobo handles SSDs internally
The use of multiple physical storage tiers inside BeyondRAID
How the Drobo system automatically tunes itself

Part 4: A Demonstration of Drobo Technology with Mario Blandini

Video: A Demonstration of Drobo Technology with Mario Blandini

Drobo Chief Evangelist, Mario Blandini, demonstrates SSD tiering with a Drobo B1200i. The intent of this demonstration was to show how the array performance improves once an SSD is added for BeyondRAID to use. Mario also passes around an Icy Dock (which Drobo uses to mount 2.5" SSDs) and an OCZ Talos SSD.

Mario also invites Rick Vanover of Veeam to talk about how that company integrates with Drobo devices for small-business data protection.

Find Drobo online:

Web: Drobo.com
Twitter: @Drobo

Nimbus Data Presents at Storage Field Day 1

Nimbus Data presented at Storage Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our SFD1 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates! Part 1: Tom Isakovich introduces Nimbus Data to the Storage Fiel …

Nimbus Data presented at Storage Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our SFD1 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Part 1: Tom Isakovich introduces Nimbus Data to the Storage Field Day delegates

Video: Tom Isakovich introduces Nimbus Data to the Storage Field Day delegates

Tom Isakovich introduces Nimbus Data to the Storage Field Day delegates. Tom talks about their "Sustainable Storage" vision and his predictions for the solid state storage market. He then introduces the Nimbus Data line: The E-Class (for Enterprise or Efficiency) and the S-Class (for Speed and Simplicity).

Part 2: Nimbus HALO Operating System Overview

Video: Nimbus HALO Operating System Overview

Tom Isakovich introduces the Nimbus HALO operating system, touching on the following points:

The Nimbus system is all-inclusive with regard to software
Administration with the CLI, REST API, and GUI (future)
Multi-protocol interface (iSCSI, NFS, SMB/CIFS, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand SRP)
Thin provisioning, replication, snapshots, deduplication, encryption
Standards: T10 thin provisioning, ALUA multi-pathing
The Nimbus flash-optimized file system and multi-enclosure aggregation
Performance impact from on-the-fly data deduplication
Integration with VMware (VAAI), Citrix Ready, Microsoft (VSS), Oracle

Part 3: Nimbus Market and Pricing

Video: Nimbus Market and Pricing

Comparing the pricing of a traditional hard disk drive-based storage array with the Nimbus all-flash array. Tom Isakovich's comparison includes hardware, overhead, licensing, and support to reach a lower cost before deduplication or compression. He then talks about use cases for all-flash storage and recent Nimbus customer wins.

Part 4: Nimbus Performance Tests and Closing Points

Video: Nimbus Performance Tests and Closing Points

Demartek recently tested the Nimbus S-Class, and Tom Isakovich discusses the results. The device reached line-rate over QDR InfiniBand (8 GB/s uncached reads, 2.3 GB/s writes). Demartek also validated VMware VAAI and SSD compatibility under vSphere 5.

Tom then hits some discussion points:

Unified flash storage
Tier-0 vs. tier-1
PCIe vs. array storage
Deduplication
Hybrid vs. dedicated all-flash
Scale-up vs. scale-out
Memory Area Networks with InfiniBand or 40 GbE

Find Nimbus Data online:

Web: NimbusData.com
Twitter: @NimbusData

Kaminario Presents at Storage Field Day 1

Kaminario CEO Dani Golan presented at Storage Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Kaminario founder and CEO Dani Golan presented at Storage Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, April 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our SFD1 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Video: Kaminario CEO Dani Golan presents the K2 solid state storage solution

Dani Golan presented a deep dive into their solid-state storage array. He began with some background on the solid state storage revolution and the challenges this poses to storage array design. Using a recorded demonstration, Golan showed the scale-out K2 storage system recovering from the loss of an entire active storage blade. He then discusses the elements of Kaminario's DataProtect software layer and scale-out "SPEAR" architecture.

Find Kaminario online:

Web: Kaminario.com
Twitter: @Kaminario

SolarWinds Presents at Networking Field Day 3

SolarWinds presented at Networking Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, March 29, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our NFD3 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

The following SolarWinds staff participated in this presentation:

Joel Dolisy, VP/Chief Software Architect
Mav Turner, Senior Product Manager, Network

SolarWinds at NFD3 with Mav Turner and Joel Dolisy from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Find SolarWinds Online:

Web: SolarWinds.com and thwack.com
Twitter: @SolarWinds and @thwack
Facebook, Google+, Linkedin Company Page, Linkedin Community Group

SolarWinds Products:

SolarWinds Thought Leadership

Spirent Presents at Networking Field Day 3

Spirent presented at Networking Tech Field Day 3 on Friday, March 30, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our NFD3 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

The first part of the Spirent presentation at NFD3 was this introduction by Sailaja Tennati and Patrick Johnson addressing the core question, "Who is Spirent?"

Spirent 1 - Sailaja Tennati and Patrick Johnson Who is Spirent? from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Next, Spirent's Ankur Chadda introduced the PASS testing methodology.

Spirent 2 - Ankur Chadda introduces the PASS testing methodology from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Spirent's Jurrie van den Breekel talked about datacenter infrastructure test solutions.

Spirent 3 - Jurrie van den Breekel - Datacenter Infrastructure Test Solutions from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Finally, Ameya Barve of Spirent talked about convergence on Ethernet and the testing challenges this creates.

Spirent 4 - Ameya Barve - Convergence and Testing Challenges from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Cisco Presents at Networking Field Day 3

Cisco Borderless and Cisco Datacenter presented at Networking Tech Field Day 3 on Friday, March 30, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our NFD3 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Han Yang, Cisco Product Manager for Nexus 1000v, began with a talk on changes in virtualization including the new VXLAN protocol.

Cisco 1 - VXLAN and the Nexus 1000v with Han Yang from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Next, Victor Moreno talked about multi data center computing, LISP and virtual machine mobility.

Cisco Multi Data Center Computing, LISP and Mobility with Victor Moreno from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Next up was a discussion of Cisco's ASA CX Prime Security Manager with Brian Conklin.

Cisco ASA CX Context-Aware Security with Brian Conklin from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

The penultimate session included Mark Emmerson (Manager, Product Marketing) and Tomer Hagay Nevel (Consulting Systems Engineer) discussing Cisco Prime.

Cisco 4 - Cisco Prime with Mark Emmerson and Tomer Hagay Nevel from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Finally, Nikhil Sharma presented a session on network troubleshooting, including Wireshark and Mediatrace integration.

Cisco 5 - Network Troubleshooting with Wireshark and Mediatrace with Nikhil Sharma from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Infineta Presents at Networking Field Day 3

Infineta presented at Networking Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, March 29, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our NFD3 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

The following Infineta staff presented:

Haseeb Budhani (Chief Product Officer) – Product Overview
Umair Hoodbhoy (Product Manager) – Infineta DMS Demo
Dr. K.V.S. Ramarao (Founder & Chief Scientist) – Deduplication Deep-dive
Ashish Shah (Director, Products) – System Architecture and TCP Optimization Feature Discussion

First, Infineta Chief Product Officer, Haseeb Budhani, introduced the company and its products. Haseeb began with a quick overview of Infineta and their focus before kicking off a product demo that runs in the background during the following session.

The demo, managed by Umair Hoodbhoy, moves 1.46 TB of data over a simulated 10 Gb WAN with 50 ms RTT. It includes 13 disk volumes, each with 125 GB of real customer data. 12 of these are accelerated with Infineta, and one is unaccelerated. The bypass traffic runs at 11 Mbps while the accelerated, deduplicated traffic hits 6.75 Gbps and is nearly 80% reduced in volume.

Infineta Product Overview with Haseeb Budhani, Chief Product Officer from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Next, Dr. K. V. S. Ramarao talked about the evolution of data deduplication solutions and Infineta's "secret sauce".

The Evolution of Data Deduplication Solutions and Infineta's Secret Sauce with Dr. K. V. S. Ramarao from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Finally, Ashish Shah talked about Infineta's System Architecture and TCP Optimization Feature.

Infineta 3 - System Architecture and TCP Optimization Feature with Ashish Shah from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Arista Presents at Networking Field Day 3

Arista Networks presented at Networking Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, March 29, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our NFD3 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Douglas Gourlay, VP of Marketing for Arista Networks, began by talking about the company's hardware and software architecture and key features and capabilities. He also introduced the new Arista FX platform, which includes an FPGA on the switch.

Arista Networks Product Introduction with Douglas Gourlay from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Next, Arista (and Sun) co-founder Andreas "Andy" Bechtolsheim talked about current networking challenges and his approach to solving them.

A discussion with Arista's Andy Bechtolsheim from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Finally, Arista demonstrated these features in action.

Arista 3 - Demo from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

NEC Presents at Networking Field Day 3

NEC presented at Networking Tech Field Day 3 on Thursday, March 29, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our NFD3 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

The following NEC personnel attended the presentation:

Donald Clark – Director, Corporate Business Development
Samrat Ganguly – Senior Network Architect
Su-Hun Yun – Senior Manager, Business Development
John Wise – Marketing Communications Manager
Janice Roberts – Roberts Communications

First, NEC's Don Clark introduced their OpenFlow implementation and product line.

NEC OpenFlow Introduction with Don Clark from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Next, Samrat Ganguly discussed OpenFlow network design.

NEC OpenFlow network design with Samrat Ganguly from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Finally, NEC demonstrated their next-generation OpenFlow technology in action.

NEC 3 - Next-generation OpenFlow demo from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Pivot3 Presents at Virtualization Field Day 2

Pivot3 presented at Virtualization Tech Field Day 2 onFriday, February 24, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our VFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

The presentation included the following Pivot3 personnel:

Bill Gallaway, CTO
Greg Pellegrino, Sr. Director Solutions Engineering
Olivier Thierry, CMO

Pivot3 began with a technical introduction to Pivot3 vSTAC appliances presented by Bill Gallaway, CTO and Olivier Thierry, CMO.

Next was a pair of demos including a a complete "View-in-a-Box" P Cubed install from scratch, as well as a demo of Test Drive. These demos allowed attendees to log on to the appliances, and were presented by Greg Pellegrino, Sr. Director Engineering.

Xangati Presents at Virtualization Field Day 2

Xangati presented at Virtualization Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, February 23, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our VFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates! The presentation included the following Xangati personnel: …

Xangati presented at Virtualization Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, February 23, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our VFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

The presentation included the following Xangati personnel:

David Messina, VP Product Management
Jagan Jagannathan, CTO and Founder (@xagan)
Alan Robin, CEO (@alanlrobin)
Nathanael Iversen, Technical Marketing Director (@njiversen)
Steve Rodgers, Corporate Marketing (@steve888)
Kim Barsi, Public Relations (@XangatiPress)

Xangati Founder and CTO Jagan Jagannathan takes to the whiteboard to explain the company's technology and explanation of virtualization performance management foundations. You might also like reading The Xangati Difference, which goes along with his presentation.

A live demonstration of the Xangati solution at Virtualization Field Day 2.

Xangati plays "Wait Wait... Don't Blame Me!" by sharing real-world virtualization performance management stories.

See the Xangati web site for free software for use or evaluation:

Xangati for vSphere – Free (Totally free software for visibility into 1 VMware host and all of its interactions)
Xangati VI Dashboard (Free trial for visibility into ALL of your VMware hosts and all of their interactions)
Xangati VDI Dashboard (Free trial for your entire VDI)

Ruckus Wireless Presents at Wireless Field Day 2

Victor Shtrom (co-founder and chief wireless architect), GT Hill (Technical Marketing Director), David Stiff (Product Line Manager) and Wilson So of Ruckus Wireless presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Friday, January 27, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our WFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Ruckus Wireless co-founder and chief wireless architect, Victor Shtrom, talks about the company's unique antenna technology. He goes into some depth about beamforming and directional signals, and reveals a next-generation antenna design.

David Stiff (Product Line Manager) and Wilson So introduce and demonstrate 802.11u at Ruckus Wireless.

Finally, GT Hill demonstrates Ruckus Wireless' ChannelFly technology.

HP Networking Presents at Wireless Field Day 2

Rob Haviland (technical marketing engineer) of HP Networking presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Friday, January 27, 2012.

Rob Haviland (technical marketing engineer) of HP Networking presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Friday, January 27, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our WFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

HP networking technical marketing engineer, Rob Haviland, introduces the wireless product line.

HP networking technical marketing engineer, Rob Haviland, continues the discussion about their wireless products.

Aruba Presents at Wireless Field Day 2

Keerti Melkote (Founder and Chief Strategy Officer), Pradeep Iyer (founding engineer), Carlos Gomez and Cameron Esdaile of Aruba Networks presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Friday, January 27, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our WFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Keerti Melkote, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Aruba Networks, presents a case for building networks starting with wireless. He discusses the Aruba architecture and strategy, and goes deep into the company's approach to wireless and networking. Also joining the discussion is Aruba founding engineer, Pradeep Iyer.

Carlos Gomez and Cameron Esdaile walk through a few use cases for Aruba Networks' security and policy controls. They talk about visitor self-registration with sponsor approvals, BYOD for employees, pre-registration, and 3rd party integration for Wi-Fi devices.

Pradeep Iyer of Aruba Networks takes questions from the Wireless Field Day 2 delegates. He introduces Aruba's Virtual Controller technology and highlights some of the advanced RF management capabilities in an Aruba WLAN.

Meraki Presents at Wireless Field Day 2

Sanjit Biswas (co-founder and CEO) and Pablo Estrada (Solution Architect) of Meraki presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, January 26, 2012.

Sanjit Biswas (co-founder and CEO) and Pablo Estrada (Solution Architect) of Meraki presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at their San Francisco headquarters. Watch the presentations below, and follow our WFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Meraki co-founder and CEO, Sanjit Biswas began with a presentation of the history of the company, from its roots at MIT in Cambridge, MA to their current cloud-controller Wi-Fi access point architecture.

Pablo Estrada, Solution Architect, then demonstrated their cloud controller technology in action.

Ekahau Presents at Wireless Field Day 2

Jussi Kiviniemi (Director, Product Marketing) and EJ Jackson (Global Tech Support Manager) of Ekahau presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2, demonstrating Site Survey (including an Android app) and RTLS.

Jussi Kiviniemi (Director, Product Marketing) and EJ Jackson (Global Tech Support Manager) of Ekahau presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, January 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our WFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Jussi and EJ demonstrated Ekahau's wireless LAN tools, with an overview of Ekahau Site Survey capacity planning. Jussi also reveals the Mobile Survey application on Android. EJ demonstrated how to use Ekahau Site Survey and took questions from the audience.

EJ also gave a brief demonstration of Ekahau's Wi-Fi Real Time Location System (RTLS). RTLS uses Wi-Fi and infrared beacons to locate tags with sub-1 meter accuracy, and integrates with Site Survey and Vision.

MetaGeek Presents at Wireless Field Day 2

Ryan Woodings and Trent Cutler of MetaGeek presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, January 26, 2012. They demonstrated Wi-Spy, “Spunik”, and introduced Eye PA. Watch the presentations now!

Ryan Woodings and Trent Cutler of MetaGeek presented at Wireless Tech Field Day 2 on Thursday, January 26, 2012. Watch the presentation below, and follow our WFD2 Links page for reactions and responses from the delegates!

Ryan Woodings introduces the history of MetaGeek, and Trent Cutler demonstrates the latest developments in their wireless capture product line.

Ryan Woodings demonstrates MetaGeek Sputnik, Eye PA, and other cool stuff at Wireless Field Day 2.