On his personal site, Architecting IT.com, Chris Evans writes his takeaways from VMware’s VMworld 2021. Specifically, he compares VMware’s Project Ensemble, displayed at the event, to other products such as those presented at a past Cloud Field Day event by Morpheus Data, in a past Tech Field Day appearance by Platform9, and the products displayed by ZeroStack during a Virtualization Field Day event, which he attended at as a delegate. Click the link below for more context behind these comparisons.
Morpheus Spends Well With Others
Delegate Justin Warren is a huge fan of a feature highlighted by Morpheus Data at their Cloud Field Day 8 appearance: the budgeting feature. While others might find it boring, Justin explains in his latest blog post that their budgeting feature helps users see what things will actually cost, not just what they might cost. When it comes to technology, administrators need to plan carefully to ensure they can come in on time and not too far over budget, and Morpheus Data is helping them do that. Justin thinks they’ve come a long way since he first saw them at Cloud Field Day 3, and thinks that you should check them out! Check out Justin’s post and the presentations from Morpheus Data on our website.
Cloud Field Day 6 Prep – NetApp and Dell Technologies
Ned Bellavance is getting ready to attend Cloud Field Day later this month, and doing his homework on the presenting companies. In this post, he’s digging into what to expect from NetApp and Dell Technologies. Both are long established stalwarts in enterprise IT, and both are making interesting choices in how they build out their cloud native offerings. NetApp had an impressive presentation at Cloud Field Day last year, and he’s looking forward to how they will build off a year of impressive announcements. Dell has such a volume of solutions that could be discussed that Ned is looking forward to what direction they will choose for their time. Be sure to watch along on the Cloud Field Day live stream to find out!
Hello Droplet Computing
Droplet Computing definitely made a big impact on Michelle Laverick when they presented at Cloud Field Day last year. In this blog post, she announced that she’s joined the company! The decision was made not just based on the technology stack they showed off as they came out of stealth, but also the spirit of the company. In this post, Michelle outlines what specifically about Droplet Computing provides exceptional value for customers.
Cloud-Native Data Protection
In this post, Chris Evans looks at cloud-native data protection. He breaks down why it makes sense for an organization, what some of the potential challenges are, and takes time to define what a cloud native solution should actually look like. He also looks the companies offering solutions in the space, including what Druva showed at Cloud Field Day last year, and solutions presented at Storage Field Day by NetApp.
Droplet Computing Product Walk Thru: Not Just Another Droplet in the Ocean
Michelle Laverick first saw Droplet Computing when they presented at Cloud Field Day last year. In this post, she walks through the experience of using their container-based technology, which allows applications to be installed “as-is” without special packaging. Running on an older MacBook, the overall performance was comparable to a local virtual machine in testing. For a 1.0 release, Michelle found it a robust solution.
NetApp Acquires StackPointCloud
Rich Stroffolino outlines how NetApp’s recent acquisition of StackPointCloud compliments what they presented at Cloud Field Day earlier this year. Their Cloud Volumes service now naturally rolls into a larger managed Kubernetes play.
Enterprise-Class Public Cloud
Chris Evans takes a look at what “enterprise-class” cloud computing would look like, which he heard about extensively from Oracle at Cloud Field Day earlier this year. Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure provides a more managed environment than other public clouds, making it well suited for enterprises that can’t completely rewrite applications. For Chris, there is definitely a market for a cloud provider that doesn’t strictly take a hyperscaler approach.
Cloud Storage – AWS, Azure, and Beyond
Ned Bellavance and Stephen Foskett break down the cloud storage options from AWS and Microsoft Azure. They then illustrate why the cacophony of choice from just those two providers make it almost impossible to do a true comparison of either performance or value. They see something like NetApp’s Cloud Volumes, which they saw at Cloud Field Day earlier this year, as a way to approach some consistency in the marketplace.
Multi-Cloud, DevOps, and Storage
From the presentation from NetApp at Cloud Field Day earlier this year, Ned Bellavance and Stephen Foskett wrote an in-depth article looking at the challenges of applying DevOps concepts to storage, especially in a multi-cloud environment. NetApp addressed this challenge with Cloud Volumes, which they see as providing the flexibility demanded by DevOps without sacrificing the functionality of robust data services.
Morpheus Data: A Next-Gen Cloud Management Platform
Martez Reed hadn’t heard of Morpheus Data prior to their presentation at Cloud Field Day in April. He found that their Cloud Management Platform shines with native orchestration and automation support. What differentiates it from the pack of competitors is a particular DevOps focus, allowing for easier creation of coordinated CI/CD pipelines.
Modern Data Protection Summary
Keith Townsend lays out exactly why data is the most important asset in the enterprise and what products have the essential protection and management features to protect, mobilize, and backup your data. Among the companies and products Keith discusses are Veritas, Rubrik Datos, and Druva who he saw present at Cloud Field Day 3 as well as Commvault who presented at Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault Go in 2017.
Cloud Field Day: Droplet Computing – Any App, Any Where, Any Device
Droplet Computing launched out of stealth at Cloud Field Day in April. In this post, Michelle Laverick looks at the implications of their browser-based application containers. This ability to run any application on any OS with any infrastructure isn’t just interesting for legacy apps. Michelle outlines why this could have far reaching consequences for organizations running new apps without worrying about underlying requirements.
The Britpop Battle of Rubrik and Cohesity
The rivalries between data protection companies remind Chris Evans of the glory days of 90s Britpop. Instead of Blur and Oasis, for him the rivals of this new vanguard are Rubrik and Cohesity. He sees both as working to centralize data protection to offer it as a service, with the ultimate goal of fending off cloud-based solutions.
Druva acquires CloudRanger, expands backup capabilities to AWS
Max Mortillaro looks at Druva’s acquisition of CloudRanger, which offers a data protection solution for AWS. Max got to see a lot from Druva at their recent Cloud Field Day presentation, and thinks the acquisition will offer a nice compliment to the company’s existing Data Management as a Service portfolio.
NetApp Cloud Volumes 101
Bhavin Shah takes a look at NetApp Cloud Volumes, after their recent announcement that it is now available on Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes provides cloud-native enterprise-class file services to users, all based around a familiar usage-billing model. He walks through how to get started using Cloud Volumes, and previews where NetApp is expanding it after watching their Cloud Field Day presentation.
Head in the Clouds: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Jon Hildebrand takes a look at what Oracle presented at Cloud Field Day last month. They specifically focused on their Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. He appreciate what Oracle is trying to do with their infrastructure SLAs, which can represent significant risk reduction for more timid organizations. Overall he found their messaging and solutions should keep them relevant in the overall cloud infrastructure conversation.
Running Native Applications in a Browser with Droplet Computing
Nick Janetakis saw the launch of Droplet Computing last month at Cloud Field Day. He found the company’s mission to run native applications online or offline in a browser on any device to be genuinely cool technology. Using their Universal Container Runtime, they can run applications without worrying about the underlying OS or architecture. Most importantly, this isn’t just a concept. While still early days, Droplet disclosed that their tech is being used by companies in production. Nick was definitely intrigued by what he saw.
Episode 54: Get up, eat omelet, throw chair
On this episode of the Buffer Overflow podcast, Ned Bellavance talks about what he saw from Droplet Computing with their company debut at Cloud Field Day. They utilize browser-based containerization using Web Assembly to run applications independent of OS or architecture.
My Life as a Tech Impostor
Being invited to Cloud Field Day caused Ned Bellavance to think about Imposter Syndrome. He’s found that in technology, not knowing every thing doesn’t make you an imposter, because everyone is in the same boat. Instead of worrying about being an imposter, he leaves the piece with some great advice: Know what you know. Learn what you can. Be generous those willing to learn. Learn from those willing to share.
