After hearing from VMware at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss moving VMware workloads with the VMware HCX. Do admins want this? Don’t they really want to move work between Kubernetes clusters instead? Or is that even the right question? It kind of was, but it kind of wasn’t. Kubernetes & containers are not simple drop-in replacements for VMware & virtual machines. Therefore, HCX has use cases, and they explain what they think they are.
Day Two Cloud 047: Highlights and Analysis From Cloud Field Day 7
In this episode of the Day Two Cloud podcast, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss some of the presentations from Cloud Field Day. They looked at the big presentations from VMware, SolarWinds, and startup Pensando in the episode, specifically focusing on VMware Cloud on AWS, monitoring cloud performance with SolarWinds, and Pensando’s SmartNIC to offload a server’s network processing. Having two great hosts discussing the latest cloud goodness makes for a good podcast.
VMware Makes Kubernetes Even More So With Tanzu
In this post, Justin Warren considers how VMware has gone about integrating Kubernetes into its establishing management platforms, something he heard all about at Cloud Field Day. This is an inherently complex task, if for no other reason than the Kubernetes landscape is still changing and updating rapidly. Any kind of integration would seemingly have to take that on as well. For Justin, a lot of the strength of VMware’s position with virtualization is that it is a known quantity that organizations have a continuing investment with over time. Adding in Kubernetes with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid doesn’t strictly play to that strength. For Justin, the key will be for VMware to simplify the solution over time as it learns how customers actually use Kubernetes.
VMware Embracing Terraform: Infrastructure as Code
Chris Grundemann was a little surprised when he heard VMware’s Narayan Bharadwaj mention Terraform during the opening presentation of Cloud Field Day. In fact, what he said is that VMware is “embracing Terraform in a pretty big way” as part of their focus on Infrastructure as Code. This struck Chris for two reasons. One, you wouldn’t be off-base to think of Terraform as a competitor to several VMware products. And two, because of the things that it makes possible. He digs into more of the specifics in this post.
Automating Disaster Recovery Is Risky Business – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks think through VMware’s DRaaS offering, pondering the pros and cons of automation disaster recovery & business continuity. Sounds great, but are users testing regularly? What’s the failback process after the disaster is over? VMware went into detail during their Cloud Field Day presentation, and Ethan and Ned break it down in this episode of Day Two Cloud.
Build Your Network Apps on Pensando’s Cloud of SmartNICs – Day Two Cloud Video
Pensando Systems definitely made a big impression at Cloud Field Day. The company is a startup that threatens to be a juggernaut if past performance of the founders is any indicator of future results. Pensando’s made an ARM processor and paired it to a NIC and orchestration platform. Put the NIC in your servers and manage the NIC fleet centrally. Use the platform to create networking applications offloaded from the x86 CPU, all for less than a 30W power draw. Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss the implications of what they saw at the event, and who will be Pensando’s customers.
Pensando Systems at Cloud Field Day 7
It’s always exciting to get a new presenting company at an event like Cloud Field Day. Pensando Systems joined the Field Day presenter alumni with their recent presentation, and definitely made an impression on the delegates. While the event was virtual for their debut, it actually fostered a lot of great interaction both from the delegates and our wider audience on Twitter. Be sure to check out their full presentation video to find out how they built a Distributed Services Platform that gives cloud providers the ability to build industry-leading cloud services and gives enterprises the unique ability to drive cloud-like agility, security and operational simplicity across their entire infrastructure with unmatched scale and performance.
VMC on AWS Is More Cloud Like All the Time – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
After hearing from VMware at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance consider VMware Cloud on AWS now that a couple of years have gone by since the service launched. Is it really cloud yet, or just VMware in a colo alongside AWS? It’s really both. They dig into it on a recent episode of the Day Two Cloud Podcast. Be sure to check it out, watch VMware’s presentation from the event, and let us know what you thing!
Monitoring Application Performance From the Inside Out With Solarwinds AppOptics
Are you relying on old tools to monitor your modern applications? Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at why you should examine the way you keep an eye on your applications and how your users experience them. At Cloud Field Day, he saw that this is where SolarWinds comes into play. They have spent a great deal of time creating the best tool to handle monitoring of your application from the inside out. Their AppOptics solution does more than just monitor the response time of your pages. It digs deep into the services that compose the application to find out what’s actually going on when users run complicated queries or connect to a node that is having some performance issues.
Cloud Field Day 7 – VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is not an unfamiliar site at Field Day events, and most recently, they graced us with a presentation at Cloud Field Day. Ed Horley was a delegate for the event and got to hear a lot about VMware Cloud on AWS. For Ed, it seems like VMware has deftly navigated the often daunting challenges of adopting their established enterprise business model into the public cloud. The solution extends the ability to run cloud workloads to the scale and flexibility that AWS provides while also providing native hooks and features from AWS that extend what an enterprise can leverage from both VMware and AWS. It’s an impressive achievement that has a lot of value for organizations with deep VMware investments.
SolarWinds X Cloud Field Day 7
At Cloud Field Day, SolarWinds provided a comprehensive company product overview, APM technical history, and demo of the APM Suite. This post culls together all their great presentation videos, providing deep dives into AppOptics to improve application performance in Kubernetes, the latest with metrics and analytics, and more. Be sure to subscribe to the Tech Field Day YouTube channel to get all of our event videos in your feed.
VDI as a Service Is Better Than VDI
One of the most familiar in-jokes among IT folks is declaring a new year to be “the year of VDI.” This joke usually elicits a droll smile or perhaps a barely noticeable wince. The reason it persists year after year is that it speaks to a larger truth, while VDI always seems like it’s about to go from a niche solution to mass market, it always somehow stays in its place. Enrico Signoretti heard from VMware at Cloud Field Day recently, and while he doesn’t think it will ever be the year of VDI, he does think that the time for VDI as a service might be here. While expense will always be an issue with the technology, VMware showed that the security benefits and ease of deployment can more than prove its worth.
Marketplaces Are Changing the Way We Do Enterprise IT
Enrico Signoretti has been looking into the increasing importance of marketplaces for unstructured data management solutions. These allow IT to add functionalities to your infrastructure quickly, without having to go through a complex purchase, installation, and configuration process. Enrico got to see two examples of these at recent Field Day events. At Cloud Field Day, VMware showed off their marketplace for VMware Cloud on AWS, with another marketplace on display at Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat. With more mature technology, Enrico see marketplaces not just as the purview of cloud providers, but rather being extended to hybrid cloud platforms and eventually the private enterprise marketplace.
Cloud Field Day 7 (#CFD7): A Heads-Up
We were lucky to have Ather Beg joins us as a delegate for Cloud Field Day. He always brings keen insight and extensive industry experience to offer a truly unique voice around the delegate table, virtual or otherwise. In this post, he gives a look at each of the presenters and why their session may be of interest to a wider audience. There was VMware, no stranger to Field Day, doing two sessions on their VMware Cloud on AWS solution. He was also interested in Stellus’ key-value store approach to storage to provide exceptional performance using protocols like NFS. There was also a presentation from SolarWinds, as well as a look into the Pensando Distributed Services Platform. Be sure to check out all the presentation videos to get to speed with the latest from the event.
Cloud Field Day 7 – All Virtual but Still a Tech Field Day Event in Every Way
While staying home in light of the COVID-19 pandemic means we can’t host in-person Field Day events, we’re glad to see such a strong positive response to our virtual events. Ed Horley joined us as a delegate for Cloud Field Day, and while he missed being able to hang out with his fellow delegates, all the classic Cloud Field Day hallmarks were still there. The event featured in-depth technical content and created meaningful conversations between the delegates and presenters. If you missed any of the sessions, be sure to check out the full videos on our YouTube channel!
Hardware Offloads, Not Everything Is X86
Alastair Cooke takes a look at why x86 isn’t the only option anymore for organizations looking to solve computing problems. This trend has been going on for a while, with GPUs finding new roles handling highly parallelized workloads in ML and AI. But he also highlights how NGD Systems is putting ARM cores inside SSDs to provide computation storage. He’s also looking forward to hearing about the Pensando Distributed Services Card at Cloud Field Day, which appears to offer hardware offloading for software-defined edge services, aimed at telcos. We can’t wait to hear what he thinks of their presentation!
Cloud Field Day 7: Delivering Cloud Migration, Modernization and Business Continuity With VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is a familiar presenter at Field Day events, and we’re thrilled to have them return to Cloud Field Day this year. This year, their presentation will focus on how VMware helps customers migrate, extend, protect and modernize their applications and how to help them continue their business operations without any disruptions. Much of this will be presented through the lens of VMware Cloud on AWS with technical deep-dive content how organizations can accelerate their migration and modernization journey. We can’t wait to see the session, so be sure to mark your calendar.
Cloud Field Day 7 – Who Will Be Presenting?
Alastair Cooke will be joining us virtually for Cloud Field Day later in April. Instead of the jetlag that comes from crossing an ocean to usually be at an event, he’ll instead be up early to join the other delegates for the presentations. Though a virtual event, he’s looking forward to the same in-depth technical presentations, the opportunity to ask direct questions to the presenters, and the great conversations with the other delegates. In this post, he runs down what he’s looking forward to from each of the presenters. This includes a mix of Field Day stalwarts like Aruba, VMware, and Solarwinds, with newer companies to the event series, like Stellus and Pensando. Be sure to mark your calendar to join the live stream to watch the event along with Alastair.
