The former CloudSimple team presented at Tech Field Day 21 on the recently rebranded Google Cloud VMware Engine (GVE). What is it? How is it different than VMware Cloud on AWS? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Keith Townsend got to learn all about it during our recent virtual Tech Field Day event. While not going into competitive solutions specifically, they did outline how GVE differentiates in the landscape. This takes the VMware Cloud Foundation based, which allows any cloud provider to take any VMware components to offer a managed VCS service. Google of course offers their considerable scale on top of this. Keith breaks down how this compares to the other major public clouds.
vSphere Kubernetes Hot Take
Keith Townsend got to hear from VMware at Tech Field Day, where they packed a lot of information into a four hour session. Part of the presentation that surprised him was the Kubernetes integration into vSphere. This didn’t take the approach that Keith had thought when it was originally announced. Instead it comes as an extension of VMware Cloud Foundation, providing the ability to run a SDDC reference design across any environment. His biggest question with this is using VSAN as the management platform for Kubernetes. It’s an intriguing breakdown of the presentation, and Keith can’t wait to get some more focused deep dive sessions from VMware soon.
Dell Technologies PowerOne – Dell’s Private Cloud?
In this sponsored episode of the CTO Advisor podcast, host Keith Townsend talks with Dell EMC’s Conor Duffy, David Iovino, and Justin Jones. In the episode, they discuss the company’s PowerOne converged infrastructure, which was announced late last year. The company recently went into detail on this at Storage Field Day. They discuss where CI approaches fit in an IT landscape dominated by cloud and HCI, and Dell lays out how their investments in automation make PowerOne stand out. Keith wasn’t at the event, but got caught up on it with our comprehensive video coverage. After you listen to the episode, be sure to check out the video for yourself.
Kubernetes and Traffic Lights
It’s no secret that Keith Townsend is skeptical of the IT hype machine that is Kubernetes. In this post, he compares it to upgrading traffic light orchestration systems to help ease congestion. The drivers only care that it helps congestion, not what system is running. That’s why he’s impressed with what he saw from Solo IO at Cloud Field Day. They embrace namespaces in their solution, allowing you to consume infrastructure without worrying about the orchestrator. Read the full piece for all the details.
Talent Is Heavier Than Data
In this piece, Keith Townsend considers the impact of human talent on data gravity. The holy grail is to have data available instantly when you need it. There are literal physical limits to how possible this is, and he recently completed a video at Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO talking about some of the use cases and the capabilities of their Activate product in regards to metadata. At Cloud Field Day, he heard from Hammerspace, which looks at how to mitigate data gravity issues with a very unique solution.
91: Keith and Ray Show at CommvaultGO 2019
In this podcast, Ray Lucchesi and Keith Townsend give their impressions of Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO 2019. The event was their first chance to talk to Commvault’s new CEO Sanjay Mirchandani. They also got to hear about Commvault Metallic, get details about what the company will do with the Hedvig acquisition, and more.
It’s All About the Delegates: Tech Field Day at 10
Gestalt IT tapped into the power of a unique and growing community of independent IT influencers, and this remains our most valuable asset. We built Tech Field Day primarily to serve this community and have always kept their needs in mind. Our delegates make it all possible, and I will always be grateful for their friendship and support.
Commvault Activate – CommvaultGo 2019
Keith Townsend sits down with Commvault Field CTO Aaron Murphy and Director of Product Management Patrick McGrath during Tech Field Day Exclusive at CommvaultGo 2019. Commvault is known as a data protection company with its Complete product representing the bulk of its revenue. Activate is a product positioned at the data platform market.
Commvault Metallic and AWS RDS on vSphere – The Future of IT
Keith Townsend was a delegate at Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO 2019, and got to hear all the exciting announcements from the event. In this post, he breaks down the details and implications of Commvault Metallica, their new SaaS offering.
Master’s Lesson in IT Management
If you’re interesting in understand the IT challenges for large shop, Keith Townsend recommends checking out a video from Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO 2019. In it, the University of Leicester went into detail about migrating infrastructure with 20PB of data. There are a lot of challenges in this, regardless of the organization. We’re glad Keith found it interesting.
CommvaultGo 2019 Hot Take
Commvault announced a SaaS backup solution (Metallic) and went into a little detail about the acquisition of software-defined storage company Hedvig during Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO 2019. Keith Townsend shares his impressions of the keynote in this video.
Pure Accelerate: Cloud Block Service
Keith Townsend, The CTO Advisor, attended Storage Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate 2019 and in this post, he analyzes their latest solution, Cloud Block Service.
Commvault Breaking the Storage Laws
For Keith Townsend, Commvault’s acquisition of Hedvig signals that they may be breaking one of the cardinal rules of storage. Commvault may be thought of traditionally as a backup company, but Keith makes the argument that the acquisition proves they want to move beyond the aspirations of secondary storage. Be sure to check out all of the video coverage from our Tech Field Day Exclusive at Commvault GO 2019 and decide for yourself!
VMware’s Cloud in 300-Words
Keith Townsend returned to the VMware campus to hear Dell Technologies share their vision of VMware on Dell Technologies Cloud during Cloud Field Day. He recorded a great “hot take” video directly after the event, be sure to check it out. He was impressed by the quality of the conversation and the willingness of Dell to be flexible in the discussion.
Dell Tech Cloud CFD6 – Hot Take
Keith Townsend returned to the VMware campus to hear Dell Technologies share their vision of VMware on Dell Technologies Cloud during Cloud Field Day. He appreciated the conversation flow of the conversation, and how the presenters were willing to curate their content to follow the interest of the delegates. It’s definitely a can’t miss presentation.
Pure Accelerate FlashArray
Keith Townsend, The CTO Advisor, analyzes the Pure Storage announcement of support for Intel Optane Persistent Memory in their FlashArray storage during Storage Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate 2019.
Lucid Link CFD6 – Hot Take
Another mobile file system? Keith Townsend thought he was going to see a familiar song and dance from Lucid Link at Cloud Field Day. But he was pleasently surprised to see a truly different solution, with block storage served on top of S3 object storage, with a global file system distributed among clients. They had a very interesting demo, so be sure to check out their full event video coverage.
NetApp CFD6 – Hot Take
In this hot take from Keith Townsend, he looks at what NetApp showed off at Cloud Field Day. Keith is no stranger to hearing from the company, but this session had a deep technical focus. They looked at where does NetApp’s Kubernetes service run its compute. They reviewed how they separate their control plane from the cloud underlay and deploy instances large enough to support the Kubernetes infrastructure next to storage and other workloads.
EXTRAHOP CFD6 Hot Take
Keith Townsend is posting hot take reactions of all the presentations at Cloud Field Day. He was looking forward to seeing ExtraHop’s networking management features at the event and using their platform under system demand. The presentation went another way with a security heavy focus. Be sure to check it out for a full deep dive.
HashiCorp CFD6 Hot Take
Keith Townsend attended the HashiCorp CFD6 presentation on Consul. While extremely low level Keith was able to walk away with the value prop of Consul. Service discovery is becoming a more important part of the hybrid cloud management operations. Learn more of Keith’s thoughts in this video.