Tech Field Day 22: The TECHunplugged Take on Red Hat OpenShift

After seeing Red Hat present on their OpenShift offering at Tech Field Day last week, delegates Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman jumped on YouTube to give their thoughts. In this video they talk about Red Hat’s place in the market, some of the interesting Kubernetes offerings, and their perspective on OpenShift. A big thank you to both Red Hat for presenting and to Max and Arjan for being excellent delegates!


Tech Field Day 22 – the TECHunplugged Take on Commvault

As delegates at Tech Field Day earlier this month, Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman got an up close look at Commvault. They enjoyed Commvault’s presentations and recapped what they learned on their TechUnplugged YouTube channel. In the conversation they recap Commvault’s several offerings including Metallic, Hedvig, and their “Store. Protect. Migrate.” strategy around kubernetes. Max and Arjan are impressed with how Commvault continues to push out offerings and work to turn out value for their customers.


Converging Conference Communities in the Cloud

In the latest episode of the Gestalt IT Rundown, Stephen Foskett brings on delegate Max Mortillaro to talk about the most recent news from the tech world. They run through a wide variety of topics from Arista Networks acquiring Awake Security, VMware’s partnerships with companies like Pensando in Project Monterey, and recent Tech Field Day events like Networking Field Day and Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld 2020. Check out their analyses of all the recent tech news and much more in the latest Gestalt IT Rundown on GestaltIT.com


Is Endpoint Backup Still Relevant in the Cloud Era?

“Should we still care about endpoints?” — Veteran delegate Max Mortillaro asks critical questions about endpoint backups and their relevancy today. Max recently attended Cloud Field Day where he saw Veeam present on their endpoint backup product for Microsoft Office 365. Make sure you check out Max’s piece and the full Veeam presentation.


Cisco HyperFlex Application Platform – Cisco’s Kubernetes Service?

In this post, Max Mortillaro shares some of his thoughts from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020. Max has been to the event a number of times, and knew that HyperFlex updates would more than likely be on the table. At the event, Cisco shared encouraging news about the evolution of HyperFlex called HXAP, or HyperFlex Application Platform. The HCI solution is now capable of supporting container-based application modernization initiatives. He digs into why organizations might want containers on top of hyperconverged infrastructure, and who could benefit from the HXAP approach.


Cisco HyperFlex Interview – Differentiators and Customer Benefits

If you missed Cisco’s presentation videos from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020, you should definitely check out their deep dive into Cisco HyperFlex Application Platform and Intersight innovations. Aniket Patankar, the Principal Product Manager for Cisco’s HyperFlex platform, led the discussion, and he recently sat down with Max Mortillaro for a TECHunplugged interview. They dig into how Cisco HyperFlex differentiates from other HCI solutions and the benefits the platform has for customers.


What Is Cisco HyperFlex Data Platform? Interview With Aniket Patankar

Max Mortillaro got to sit down with Aniket Patankar, the Principal Product Manager for Cisco’s HyperFlex platform, in a recent interview for TECHunplugged. They discussed if Cisco is jumping into the bandwagon of Enterprise-targeted Kubernetes platforms and what exactly is Cisco HyperFlex Data Platform? Be sure to check out all of Cisco’s presentation videos from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020 for all the technical details.


TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer

Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro are covering a lot of the announcements and presentations from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020 in their video series with TECHunplugged. In this video, they dig into Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer. This is an impressive new addition to the management interface used for HyperFlex and UCS. Both of them thought it was a really interesting announcement. This lets an admin hook almost everything in a data center into Intersight, that can be used for monitoring and capacity tool for the entire environment.


TechUnplugged VideoCast: CiscoLive Barcelona HyperFlex Application Platform

The TECHunplugged crew was about in Barcelona for Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020 and got to hear about HyperFlex Application Platform. In this video, Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro discuss the evolution of HyperFlex as Cisco’s HCI solution, something Max has been following for a number of years. HXAP is a standalone add-on running on top of HyperFlex which gives the ability to run containers. This complete new cluster builds on top of a Linux KVM environment with a Kubernetes environment. They dig into how this fits into the overall container landscape and the implications for organizations in the video.


Cisco Live Europe 2020 – Introduction and Expectations

Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro from the TECHunplugged crew were delegates at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020. They recorded a slate of videos breaking down their favorite announcements and most important parts of the event. They break down Cisco UCS and HyperFlex updates, innovation around Industrial IoT, as well as overall Data Center and Security announcements. Be sure to watch them all, then dive into the full video coverage we have on our YouTube page.


TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco Threat Response

At Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020, Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro got to hear from the Cisco Threat Response team. They enjoyed seeing Cisco ability to dive into threats to your networking environment as they are being monitored, and how this is integrated into a further online knowledge base to better educate about emerging threats. With security teams traditionally understaffed, Cisco Threat Response is vital to gather together all the threats facing your organization in a manageable interface and provide further context for how this will continue to impact your organization. It’s not a traditional metrics-based dashboard, but an excellent way to get a security overview.


TECHunplugged at Cisco Live Barcelona 2020 – Introduction

In this video Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman talk about Cisco Live in Barcelona 2020. They talk about Tech Field Day Extra, Cisco in general, HyperFlex, UCS and IoT. They discuss why the appreciate the unique access events like Tech Field Day Extra provide. During busy industry shows like Cisco Live, it’s one thing to hear all the announcements live. But Tech Field Day Extra provides access to experts on the announcements, and often hosts sessions going into technical deep dives on the latest technology.


TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco UCS Updates at Cisco Live Europe 2020 in Barcelona

Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro of the TECHunplugged crew cover what they saw from Cisco UCS at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020. This x86 server infrastructure has been around for a decade, and at the event, Cisco announced updates to the latest Intel processors, as well as adding in support for the AMD Rome platform, providing up to 64 cores on a processor. This processor competition coming to Cisco UCS can only spell good things for customers down the road. UCS Gen 5 also adds new support for NVMe, adds novel blade designs, and still providing GPU dense options. In the words of Arjan, Cisco is “doing something special with UCS.”


TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco Live Barcelona – No Love for Single Panes of Glass

Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro were in Barcelona for Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe. In this video, they dig into why the single pane of glass seems to be the goal of many companies in IT, but why it can actually add to complexity for actual IT operators. They saw some companies presenting multiple panes of glass, each with specific functions, but ultimately adding to sprawl. With organizations that use solutions across a number of vendors, a single pane of glass tied to one company still requires moving to different tools. They discuss how to possibly create an “ideal” single pane of glass that taps into the API driven enterprise, and what they heard from Cisco Workload Optimizer in moving closer to that future.


Mastering the Art of Data Visualization

Data management and visualization are hot topics in IT today, but sometimes the terms can get muddied. After returning from Tech Field Day, Max Mortillaro breaks down what qualifies as visualization, how this relates to a good user interface, and more.


Meet the #TFD20 Delegates: Max Mortillaro

Max Mortillaro has been coming to Field Day events since 2016. In this interview with Aruba Networks, he discusses how he initially got involved, how the community has impacted his career, and how the event has changed over time.


Tech Field Day 20 Is Right Around the Corner!

It’s hard to believe that Max Mortillaro has attended just one Tech Field Day event. A frequent face at Storage Field Day and Tech Field Day Extra events, Max got to attend the tenth anniversary Tech Field Day event. It’s been great to have Max in the Field Day family, in this piece, he talks about what he was looking forward to seeing at the event.


Cloud Block Store: How Pure Storage Built a Cloud-Native Block Storage Solution

Cloud Block Store was one of the major announcements from this year’s Pure Accelerate. Max Mortillaro was at the event and got detailed technical briefings as a delegate at Storage Field Day Exclusive as part of the show. In this post, he digs into the architecture and use cases.


Pure Storage Introduces Cloud Block Store, Secondary Storage All Flash Array, Optane Caching Solution

We were thrilled to have Max Mortillaro as a delegate for Storage Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate this year. In this post, he shares his thoughts on a lot of the announcements from the show, including Cloud Block Store, FlashArray //C, DirectMemory. He gives a quick technical overview and digs into their potential use cases.


DirectMemory, an Optane-Based Nitro Shot for the FlashArray //X

Max Mortillaro was a delegate at Storage Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate. This allowed him to get all the exciting announcements from the show, but joined up with technical deep dive presentations. In this post, he digs into the implications of DirectMemory, one of the major announcements that made a splash at the show.