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.
Videocast From Pure Accelerate 2019
Max Mortillaro was a delegate at Storage Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate 2019. In this video, he shares his thoughts about FlashArray //C, which was announced at the show. The delegates got a deep dive into this during the Field Day presentations.
Commvault Acquires Hedvig for $225M, What Should We Expect?
Commvault and Hedvig are no strangers to presenting at Tech Field Day. After the former bought the latter, Max Mortillaro considers what to expect from the acquisition. Max breaks down Hedvig’s software-defined storage stack, which offers hardware agnostic block, file and object storage support across private and public clouds, designed for massive scale. This appears to be a solid technological acquisition and should allow Commvault to continue to expand the scope of their business.
Pure Storage Accelerate 2019 – Everything’s Faster in Texas
Max Mortillaro is heading out to Pure Accelerate next month, and he’s looking forward to the Tech Field Day Exclusive event presentations happening there as well. In this post, he runs down some of the exciting updates he’s expecting at the event, including DirectFlash Fabric, and the keynote from astronaut Leland Melvin.
EP27 – VAST Data – a Revolutionary Storage Platform for the Next Decade – With Howard Marks
In this episode of the TECHunplugged Podcast, hosts Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman talked with Howard Marks. While they once all joined forces behind the delegate table at Field Day events, Howard is now the Technologist Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at VAST Data. VAST presented at Storage Field Day, and in the episode, they dive deep into how the company is bringing revolutionary flash economics to the market by combining 3D XPoint, NVMe-oF and QLC Flash.
TECHunplugged Videocast #1 – Liqid and Composable Infrastructures
In this take, TECHunplugged Analyst Max Mortillaro talks about Liqid, composability, and their upcoming Gen-Z composable infrastructures. Max was a delegate at Tech Field Day Extra at Dell Technologies World, and got to hear directly from Liqid at the event. Their PCIe-based composability lets customers create pools of resources for servers or VMs that aren’t bound by physical enclosures. What’s exciting though is what is coming down the road. Be sure to watch the video to find out Max’s thoughts.
EP21 – Discovering Weka.io, the World’s Fastest Filesystem With Barbara Murphy
On this latest episode of the Tech Unplugged Podcast, Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman spoke with Barbara Murphy, VP of Marketing at Weka.io. Max saw the company present at Storage Field Day earlier this year. The two host have a conversation digging into the company’s claim of having the fastest, most scalable parallel file system.
Western Digital : Innovation in 3D NAND and Low Latency Flash NAND
Western Digital has been a long time mainstay of the storage industry. Max Mortillaro heard from them at Storage Field Day earlier this year, and it fit into his larger considerations of the state of the solid state memory industry. In this post, he looks at how Western Digital has remained relevant as the industry transition from disk to flash. The company faces a similar transition as storage is starting to close the gap between DRAM and flash. Max looks at Western Digitals announcements around Low Latency Flash NAND and Storage Class Memory.
Developing Data Protection Solutions in the Era of Data Management
IBM returned to Storage Field Day this year, providing an update to the delegates on IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. In this context, Max Mortillaro provides some historical perspective on data protection and management, emphasizing that every organization is on a different path on the journey toward better data management. In this, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus is a laudable effort build from scratch to address modern data protection needs. While it may not be as feature rich as competing solutions, for those organizations with a strong history with IBM, it should serve them well as they navigate their own data management journey.
