At Networking Field Day last month, Larry Smith had the opportunity to join us as a delegate and learn about DriveNets for the first time. DriveNets presented two products that stood out to him: DriveNets Network Operating System (DNOS) and DriveNets Network Orchestrator (DNOR). While Larry highlighted just two of its products, in his blog, he mentions that he plans to dig into more of its products. For more of Larry’s thoughts, check out his blog!
VMware TKG
VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid represents a big shift for VMware and their long history of virtualization. Larry Smith was lucky to be delegate at Cloud Field Day to get to hear an extensive session on it at the event. With Kubernetes becoming increasingly important to IT infrastructure, understanding TKG as the core of core component VMware’s Kubernetes deployments is key. Larry breaks down the architecture of TKG, how organizations can deploy it across a number of personas, and how it integrates into vSphere. Be sure to check out the piece before digging into the presentaiton video
CFD6 – Hashicorp
Larry Smith was very excited to hear from HashiCorp at Cloud Field Day. As a stalwart in the open-source world, Larry had a lot of interest in what they would talk about. They spent their time doing a deep dive into Consul, a set of tools around service mesh. There was a lot to go over so be sure to read the whole piece, then check out the videos from the presentation.
CFD6 VMware API Questions
Larry Smith Jr is no stranger to Field Day events, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t love having him as a delegate at Cloud Field Day earlier this year. He brings his typical technical acumen and insight into this post, asking some key question on what he saw from VMware at the event. To date, Larry has not been a fan of VMware API implementation and documentation. Be sure sure to check out his post to see if this presentation changed his mind.
NFDX – Cisco IOS XR – ZTP
Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) was one of the focuses of the recent Networking Field Day Exclusive with Cisco Service Provider event. In this post, Larry Smith digs into some of the ZTP features built into Cisco’s IOS-XR. He outlines why this is the networking platform that excites him most from the company, namely that it provides a ton of possibilities.
Cumulus – Not Your Average Networking
Cumulus Networks presented at Networking Field Day recently with their partner Mellanox. Larry Smith reviews what he saw from the company. Cumulus takes a core Debian Linux OS, and optimizes it to allow network engineers to configure in CLI without having to learn specific Linux commands. The benefit of a Linux core is amplified because the OS supports almost any automation tool a network admin will need.
Bringing DevOps To Routing – Cisco XR
Larry Smith got his first deep dive into Cisco XR at Networking Field Day last month. This is Cisco’s Linux-based OS that adds application and configuration management to their platforms. This piece looks at how native and Docker application hosting works on XR, as well as how it supports ZTP and iPXE.
#NFD17 – It’s A Wrap
In this post, Larry Smith Jr says goodbye to the most recent iteration of Networking Field Day. He’s looking forward to reviewing everything he saw and heard during the three day hire hose of IT networking, but his initial takeaway was everyone having some story around either automation or intent-based networking. It’ll be interesting to hear what Larry thinks of each specific solution.
TFD14 – NetApp
Larry Smith Jr. takes a look at the open source initiatives from NetApp, as presented at Tech Field Day earlier this year. This reflects a change in focus from the company. Previously seen as a pure storage company, their embrace of open source and DevOps culture through thePub marks a decidedly different company. Larry was particularly impressed by their NetApp Docker Volume Plugin, moving into the world of container storage management.
TFD14 – NetApp
Earlier this year, Larry Smith Jr saw NetApp present at Tech Field Day. The company presented their work with open source projects to further their relevance to the DevOps community, centered around their thePub initiative. Larry found it an impressive change in tone from a company mostly known for storage arrays.
