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.
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.
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!
Daily Check-In for May 4, 2020
Ned Bellavance has been checking in on his YouTube channel every weekday at 11am ET while we’re all working from home, and he recently talked about what he saw from OpenShift at Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat. He focuses on OpenShift Cluster Manager, which can be used as a SaaS service or deployed on-prem. He looks at how this fits into typical organizational uses of Kubernetes, where organizations might run into problems, and some of the advanced features available to on-prem deployments.
(32) Daily Check-In for April 30, 2020
Ned Bellavance has been doing daily video check-ins while sheltering in place, and in this video he provides his thoughts on Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat. He was a delegate at the virtual event, and was impressed by both the breadth of talent and tech shown at the event. The overall focus was on OpenShift. In the video, Ned breaks down some of the major updates, why Red Hat pivoted OpenShift to Kubernetes, and what the implications are for IT and organizations.
Day Two Cloud 038: Making the Case for Third-Party Cloud Storage
Tech Field Day founder Stephen Foskett was recently a guest on the Day Two Cloud podcast. On the episode, he and Ned Bellavance discuss third-party cloud storage, and how it fits into a market with so many native options readily available. In the episode they discuss common enterprise use cases, and examines key issues including performance, data management, and operations.
Ned in the Cloud LLC – Six Month Check-In
Ned Bellavance took a big leap, moving from consulting into starting his own business. After six month, Ned catches us up on how the journey has been. He’s started the Day Two Cloud podcast, attended Cloud Field Day, and discovered the travails of time management. We’re excited to see where he goes with the company in the next six months.
NetApp and the Cloud Conundrum
Ned Bellavance got to hear from NetApp at Cloud Field Day. Being traditionally thought of as a storage company, it might have struck some as a little odd to see them at the event. But Ned does a great job of breaking down the challenges the cloud has presented to a company like NetApp, and how the company’s strategy indicates they have a plan to stay relevant for a long time.
Solo.io Stole the Show at Cloud Field Day 6
Ned Bellavance doesn’t make any bones about it, Solo.io was his hands down favorite presentation at Cloud Field Day. They had a keen focus on delivering a customer-focused service mesh solutions with a suite of well built apps. This means helping customers solve problems, and building better functionality on top of the solutions they are already using. Be sure to check out the full video of their presentation to get the specifics.
Cloud Field Day – First Impressions on Hammerspace
Ned Bellavance got to hear from Hammerspace at Cloud Field Day last month and shares his initial impressions in this post. They did a technical deep dive on their platform that sits in front of multiple NFS systems and decouples the metadata layer and the data layer from each other. In this piece, Ned considers if they showed the value in adding this abstraction layer into an organizations stack.
Cloud Field Day 6 Prep – Hammerspace and solo.io
Ned Bellavance is out at Cloud Field Day this week, but before he left for the event, he completed a comprehensive look at the presenting companies. Never let it be said that Ned doesn’t do his homework. In this space, he takes a look at what he expects to see from hammerspace and solo.io.
Cloud Field Day 6 Prep – Lucidlink and ExtraHop
Drinking from the IT fire hose at an event like Cloud Field Day can be overwhelming at first glance. It’s a lot of information to take in, even when viewing remotely. Luckily many of the delegates do their homework and post previews of what to expect. In this post, Ned Bellavance wrote up some background and what he expects to see from Lucidlink and ExtraHop. Be sure to check it out before watching their presentations.
Cloud Field Day 6 Prep – NetApp and Dell Technologies
Ned Bellavance is getting ready to attend Cloud Field Day later this month, and doing his homework on the presenting companies. In this post, he’s digging into what to expect from NetApp and Dell Technologies. Both are long established stalwarts in enterprise IT, and both are making interesting choices in how they build out their cloud native offerings. NetApp had an impressive presentation at Cloud Field Day last year, and he’s looking forward to how they will build off a year of impressive announcements. Dell has such a volume of solutions that could be discussed that Ned is looking forward to what direction they will choose for their time. Be sure to watch along on the Cloud Field Day live stream to find out!
Cloud Field Day 6 Prep – Morpheus Data and HashiCorp
Ned Bellavance will be joining us at Cloud Field Day later this month. To get ready, he’s looking at all of the announced presenters. In this post, he’s digging into Morpheus Data and HashiCorp. He looks at his own history with the two companies, what solutions they currently offer, and what he hopes to see from them at the event.
Going Cloud Native With Pure Storage Purity
Ned Bellavance saw a presentation from Pure Storage while a delegate at Cloud Field Day earlier this year. Ned always gets a little wary when a traditional storage company starts talking about the cloud, but Pure made solid points by saying their approach was to bring consumption based pricing, elastic capacity, and API driven interactions to their solution. They showed off Cloud Snap and Cloud Block Store as examples of this approach. Overall Ned found the presentation exciting and thinks for existing on-prem Pure customers, their cloud offerings are a no-brainer.
Rubrik’s Build Is All About Education
We were fortunate to have Ned Bellavance as a delegate at Cloud Field Day earlier this year. He’s been giving a comprehensive look at many of the presenters, in this piece he looks at Rubrik. This included an architectural overview of their Polaris and Polaris Radar. The conversation then shifted to the Build project at Rubrik, an open source project that’s part of a broader effort to educate sysadmins who have never touched an API before. It took Ned a minute to understand why this was at Cloud Field Day, but the more he thought about it, the more important a piece it seemed.
Sysdig – Monitoring via eBPF
Sysdig recently presented at Cloud Field Day, and we were fortunate to have Ned Bellavance around the table as a delegate. Sysdig was founded by the co-author of Wireshark based on the idea that packet capture on the wire is dead. Sysdig instead aims to capture all traffic information from containers for analysis. They do this with a lightweight container on each host that can access a extended Berkeley Packet Filter running on the kernel. Ned found this a compelling architecture for the monitoring challenges that cloud-native applications introduce.
Cloud Field Day – VMware
Ned Bellavance is joining us as a delegate again at Cloud Field Day this week. He’s published a series of posts looking at each of the presenters, and in this one he casts his gaze toward VMware. Their presentation will focus on VMware on AWS, something Ned has been skeptical about since it launched. He still thinks its a viable, and in some cases appropriate, solution for some organizations. We’ll see if their presentation can change his mind.
