Western Digital recently shook up a lot of their strategy in the enterprise, so it’s no surprise that a lot of people were eager to hear what they had to say at Storage Field Day. While not a delegate at the event, Tom Coughlin at Forbes watched the presentation to get caught up on all the news. The storage stalwart gave updates on their latest storage technology, like how they are using helium-filed drives utilizing shingled magnetic recording to provide media for companies approaching zettabyte scale. They also presented their Zoned Storage technology, which provides a unified approach to manage naturally serialized data at scale, important when you need predictable performance at cloud-scale. Be sure to read the rest of Tom’s post for his thoughts, then dig into the videos for all the details.
Tiger Bridge Extending NTFS to the Cloud
For Chin-Fah Heoh, just seeing the name of Tiger Technologies on the presenter list for Storage Field Day was enough to get him excited. Then he realized that he was familiar with the company in the media and entertainment space. At the event, the showed their Tiger Bridge solution, which effectively lets you extend NTFS into the cloud. While NTFS is a venerable file system, for Chin-Fah, it’s also the most reliable and go-to file system in Windows. They showed how their hierarchical storage management tiering tech is capable of replication and disaster recovery, while at the same time reducing those dreaded cloud egress charges. It was an great debut presentation for the company at Storage Field Day, be sure to check out their full video.
Storage Field Day 19 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure
We are always supremely grateful to our delegates for carving out some time to attend Field Day events. This is especially true for our international delegates, who often brave double-digit flights across an ocean to attend. Dan Frith made such a trip to attend Storage Field Day. We’re very glad he endured some not inconsiderable jet lag to drink from the storage fire hose at the event. Be sure to check out all of his blog coverage from the event, and dig into the comprehensive video archive of all the presentations on our YouTube channel.
First Steps to Tackling My Anxiety
For 2020, Keiran Shelden set a goal to help overcome his anxiety about public speaking. It’s a laudable goal, and attending events like Storage Field Day provides a lot of opportunity to get your feet wet while being surrounded by a supportive community. Keiran has found that accepting some of the speaking opportunities around the event, like being a guest on the On-Premise IT Roundtable podcast, were positive experiences as well. Whether through the spoken or written word, Keiran’s voice is always valuable at Field Day events.
Hadoop Is Truly Dead – LOTR Version
Chin-Fah Heoh didn’t initially set out to write a post declaring the death of Hadoop. But what he heard at Storage Field Day made it seem like he had to. While at the event, he participated in the On-Premise IT Roundtable podcast at Pure Storage, ostensibly to talk about storage metrics. However Hadoop quickly became the focus of the discussion. From there, other presentations further showed solutions that made it impossible to consider any other premise. Because this is the world of technology, Chin-Fah doesn’t think it’s impossible for Hadoop to live again in some other fashion, but right now the case is beyond terminal.
TECHunplugged at Storage Field Day 19
Our most recent Storage Field Day may have finished, but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t a lot of great content to explore from the event! Luckily we just so happen to have wall to wall video coverage of all the presentations, so you can digest all the storage goodness at your leisure. Of course, the Field Day experience isn’t just defined by great technical presentations. We couldn’t do our events without our amazing delegates around the table. They great productive dialogue and ask the hard questions about the tech to help bring even more value out of the presentations. In this post, Arjan Timmerman put together a full list of all the presenters and delegates. Be sure to check out their blogs to get to know the faces around the table a little better, and follow them on Twitter for a ton of storage thoughts in your feed.
Preview for SFD19 – Day 1
Arjan Timmerman and the rest of the TECHunplugged crew have really been putting out some great video content recently. In this video, he gives us his initial thoughts on the first three companies that presented at our recent Storage Field Day event. With Tiger Technology, NetApp and Western Digital, we got to see a full spectrum of voices from across storage IT. Tiger Technology is a new voice to the Storage Field Day stage, so part of the session is just about getting familiar with their considerable solutions portfolio. NetApp is no stranger to the delegates, but continues to shift from a more traditional storage company into the cloud with advanced data management, so it’s always good to get up to date on their latest. Finally Western Digital is a company with a lot of consumer awareness, that’s recently pivoted some of their enterprise focused solutions. It’s great to be able such breadth in a single day at Storage Field Day.
Top 5 Takeaways From #SFD19 Day 1
One of the great things about Field Day events is that they are live streamed on the internet, expanding our pool of delegates from the dozen individuals in the room to a much wider audience. We always love to hear people’s impression from the live stream, and Jason Benedicic has a great write up with his takeaways from our recent Storage Field Day event. For Jason, the event showed the breadth of quality engineering talent from across the world, showed NetApp’s exciting solutions with Active IQ and StorageGRID, and demonstrated that spinning disks aren’t dead yet. Be sure to check out all his thoughts in this post, and if you’ve watched the Storage Field Day presentations, why not share your big takeaways as well!
On the Road Again: #SFD19 Bound
Becky Elliott recently attended her fourth Storage Field Day event. Despite that and a spate of Tech Field Day Extra events over the year, the thrill of attending Field Day hasn’t been lost on Becky. This event saw her get to attend with fellow NetApp A-Team’er Ruairi McBride. We always love to watch the delegate community grow, and to see one time new delegates spread the message about the event and help bring in new voices. Storage Field Day was a packed event with a lot of interesting presentations. We can’t wait to hear what Becky thought of them in future posts. Be sure to check out our video coverage to get up to speed on all the great new tech!
Meet Field Day Delegate – Ruairi McBride
Ruairi McBride got a taste of Field Day at Tech Field Day Extra at NetApp Insight 2018, but he’s getting his first full drink from the IT firehose at Storage Field day. He is a “storage aficionado”, a NetApp A-Team member and VMware vEXPERT. We are humbled that he would take the long journey from the UK to come to the event as a delegate. Get to know him better in this interview with Gestalt IT.
Meet Field Day Delegate – Vuong Pham
Vuong Pham is coming to Storage Field Day, his first full Field Day experience! Get to know this experienced Senior Solutions Architect with his recent interview with Gestalt IT. He’s an author, blogger, and speaker skilled in Storage Area Network (SAN), NAS, VMware Virtualization, Storage, Servers, Hybrid Cloud, and Data Center. We can’t wait to hear what he thinks of the event and the presenters!
Zoned Technologies With Western Digital
A lot has changed since Chin-Fah Heoh last heard from Western Digital at Storage Field Day. Though only a year has passed, the company sold IntelliFlash to Data Direct Networks and is seemingly trying to sell off their ActiveScale object storage platform. But that doesn’t mean Chin-Fah isn’t excited to hear from the company. Indeed, their advances in Zoned Storage points to a bright future. We can’t wait to hear more about this from Western Digital and Chin-Fah.
Storage Field Day 19 RoundUp
Storage Field Day is our first event of 2020, and we’ve got a packed roster of companies to present. It’s exciting to have a mix of familiar faces like NetApp and Dell EMC presenting with companies new to the event like Tiger Technology and Minio. Enrico Signoretti will be around the delegate table, asking questions and creating dialogue to help make Storage Field the unique event that it is. If that isn’t enough to get you excited, there is the always provocative “secret company” presenting at the event. Be sure to mark your calendar and unravel the mystery with us on the live stream.
Storage Field Day 19 – Vendor Previews
Chris Evans is no stranger to storage. His voice and experience is always welcome around the delegate table, and in this post, he brings both in previewing the presenting companies. He’s looking forward to the second day and hearing about Dell EMC doing deep dives into Isilon, DevOps and PowerOne. There are also a number of new presenters that Chris doesn’t have much background with. These include the DRaaS company Infrascale, the open-source enterprise-class object storage platform from MinIO, and Tiger Technologies. Tiger is competing in the crowded software-defined storage market, so Chris is interested to see how they will differentiate themselves. Western Digital will also be an interesting presentation, as the company has shifted it’s enterprise storage vision. Overall, it sounds like there’s not much Chris isn’t looking forward to at the event.
Storage Field Day 19: Getting Back to My Roots
Gina Rosenthal has extensive history in the storage industry, and we’re thrilled to now have her in the delegate ranks. In this post, she highlights what she’s looking forward to at the event. This includes a debut presentations from Tiger Technology, Infrascale, and Minio, as well as Gina’s second presentation from NetApp. There are many other presenters on tap, so be sure to mark your calendar for the event. We’ll have videos posted soon after the event, so even if you don’t catch the live stream, you can still watch all the storage goodness.
California, Rescue Me… Storage Field Day 19
In this post, Keiran Shelden looks forward to heading out to Storage Field Day. It’s our first event of 2020 and Keiran’s third, it’s always good to have a seasoned veteran delegate returning. The event promises to be packed with quality content. Even with experience under his belt, drinking from the storage fire hose can be an intense experience. Luckily, we provide full videos that you can watch at your leisure soon after the event. We can’t wait to hear what Keiran thinks of the event and to see his breakdowns of the presenters!
Is General Purpose Object Storage Disenfranchised?
It’s hard to image a Storage Field Day without the sharp insight and experience of Chin-Fah Heoh around the delegate table. In this post, he writes how general purpose object storage experienced a unique race to the bottom in Malaysia, with hosting companies chasing the lowest price per TB. This created a set of assumptions about object storage that aren’t strickly true. That’s why he’s excited to hear from MinIO at Storage Field Day, who break free from the classic cheap, slow, and cloud-locked assumptions.
Storage Field Day – I’ll Be at Storage Field Day 19
Dan Frith is no stranger to Storage Field Day, so we’re thrilled to have his familiar face returning to the event. It’ll be the first Field Day event of 2020, so be sure to mark your calendar. The event is packed with a lot of the storage industry giants, emerging companies, and intriguing startups, so be sure to watch the live stream to stay up to date.
