Like a lot of people, Mike Preston knows that containers are big in enterprise IT right now. But like me, he’s still a little fuzzy on the details. Luckily, Mike was at Tech Field Day this month to see Docker present their latest and greatest on containers, and cleared up a lot of misconceptions. He found a lot to like about containers, including some useful applications for an operations guy like him! Also, he was impressed that containers are no longer a Linux thing, Microsoft now supports Docker right out of the box with Windows Server 2016. Mike brings a really fresh perspective to containers as he’s learning more about them, and it seems like Docker answered a lot of his questions.
DriveScale Gives You Ethernet With a Side of Storage
I wrote up a review of what DriveScale showed off at Tech Field Day earlier this month. Their approach to disaggregating storage within the server rack is really interesting. As opposed to other designs I’ve seen from vendors, they offer something that’s remarkably open and adaptable. While they’re still in the appliance licensing game, they seem more interested in creating a unique architecture to make this happen. Worth the read if only to see their founders’ impressive resumes!
SPEP03 – TFD12 | Open TechCast
At Tech Field Day earlier this month, a number of our delegates and staff got to sit in on the Open TechCast. Give it a listen to hear Alex Galbraith get the latest takes from Stephen Foskett, Matt Crape, and Mike Preston!
Friday Shorts – VMware, Veeam, Docker and Community
Mike Preston gives a brief sum up of his experience at Tech Field Day last week. Plus, Mike is a little perplexed by the popularity of Docker and containers, good thing he saw them present at the event! Mike always provides great coverage, so stay tuned for more.
The struggles of travelling
In this piece, Matt Crape reflects thoughtfully on what it means to travel for events, how it impacts family and work-life balance. How do you measure the value of traveling to the event, and what you lose by being away from home and family? Matt does a really good job of keeping this all in perspective, laying out both the pitfalls and the benefits. We’re very grateful for his time, and thrilled that Tech Field Day was a worthwhile event!
Throw Your Isilon in the Data Lake
Eric Shanks gives a rundown of the Dell EMC Isilon presentation he saw last week at Tech Field Day 12. He goes into what exactly the Dell EMC Isilon solution is, essentially a single namespace for an enormous storage pool. He then goes on to rundown some of the market segments Isilon would market to, as well as some of the notable features. One feature stood out to Eric, the “Smart Lock” feature, which allows you to prevent files from being changed, essentially protecting sensitive data from potential malicious agents. Plus he even tells you how to try it out on your own.
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: Dell EMC
Matt Crape gives a preview of what he expected from Dell EMC for their Tech Field Day presentation last week. With such a big portfolio, it was hard to determine what exactly he expected to see. Read his post, then check out all the videos from Dell EMC’s Isilon presentation right here!
Cohesity Provides All of Your Secondary Storage Needs
Tech Field Day delegate Eric Shanks reviews what he saw from Cohesity. They’re offering a holistic offering in what they’re defining as secondary storage. Eric seemed impressed with how the Cohesity appliance handled backups, particularly not keeping numerous redundant copies in storage. He also liked that Cohesity can target any S3-compliant cloud service for backups as well. Overall, the simplicity of their offering seemed to appeal the most.
Cohesity Presents at Tech Field Day 12
It was a pleasure to hear from Cohesity and their future for secondary storage at Tech Field Day last week. Linda Sim from Cohesity shares some of the excited reaction from hosting our delegates, as well as sharing videos of the event. Check out the event page for video coverage of all of the presenting companies!
Rubrik – A Refreshing Approach to Backups
We’ll miss Max at Tech Field Day but it’s great that he got a chance to catch up with Rubrik at VMworld. Here’s his “state of the union” for Rubrik in preparation for their Tech Field Day 12 presentation. Overall, he seems impressed by the company’s ability to deliver a simple and easy to deploy backup product, using their “Rubrik brick” appliances to allow for simple, transparent, efficient, and scalable backups.
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: StorageOS
If you’re all about containers, you should check out Matt Crape’s preview of StorageOS, presenting at Tech Field Day later today. StorageOS tackles the problem of persistent storage in containers. Their solution uses their own container to deliver block storage capabilities, essentially combining disparate storage, and presenting it to a container via their software abstraction layer. Matt delves into some of the benefits of this solution, so be sure to click through for the piece. Be sure to check back here after StorageOS presents for video and additional coverage!
DellEMC will make it’s first appearance at a Field Day event since merger!
You may not have heard, but two small bespoke vendors named Dell and EMC merged in a deal that finalized in September. They both have presented at Tech Field Day events in the past, but this is the first time we’ll see them present to our delegates with their powers combined! They’ll be presenting about their Isilon offering on Wednesday. Check out Mike Preston’s piece about the DellEMC merger, and what he’s looking forward to at Tech Field Day.
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: DriveScale
Fresh out of stealth mode in May, DriveScale will be presenting for the first time at Tech Field Day tomorrow. Matt Crape wrote up a great piece to get you up to speed with where the company is at prior to their presentation. The company’s solutions puts an abstraction layer over existing compute and storage systems to allow administrators to reallocate resources, either via a GUI interface, or via RESTful API calls. It seems like an interesting solution Big Data needs, especially since it runs on commodity hardware. Tune into their Tech Field Day presentation on Wednesday for all the juicy details!
Cohesity bringing secondary storage to Tech Field Day
In this piece, Mike Preston gives a great preview of what he’s looking forward to from Cohesity later today at Tech Field Day. Aside from the company’s temporary proximity to the Stanley Cup, he’s interested in the company’s secondary storage solution. In particular, he likes that once backup data resides within Cohesity’s appliance, users can perform comprehensive search , as well as quickly create environment copies. Another highlight was the 3.0 release by the company to bring physical Windows and Linux support, allowing physical servers to use the solution along with already supported VMs. We’ll have the latest videos and updates from Cohesity after their presentation to our delegates, make sure to check back soon!
Tech Field Day 12 Primer: Docker
If you’ve heard about Docker but want to know more, Matt has a post to get you up to speed. He runs down all the latest announcements from DockerCon 2016, and get you ready for the company’s presentation at Tech Field Day next week. Lucky for you!
Intel to take the stage at Tech Field Day!
Sadly, Intel will not be able to present at Tech Field Day after all, but we share Mike’s excitement! Plus, check out Mike’s brief history of the company in the piece, which if named after its founders, would have been called “Moore-Noyce” (good call going with Intel).
Docker to make 4th Field Day appearance!
Mike Preston is excited for Tech Field Day next week. It’ll be his first presentation from Docker. They’ve presented at three previous Tech Field Day events, but as containerization gains increasing hegemony in IT, it’s always a good time to hear from them. Check out Mike’s post for a rundown of what they’re offering, and what he’s looking forward to seeing next week!
StorageOS to Highlight Persistent Container Storage at CloudNativeCon and Tech Field Day Events
StorageOS will be presenting at Tech Field Day, with CEO Chris Brandon and CTO Alex Chircop. They’re currently still in beta, but their versatile container environment, running anywhere from bare metal to the cloud, is really intriguing.
Rubrik to talk cloud data management at Tech Field Day
Mike Preston has a great rundown of what he’s looking forward to from Rubrik at Tech Field Day next week. Aside from tempting Mike with free Lego (the struggle is real), he’s likes their policy based approach to data protection and disaster recovery. The strength of the policy based approach lies in the simplicity, define the tasks you want in the policies, and Rubrik’s appliance does the rest.
The other benefit Mike likes is the ability to work inside backups performed by Rubrik. This includes analysis, complex search, and testing on VMs.
The company iterates quickly, on their third major release in just a few years in existence. It should make for an exciting Tech Field Day presentation.
Tech Field Day 12
John White writes about going from attending the OpenStack Summit in Austin earlier this year to attending Tech Field Day Extra in Vegas this August. Now he’s been invited to Tech Field Day next week, and he calls it a “dream come true.”
