Keith Townsend outlines two solutions he saw that enable organizations to abstract the time-consuming challenges involved with provisioning ephemeral workloads. At Cloud Field Day this month, he saw Delphix present on how their solution allows organizations to automate the process of masking sensitive data through their abstraction solution. At Tech Field Day last year, Keith also saw Actifio present on a similar solution, but aimed at abstracting legacy workloads.
Looking Through the (Cloud)Lense with Ixia
Paul Woodward got a look at Ixia at Tech Field Day last September. They presented on their CloudLense visibility solution, which solves some of the limitations of monitoring data in hybrid or public cloud workloads. CloudLense does this by using containers or agents to collect, categorize, and surface the most relevant packet and infrastructure information. Paul really likes that it can also be used to gain visibility into containers as well.
Still Backhauling All Internet-Bound Traffic To Your Data Center?
Many organizations depend on a hub-and-spoke model for performing enterprise-grade traffic inspections, but in this post James Green illustrates why this can prove insufficient for cloud first branch networks. He then highlights how a recent partnership between Riverbed and Zscaler allows for better overall WAN management and branch security. James originally saw this at Riverbed’s Tech Field Day presentation.
Moving Beyond Backups to Enterprise-Data-as-a-Service
James Green recently saw a presentation from Actifio at Tech Field Day late last year. In this post, they look over some case studies from the company. These highlighted how the company can not only provide effective disaster recovery as a service, but Enterprise Data as a service. This allowed a media organization to not just get piece of mind with data, but to better leverage it within an organization.
Simplify Remote Offices
At Tech Field Day last year, Mark May heard from Riverbed about their SteelFusion appliance. This combines a remote appliance with an appliance in a datacenter to accelerate access to centralized data. For Mark, this simplifies a lot of remote office IT, by providing local performance at the remote site but while keeping all the advantages of centralizing management and data.
Riverbed Steel Fusion: A New Approach to Remote Office Infrastructure
Remote and edge sites are exploding in the enterprise. But as organizations span across countries and legal jurisdictions, managing and securing data can become onerous. In this piece, Paul Woodward takes a look at Riverbed’s Steel Fusion solution, something he saw at Networking Field Day last year. This offers administrators simplified automated deployments, centralized management, and helps organizations prepare for issues that might otherwise be overlooked when planning a remote location.
Keeping An Eye On Containers with Ixia CloudLens
Containers have a number of benefits in modern IT, but monitoring them can quickly become problematic. Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at Ixia’s CloudLens solution, a container monitoring solution built into a container! This allows it to be highly portable and easily configured with other containers for monitoring.
That’s a Wrap: An ExploreVM Look Back at 2017
2017 seems to have been a year of milestones for Paul Woodward. He completed season 1 of his new ExploreVM podcast, launched his YouTube channel, wrote a record number of blog posts, and saw readership increase by over 300%! He also attended a number of IT events, finishing the year by attending Tech Field Day in September. We’re looking forward to seeing more of Paul’s impressions from Tech Field Day, and what he has in store for 2018!
2017 – A Personal Reflection
It’s been a busy year for Matt Crape. He presented at the Veeam Online User Group, got his VCP7-DTM certification, and was a guest on some podcasts. In this post, he lays out some goals to make 2018 a similar success. We enjoyed having Matt attend three Field Day events in 2017!
Enterprise Data as a Service (DaaS): the new paradigm of Actifio
Actifio presented at Tech Field Day earlier this year in Silicon Valley. We were lucky to have Raff Poltronieri as a delegate, and he’s shared his thought about what he’s saw. He looks at their Sky Platform 8.0, and how it gives organizations the agility needed to let business drive IT.
Ixia CloudLens to dive in the public cloud traffic
Ixia presented at Tech Field Day earlier this year, giving a deep dive into their CloudLens visibility platform. Raff Poltronieri wrote up his thoughts on the solution, finding it an interesting option for cloud agnostic monitoring and visibility.
Tech Field Day 15 @Riverbed (#TFD15) (with images, tweets)
Michael Sheehan put together a Storify page around Riverbed’s presentation at Tech Field Day earlier this year. This gathers together the best tweets, pictures and posts from the event, displayed in a chronological timeline. Make sure to watch full video of their presentation a follow along!
How to quickly deploy Riverbed’s Xirrus wireless solution
Brandon Carroll reviews how to get up and running quickly with Riverbed’s Xirrus solution. This is a cloud-based wireless system, which impressed Brandon with its overall ease of use. He walks through creating a network, as well as adding and configuring access points.
Google Cloud nested virtualization popularizes the technology
Mark May takes a look at how the announcement of nested virtualization support for Google Cloud will popularize the technology. He got a perfect example of this at Tech Field Day last month, where Scale Computing announced a partnership with Google Cloud to bring frictionless VM recovery to the service.
Commentary: Infrastructure Considerations for Machine Learning
In this post, Dr. Rachel Traylor looks at machine learning in the enterprise. The issue is machine learning takes vast swaths of varied data to produce useful results, something that might constrain a production database. Dr. Traylor looks at the Sky Infrastructure Actifio presented at Tech Field Day in September as a possible solution. This saves a “golden copy” of data, with changes saved incrementally, and able to serve up “virtual copies” much more efficiently for testing.
DataCore Divides & Conquers to Increase SQL Server Performance
DataCore Software’s newly released MaxParallel for SQL Server offers an interesting IO optimization feature to help prevent bottlenecks. Matt Crape thinks the solution has some interesting application for distributing an otherwise heavy workload to make it more manageable. He’s interested in learning more about it in the future and getting into the weeds on how it works.
Riverbed’s Xirrus offers more than just connectivity
Matt Crape got to hear from Riverbed at Tech Field Day last month, where they demonstrated how they are integrating their Xirrus assets post acquisition. Matt found their approach to secure wireless deployment makes them stand out in a crowded market.
Taking Complexity Out of the Distributed Enterprise—Tech Field Day 15
Michael Sheehan shares his thoughts on Riverbed’s presentation from Tech Field Day last month. The talk centered around the companies solutions for the business edge, which is where they see IT shifting. They demonstrated how their SteelFusion edge solution can deliver a “cloud-like” experience for deploying and managing on the edge, providing simplicity while still being centrally managed by a data center.
Why the hybrid IT control plane is destined for the public cloud
Cloud growth is exploding, but analysts have shown that compared to a traditional data center, it can be much more expensive in the long haul. That’s why Keith Townsend things a hybrid IT approach will allow organizations to leverage the agility of the cloud without the cost associated with a complete migration. Keith takes a look at some SaaS-based data center control planes from Platform9, Skyport Systems, and HPE to compare their strategies for hybrid IT management.
How to deploy SkySecure hyperconverged infrastructure
Skyport Systems offers a HCI solution that allows for true cloud-management for on-site applications and workloads that can’t be moved to the cloud. Brandon Carroll looks at how the company has built a secure system from the ground up, starting with their hardware that is tamper resistant and has no management interface on the appliance itself. This article walks through how to fully deploy Skyport’s solution while maintaining and verifying inherent security.
