Datacore Tech Field Day 15 Reap

The CTO Advisor, Keith Townsend, put together a full video recap series looking back at Tech Field Day presenters from last month. In his final video, he looks at DataCore Software, who debuted their MaxParallel for SQL Server at the event.


Riverbed Tech Field Day 15 Recap

In his video recaps of last month’s Tech Field Day, Keith Townsend looks at what Riverbed presented. He came away impressed by their solution to project VMs to remote sites.


Actifio Tech Field Day 15 Recap

For Keith Townsend, Actifio was a returning presenter to Tech Field Day, having first seen them in 2014 at Storage Field Day. In his video review, Keith looks at how the company has been successful in their data as a service business model.


Scale Computing Tech Field Day 15 Recap

The Tech Field Day delegates at last month’s event saw the benefits of nested virtualization courtesy of Scale Computing’s announced partnership with Google Cloud. This effectively allows them to offer DRaaS using Google’s backend. Keith Townsend gives his thoughts on it as part of his excellent video review of the event.


Ixia Tech Field Day 15 Session Recap

The latest Tech Field Day saw a return of Ixia, who originally presented at Networking Field Day last November. Keith Townsend reviews what he saw in their presentation, essentially an authorized man-in-the-middle to capture traffic for analysis. Keith reviews how their SSL approach fits into the broader visibility landscape.


Skyport Tech Field Day 15 Recap – YouTube

As part of his video review of Tech Field Day from last month, the CTO Advisor Keith Townsend takes a look at Skyport Systems. Keith found it a very opinionated solution, taking a view that the cloud will be pervasive, leaving only the most mandatory elements in the datacenter. Their approach then is to provide a secure, cloud managed on-site infrastructure.


Cisco Tech Field Day 15 Session Recap

Keith Townsend put together a video series looking at the presenters from Tech Field Day last month. He gives his thoughts on the overall event, and dives into what he saw from Cisco, particularly their ACI solution.


Scale Computing HC3 Cloud Unity – Whats that about then?

Ian Sanderson takes a look at Scale Computing’s HC3 Cloud Unity, which uses Google Cloud’s new nested virtualization feature to offer a DRaaS solution ideally suited for SMBs. By being able to run Scale’s hypervisor on Google’s cloud hypervisor, it lets you move over your VMs to the cloud when disaster strikes without any reconfiguration hassle.


Spartans and Servers and Storage, Oh My!

James Green explores the IT lessons found in the legendary Battle of Thermopylae, bottlenecks can be a big deal. He uses this example of a serialized approach to combat to show why parallelism is important both in ancient combat and for I/O in the modern enterprise. A modern example of this is DataCore Software’s just released MaxParallel for SQL Server which parallelizes workloads to optimize them for multiple CPUs. It’s a really fun metaphor and a great read!


Scale Computing is Simplifying DRaaS

Matt Crape looks at Scale Computing’s HC3 Cloud Unity Platform, which offers disaster recovery as a service backed by Google Cloud. Scale is able to offer this thanks to Google’s newly announced support for nested virtualization, effectively letting you run a hypervisor within a hypervisor. Matt sees this as a viable path for SMBs to actually adopt a DR plan. Scale’s HC3 Cloud Unity makes it affordable, managed by their familiar interface, and easily moves over workloads in the event of an outage.


DataCore MaxParallel for SQL Server – Whats that about then?

DataCore Software debuted their MaxParallel for SQL server solution at Tech Field Day last month. This uses parallel processing to allow multicore systems to begin working on I/O requests without waiting for other cores to be complete. For SQL Server, this results in X quicker response and 60% more transactions processed. At the event, Ian Sanderson found out that this doesn’t specifically target SQL workloads, but instead uses a Least Recently Used caching mechanism to evict old data across the board.


Commentary: High Level Data Filtration

Dr. Rachel Traylor looks at Ixia’s approach to real-time network visibility. This uses high level data filtration from a database of known bad actors to quickly eliminate large chunks of data from their analysis engine. This allows them to not have to process the entire firehose of network data and gives each successive analysis layer additional efficiency.


A Thank You to Tech Field Day

Paul Woodward reflects back on the experience of his first Tech Field Day in this post. He found the three days of presentations surrounded by delegates from across the globe to be an exhilarating experience. We’re looking forward to seeing his thoughts on the presenting companies as part of #Blogtober!


Inefficiencies of large systems

Inspired by DataCore Software’s Tech Field Day presentation, Keith Townsend reflects on the inefficiencies of large organizations, using Microsoft as an example. Microsoft is filled with skilled engineers, but often can’t be responsive to customer requests for giant projects like SQL server. This is where DataCore can come in with their I/O filter, which provides parallel streams to the storage sub-system, ultimately giving applications more I/O bandwidth.


How to get started with OpenConfig and YANG models

Most people agree that automation is the way of the future in enterprise networking, but getting to that point is much more problematic. Brandon Carroll gives an introduction on how to do this in open networking environments with OpenConfig. This vendor-neutral approach uses the data modeling language YANG to create a single model for your automation. This allows admins to not have to dig into individual CLI interfaces for each network device. Brandon’s only drawback to this approach isn’t technical, but rather organizational. Once an IT staff embraces automation, the technical merits become obvious.


Security From The Ground Up With Skyport Systems

Making a system secure is a unique challenge unto itself. But having the option to historically verify that your system has remained secure requires a fundementally different approach. That’s what Skyport System did with their ground up architecture. This allows for a complete cloud management on-site servers architected to always be able to verify security. In this post, Matt Crape gives his thoughts on their solution.


Scale Computing Debuts HC3 in Google Cloud Platform

Scale Computing partnered with Google Cloud in their announcement to bring nested virtualization for their public cloud platform. Scale demonstrated this at Tech Field Day last week. Chris Evans looks at how with Scale’s HC3 Cloud Unity solution, the company is now able to offer Public Cloud as a DR location. Chris sees this fitting in with Scale Computing’s emphasis on simplicity offering organizations an easy path for low cost DR in a hybrid cloud.


How to Build a Datacenter with Skyport Systems

Raff Poltronieri starts off his Tech Field Day coverage with a look at Skyport Systems. They offer an on-site virtualization platform but managed centrally in the cloud via their SkySecure Center Cloud Management Service. This was developed around the idea that the cloud will win, but some on-site servers can’t or won’t make the transition. On-site infrastructure needs to move to be simultaneously less complex and more secure in these instances. Skyports cloud managed on-site solution does this by being architected from the ground up to be a hardened and secure platform.


3 things infrastructure pros need to know about nested virtualization on Google Cloud

Keith Townsend reviews Google’s announce support for nested virtualization, which lets you run a hypervisor within a hypervisor. Keith outlines why this would be needed, and uses an example from Scale Computing running HC3 for disaster recovery inside Google Cloud as a use case. Keith saw this from Scale at Tech Field Day last week, be sure to check out the video of the announcement for more details.


Cisco Gives SP Customers Programability Features in IOS-XR

At Tech Field Day last week Brandon Carroll found that Cisco has made big strides in network programmability with their IOS-XR using OpenConfig. Instead of forcing customers into using Cisco Works, Brandon thinks this could open up network programmability to a new market.