Distributed tracing is the dark art of tracking a transaction that passes through several microservices for troubleshooting purposes. Why was the transaction slow? Hard to say, especially when the failure is intermittent. Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks explain the problem and how SolarWinds Application Performance Monitoring suite is tackling it with Pingdom, Loggly, and AppOptics. Especially AppOptics, something they heard a lot about during SolarWinds’ Cloud Field Day presentation.
Moving Workloads With VMware HCX – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
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.
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.
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.
OpenShift TFDx Hot Take – What’s the Tipping Point for K8s?
To date, Keith Townsend hasn’t felt comfortable recommending OpenShift and Kubernetes to the typical enterprise he consults with. He got to get extensive time with the OpenShift team during our recent Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat, and finally got the firm response that he wanted the OpenShift is a PaaS solution in addition to a managed Kubernetes offering. Keith is still a Kubernetes skeptic, he still hasn’t heard the problem that Kubernetes has uniquely solved. But the clarification about OpenShift was well worth it for Keith.
Coming Together During COVID-19, With Stephen Foskett of Gestalt IT
Tech Field Day founder and organizer Stephen Foskett appeared on Live Now to discuss how technology companies and events are adapting to the current COVID-19 self-isolating landscape. He finds the industry is dividing into two camps: those that are scaling back on events and other efforts as they get up to speed, and other that are already used to working remotely and operating at full speed. It’s an interesting discussion in how IT as a whole is reacting to this unprecedented situation.
vSphere 7 and Kubernetes – Should Customers Wait?
On this video from Keith Townsend, he talks with CTO Dose co-host Joep Piscaer about vSphere 7 and his impressions of the Kubernetes integration. Project Tanzu Grid is the updated branding for Project Pacific. They break down if VMware’s initial release lived up to the not inconsiderable hype. They also discuss if customers should be quick to latch onto Tanzu, or wait for further development. Watch as Keith and Joep recap their impressions from VMware’s Tech Field Day presentation.
Hot Take Zerto 8.0 Tech Field Day 21
Keith Townsend recently made a video looking at what Zerto presented at Tech Field Day. In it, he focuses on how Zerto can help solve a common anxiety when testing disaster recovery, contaminating production data with DR and then having to roll back. Their platform introduces a logging feature, which replicates the whole VM state. With the configuration tools built into the feature, it makes it really powerful to keep the application state consistent. This logging feature also allows for the logs to provide extremely granular visibility for data protection. Be sure to check out Keith’s video to get his full hot take, then dive into their presentation video.
Google Cloud VMware Engine – Hot Take
The former CloudSimple team presented at Tech Field Day 21 on the recently rebranded Google Cloud VMware Engine (GVE). What is it? How is it different than VMware Cloud on AWS? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Keith Townsend got to learn all about it during our recent virtual Tech Field Day event. While not going into competitive solutions specifically, they did outline how GVE differentiates in the landscape. This takes the VMware Cloud Foundation based, which allows any cloud provider to take any VMware components to offer a managed VCS service. Google of course offers their considerable scale on top of this. Keith breaks down how this compares to the other major public clouds.
vSphere Kubernetes Hot Take
Keith Townsend got to hear from VMware at Tech Field Day, where they packed a lot of information into a four hour session. Part of the presentation that surprised him was the Kubernetes integration into vSphere. This didn’t take the approach that Keith had thought when it was originally announced. Instead it comes as an extension of VMware Cloud Foundation, providing the ability to run a SDDC reference design across any environment. His biggest question with this is using VSAN as the management platform for Kubernetes. It’s an intriguing breakdown of the presentation, and Keith can’t wait to get some more focused deep dive sessions from VMware soon.
TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer
Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro are covering a lot of the announcements and presentations from Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020 in their video series with TECHunplugged. In this video, they dig into Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer. This is an impressive new addition to the management interface used for HyperFlex and UCS. Both of them thought it was a really interesting announcement. This lets an admin hook almost everything in a data center into Intersight, that can be used for monitoring and capacity tool for the entire environment.
TechUnplugged VideoCast: CiscoLive Barcelona HyperFlex Application Platform
The TECHunplugged crew was about in Barcelona for Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020 and got to hear about HyperFlex Application Platform. In this video, Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro discuss the evolution of HyperFlex as Cisco’s HCI solution, something Max has been following for a number of years. HXAP is a standalone add-on running on top of HyperFlex which gives the ability to run containers. This complete new cluster builds on top of a Linux KVM environment with a Kubernetes environment. They dig into how this fits into the overall container landscape and the implications for organizations in the video.
TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco Threat Response
At Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020, Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro got to hear from the Cisco Threat Response team. They enjoyed seeing Cisco ability to dive into threats to your networking environment as they are being monitored, and how this is integrated into a further online knowledge base to better educate about emerging threats. With security teams traditionally understaffed, Cisco Threat Response is vital to gather together all the threats facing your organization in a manageable interface and provide further context for how this will continue to impact your organization. It’s not a traditional metrics-based dashboard, but an excellent way to get a security overview.
TECHunplugged at Cisco Live Barcelona 2020 – Introduction
In this video Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman talk about Cisco Live in Barcelona 2020. They talk about Tech Field Day Extra, Cisco in general, HyperFlex, UCS and IoT. They discuss why the appreciate the unique access events like Tech Field Day Extra provide. During busy industry shows like Cisco Live, it’s one thing to hear all the announcements live. But Tech Field Day Extra provides access to experts on the announcements, and often hosts sessions going into technical deep dives on the latest technology.
TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco UCS Updates at Cisco Live Europe 2020 in Barcelona
Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro of the TECHunplugged crew cover what they saw from Cisco UCS at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe 2020. This x86 server infrastructure has been around for a decade, and at the event, Cisco announced updates to the latest Intel processors, as well as adding in support for the AMD Rome platform, providing up to 64 cores on a processor. This processor competition coming to Cisco UCS can only spell good things for customers down the road. UCS Gen 5 also adds new support for NVMe, adds novel blade designs, and still providing GPU dense options. In the words of Arjan, Cisco is “doing something special with UCS.”
TECHunplugged Videocast – Cisco Live Barcelona – No Love for Single Panes of Glass
Arjan Timmerman and Max Mortillaro were in Barcelona for Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe. In this video, they dig into why the single pane of glass seems to be the goal of many companies in IT, but why it can actually add to complexity for actual IT operators. They saw some companies presenting multiple panes of glass, each with specific functions, but ultimately adding to sprawl. With organizations that use solutions across a number of vendors, a single pane of glass tied to one company still requires moving to different tools. They discuss how to possibly create an “ideal” single pane of glass that taps into the API driven enterprise, and what they heard from Cisco Workload Optimizer in moving closer to that future.
Preview Storage Field Day 19 – Day 1
Arjan Timmerman put together a series of videos previewing what he expected to see at Storage Field Day. This video sets out some background on Tiger Technology, NetApp and Western Digital. These represent an interesting selection of experience with the event. Tiger Technology is new to the Field Day family, but has been a force in the media and entertainment space since 2004. NetApp has a long history both in enterprise storage and presenting at Storage Field Day. And Western Digital is an iconic provider of storage who is quickly becoming a familiar sight at the event. Arjan was excited to hear from each company at the event, and we can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts on the presentations going forward.
TECHunplugged VideoCast SFD19 Part 1
It’s always great to have TECHunplugged’s Arjan Timmerman as a delegate at an event, and we were thrilled to have him attend Storage Field Day. This was Arjan’s fourteenth time around the table to get caught up on the latest in enterprise storage, and his enthusiasm for the experience is infectious. In this video, he previews what he expected from each of the presenters. The event had a fantastic array of presenting companies, with the latest from Dell EMC, Infrascale, Komprise, MinIO, NetApp, Tiger Technology, WekaIO, and Western Digital. Be sure to check out the preview before diving into our comprehensive video coverage.