TechField Day 18 – Day 1 With Datera, NetApp and VMware

Ed Horley was one of the delegates that made his way down to Austin for Tech Field Day last week. The event had a full roster of prominent IT companies. In this post, Ed focuses on what he heard on day one of the event, with presentations from Datera, NetApp, and VMware. For him, the three companies showed varying approaches on how to differentiate their solutions based on how they are handling data analytics. These differences in approaches were illuminating in how each pitched their value to the delegates.


TFD18 Prep: VMware

Justin Warren is getting ready to head out to Tech Field Day in Austin later this week. Of course, he’s doing his homework before the presentations. In this piece, he’s looking at what to expect from VMware. They’ll be presenting on vSAN and particularly focusing on vSphere Health. As an Ops guy at heart with a long history with automation, there’s a lot to like with vSphere Health, even if its ideas aren’t exactly new. He’s interested to see how it handles being an advisory tool for automation versus something that remediates without constant interaction.


VMware vSAN – Join Us at Tech Field Day 18!

It’s always exciting to have a presentation from VMware at an event, and they’ll be presenting this week at Tech Field Day in Austin. In this post from John Nicholson, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect for vSAN, he previews the company’s presenters and what will be on the docket for discussion. Be sure to watch along on our live stream!


Join us at Tech Field Day 18

At Tech Field Day events, we like to get a wide swath of companies to present. Some are unknown startups, who can offer an interesting and insurgent perspective. But it’s also just as important to hear from industry stalwarts, like VMware. They presented at Tech Field Day last week, doing a deep dive on vSAN and vSphere Health specifically. You’ll need to check out the full video of their presentation to hear all the details.


Security through Virtualization (brought to you by VMware)

Chris Grundemann got to hear from VMware at multiple events this year, bookending the year with at Networking Field Day in January and Security Field Day in December. They outlined their vision for a business network fabric that can connect all applications to users virtually with full visibility into endpoints and control over connections. The two presentations left Chris pretty excited with where VMware is heading right now.


Stuck in Traffic – Micro-segmentation

It stinks that J Wolfgang Goerlich gets stuck in traffic so much, but the silver lining is that he creates more great IT videos. In this one, he’s discussing micro-segmentation, which is crucial for organizations that need more and more granular security controls. This effectively segments and firewalling around an individual hosts. At Security Field Day, he got to hear from VMware is approaching this with NSX.


Live at VMworld Europe 2018: An Update on VMware Strategy and Vision, or VMware is Cool Again

In this post, Max Mortillaro considers the emergence of Kubernetes as a de facto container orchestrator. This can be seen looking at any number of IT companies, including what he saw at Tech Field Day Extra at NetApp Insight 2018. This event saw a lot of coverage around the company’s new NetApp Kubernetes Service, from their recent StackPointCloud acquisition.


Is Software Defined Networking Like Yoga?

How does software defined networking resemble yoga? Both give you flexibility. Luigi Danakos makes the case that VMware NSX offers the flexibility needed to meet the needs of distributed modern networks.


VMWare’s Virtual Cloud Network: Managing networks like magic

Sonia Cuff shares how VMware’s Virtual Cloud Network can help solve the challenges of a modern distributed workforce. This uses NSX SD-WAN to securely connect and monitor a network, while keeping management simple. For Sonia, invoking Arthur C Clarke, this approaches networking magic.


VMware’s Virtual Cloud Network Fulfills the SDN Promise

At Networking Field Day Exclusive with VMware, Jordan Martin saw how the company’s Virtual Cloud Network integrates different domains into a coherent orchestration and policy engine. For him, it delivers on the initial promises made by software-defined networking.


VMware’s Virtual Cloud Network: Riding the Wave of Digital Transformation

Eyvonne Sharp takes a look at Virtual Cloud Network, which she saw at length during Networking Field Day Exclusive with VMware last week. For her, this represents the first glimpse into how the company will integrate their VeloCloud acquisition into their already robust software stack.


Simplifying Network Security with Context-Aware Micro-Segmentation

In this piece, Phil Gervasi reviews VMware’s context-aware micro-segmentation solution built into NSX. He got a deep dive look at this at Networking Field Day this past January. This allows organizations to bring security down to the application itself, which is vital to maintain security on east-west traffic.


How to fit an Elephant into a small car to transport it over the Networkautobahn

Load balancing across multiple WAN uplinks is a fairly common SD-WAN capability. At Networking Field Day last month, Dominik Pickhardt heard from VMware’s VeloCloud about something more challenging. They demonstrated how they can handle so-called “elephant flows”, which is when you have one large session that can’t be easily distributed.


BiB 028: VMware NSX At NFD17 – SD-WAN & Security

In this episode of Briefings in Brief, Drew Conry-Murray and Greg Ferro discuss what they saw from VMware’s NSX team at Networking Field Day last month. They touch on the company’s update on VeloCloud post-acquisition, NSX-T features, and a look at the latest version of vSphere.


Off the Cuff – NFD17 Wrap Up

In the most recent “Off the Cuff” episode of Network Collective, the crew discussed what they saw at Networking Field Day last week. What happens when six delegates sit on a podcast together? Magic!


Networking Field Day 17: Hawt or Naught

WIth Networking Field Day in the rearview mirror, Chris Grundemann looks back at some of the trends from the presenters. He breaks down what’s in and out, and includes a lot of animated GIFs as a bonus!


Network Field Day 17: Mark Your Calendars!

Drew Conry-Murray and Greg Ferro from Packet Pushers will be at Networking Field Day next week. They’ll get to drink from the firehouse of presenting companies over the three day event. Remember to follow along on our live stream and tweet out questions with #NFD17.


Its time for Network Field Day 17

Greg Ferro is no stranger to Networking Field Day. We’re happy to have him along for our first event of the year. He’ll beheading out to Silicon Valley to hear presentations from the latest and greatest in networking. In this piece, Greg breaks down where each of the presenting companies are positioned at the start of 2018 and what he hopes to hear from them. Make sure to watch along with Greg on our live stream!


Is it time for virtual switch abstraction to fade?

From VMware’s presentation on NSX at Networking Field Day, Keith Townsend started looking seriously at the concept of a virtual switch. After working with designing cloud-based infrastructure projects, where the concept doesn’t exist, Keith was seeing the idea as outmoded in a modern data center. This caused a fascinating discussion in the VMware presentation. Keith links to it, and it definitely gets you thinking.


NSX – The Network Redefined

Justin Cohen takes a look at VMware NSX, which he saw a lot of at Networking Field Day in April. This is a comprehensive review of the network virtualization solution, best summed up by Justin: VMWare does for the network what it did for servers. It’s not quite as simple as that, and Justin does a good job of showing what VMware is doing different to account for the realities of networking. It’s a good read, and gives a thorough overview of the solution.