Nathaniel Bennett delves into VMware’s latest advancements presented at Cloud Field Day 21 in his analysis. He highlights the improvements in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), such as enhanced cluster consolidation and seamless migration facilitated by SDDC Manager and HCX. Bennett also explores the new deployment and monitoring enhancements brought by Aria Operations and the strategic integration of Kubernetes within VCF. Read more in this third article by Bennett inspired by the VMware by Broadcom presentation from Cloud Field Day 21.
VCF Platform Overview
Nathaniel Bennett provides a comprehensive analysis of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), noting its suitability for enterprise-level customers with complex IT needs, while recognizing that its extensive features may be excessive for smaller companies. In his assessment, Bennett suggests that VCF’s design relies heavily on the assumption that users are developing custom applications, potentially overlooking those primarily managing standard software environments. Read more in this article, inspired by the VMware by Broadcom presentation at Cloud Field Day 21.
Qumulo – Cloud Data Platform
Nathaniel Bennett discusses the capabilities of the Qumulo Cloud Data Platform, emphasizing its strategic role in managing data growth and enhancing data durability. He outlines how the platform enables effortless data movement across different environments, including on-prem and cloud settings, through Qumulo Nexus, which consolidates multiple storage solutions into a single user interface. Read more in this article, inspired by the Qumulo presentation at Cloud Field Day 21.
BCOM/VMware – Private Cloud
Nathaniel Bennett discusses the relationship between VMware and Broadcom, focusing on the post-acquisition changes aimed at streamlining VMware’s software licensing into a single product framework. This initiative is expected to grant customers increased control over their private cloud configurations, extending beyond traditional on-premises data centers to include various cloud services. Read more in this article, inspired by the VMware by Broadcom presentation at Cloud Field Day 21.
Platform9 Private Cloud Director
Nathaniel Bennett reacts to the introduction of Platform9 Private Cloud Director. This promising solution for enterprises looking to transition away from VMware, especially in light of the increasing costs linked to Broadcom, offers the ability to construct virtualization clusters, handle Kubernetes, and refine networking operations, with a strong emphasis on facilitating flexible application migration while preserving database integrity. Read more in this article, which followed the Platform9 presentation at Cloud Field Day 21.
Cloud Field Day 18: After-Action Perspective From the Delegates
We loved Nathan Bennett’s group Cloud Field Day after-action report video and wrote up an article to go with it at Gestalt IT. The event offered a platform for tech companies to showcase their developments and gain feedback from our delegates. Juniper Networks presenting their AI integration into Apstra, while Mezmo impressed with its telemetry capabilities and user-friendly interface. Long-standing industry player, VMware, was noted for its adaptability in the multi-cloud environment, proving that the evolving tech landscape remains exciting and innovative. Get the delegate reaction to all the presentations in this video!
Cloud Field Day 18 – After Action Report
This “after-action report” is a YouTube video featuring a group of Cloud Field Day delegates discussing the presentations and content from our recent event. Organized by Nathan Bennett, these videos give an immediate and unvarnished look at the presentations.
WEKA Da Hecka?
Nathan Bennett shares a deep dive into the functionality and benefits of the WEKA Data Platform, designed for high-performance workloads and AI/ML applications. He notes WEKA’s multi-cloud capability, lauding its performant hybrid management across four major cloud marketplaces including AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle Cloud. What sets WEKA apart is its cost-effectiveness and its cluster scaling features, enabling it to fit seamlessly into existing business ecosystems and budgets while intelligently managing data workloads.
AMD With #CFD18 – What’s a Chip Manufacturer Doing in a Cloud Conference?
Nathan Bennett gives an overview of AMD’s presentation on cloud native solutions at Cloud Field Day. AMD discussed the increasing trend towards running solutions within a DPU (Data Processing Unit) in cloud environments. Bennett challenges AMD’s focus, suggesting that the real impact of chipset makers comes from how the tech is tailored and used by individual hyperscalers, stressing the need for customers to pay attention to the broader context of what chip manufacturers are doing.
Prosimo – How Multi-Cloud Networking Should Work – CFD18
Nathan Bennett dives into the challenges and benefits of multi-cloud networking with a focus on the solutions provided by Prosimo. Highlighting how the complexity of multi-cloud networking can be addressed, Prosimo’s capabilities of establishing connections across different network areas are pointed out. With three encounters with Prosimo, Bennett concludes that the platform is an efficient solution to these challenges, noting Prosimo’s ability to create a mesh, guide traffic between clouds, and enable services without relying on IP addresses.
VMware Tanzu/Aria
Nathan Bennett analyzes VMware’s product rebranding and the introduction of the Tanzu portfolio in this Cloud Field Day post. He discusses the Tanzu Transformer for migration practices, Tanzu Hub for overseeing lifecycle of cross-cloud services, and Tanzu Guardrails for maintaining compliance requirements. Despite initial confusion over the rebranding, Bennett praises the functionality of the combined products but emphasizes the need for clarity amidst product name changes.
Mezmo – #CFD18
Nathan Bennett recently attended Cloud Field Day and learned about Mezmo, a telemetry and observability company, previously known as LogDNA. Mezmo aims to help organizations gain a deeper, more insightful understanding of their data, including where it’s going and what it’s doing, even across different use cases. One standout feature is their Telemetry Pipeline, which aids in validating and specifying what data is needed from various sources, while their cleanly designed UI and built-in “Incident” mode for debugging are also impactful aspects of their platform.
Juniper Networks IaC Apstra
Nathan Bennett takes a deep dive into the challenge of automating the datacenter just like the cloud with Juniper Apstra. Leveraging a detailed demonstration of network orchestration using Terraform, Apstra showed how they can transform networking and speed up digital transformation. Bennett’s write-up gives a step-by-step account of how a fully functional spine and leaf network can be built and even migrated into AWS.
Juniper – Building AI Clusters
In this short article, Nathan Bennett discusses how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has hit a bottleneck in performing tasks due to large-scale deployments, which Juniper aims to address by refocusing on compute power. It highlights that each GPU now has a 400G NIC, staggering amounts of networking capacity that were previously unthinkable. Juniper also offers online demonstrations through their cloud laboratory, allowing users to experience their cutting-edge technology without needing any additional hardware or connections.
Juniper – Being an Operations Superhero
Navigating through the realms of network automation and AI cluster creation, Juniper Networks delved operations analytics in, focusing on Apstra’s role in facilitating operational understanding. Apstra aids in identifying data sources, running commands to discover network errors, and using a graph database to validate and leverage data for a comprehensive understanding of the entire solution. The data then finds its way to a visually appetizing dashboard, paving the way for s-flow and net-flow data consumption, making Apstra’s data analytics solution an essential tool in comprehending, validating, and visualizing network operations.
Mind the Gap Between Hyperscale and Enterprise IT
Stephen Foskett and Cloud Field Day delegates Allyson Klein, Eric Wright, and Nathan Bennett examine the gap between hypserscale and enterprise IT in this episode of the On-Premise IT podcast. The episode’s guests scrutinize the disparities across numerous areas, including AI and sustainability. They propose that these differences stem from the influence hyperscalers have on technological developments and discuss the importance of bridging the hypserscale-enterprise IT gap.
Cloud Field Day 15 – Day One
Field Day delegate, Nathan Bennett, is joined by delegate, Eric Wright to discuss the first day of September’s Cloud Field Day. In this video, they both go into detail on presentations from Prosimo, Google Cloud, and Kentik. If you want to learn more, watch the video here, or visit Nathan’s YouTube channel.
CFDx NetApp – Thoughts
The very first Cloud Field Day Exclusive with NetApp was this past September where Chris Williams, Jim Jones, Nathan Bennett, and many other delegates joined together at NetApp headquarters along Santana Row. In this latest YouTube video, Chris, Jim, and Nathan, sit down with Stephen Foskett to discuss their thoughts on the NetApp presentation and their cloud solutions. You don’t want to miss this technical discussion!