DriveScale will be presenting at Tech Field Day 12, and it looks like they will have a lot to share. It took me quite a few reads to finally wrap my head around what they do, but I think I have a clear picture now. Based out of Sunnyvale CA, and founded in 2013 by some extremely smart folks, DriveScale only came out of stealth in May of this year. At the same time, they announced $15 million in Series A funding. One of the investors includes Foxconn (via one its subsidiaries - Ingrasys Technology), who are the largest contract electronics manufacturer in the world. I imagine that can be a pretty lucrative deal if things pan out. ...

In my last post I covered off Docker, and I touched on how containers have exploded in use over the last couple of years. One thing that I didn’t go into detail about is the underlying storage for these containers. In a lot of cases, these containers will get spun up and not have any persistent storage. Docker does allow for the use of persistent storage with its containers, but it can be a little limiting. ...

I’m definitely excited to see Docker present at the upcoming Tech Field Day 12. I had meant to sit in on their exclusive vExpert demos at VMWorld 2016, but I, unfortunately, had a conflict at the time and skipped it (boo). I was bummed as I don’t know a ton about Docker, but I definitely want to learn more. For background, Docker Inc. was founded in 2010 after it was split off from dotCloud, which originally developed the container technology that became Docker. As it stands, Docker Inc. has had $180 million in funding across 6 rounds, and it has helped change the landscape of traditional application deployments. ...

There are several tasks that I find myself doing often enough (not necessarily daily), to warrant automation. But even more so, it is those tasks that I don’t necessarily do often where I really appreciate the automation. Part of it is because of the time savings, but even more so, if it is automated, there are a lot fewer steps that I need to remember. A good example of this is employee terminations. A simple, but typical workflow that I see is along the lines of: ...

Today I was fortunate enough to present at the Toronto VMUG. That’s two talks that I’ve given at the TO VMUG this year - not bad considering I only started ‘participating’ in the vCommunity earlier this year! As always, I see these opportunities not only as a way to give back to the community but also as a way to practice and develop my own skills. I am constantly trying to improve my public speaking - I have found that the key for me is to be able to turn my presentations into a conversation (admittedly it is a one-sided conversation). It still takes me a bit of time to ‘slip into’ that mode, but I’m definitely getting better at it. ...

Since I was first alerted to the fact that you didn’t need an iPod to listen to a podcast (that probably dates me), I have been consuming podcasts whenever I get a chance. I am usually able to squeeze in a couple of hours of listening a day. This comes from listening to them at 2x (this may require some ‘practice’), but also finding the opportunities, such as when driving, walking the dog, cleaning the house, barbecuing, etc.. ...

Something that I think is often over looked when it comes to backups is security. I’m not referring to physical security (e.g. locking the media up in a vault), but rather making sure that the backups aren’t being abused. There are plenty of horror stories kicking around about folks who have their backups wiped out. This might be due to a malicious admin, bad hardware, or (more and more common) something like Cryptolocker. ...

Igneous Systems, founded in 2013, is a Seattle-based company who will be making their first Tech Field Day appearance. According to Crunchbase, they are under the 50 employee mark, so still very much in startup mode, which can have its benefits alongside some challenges. I have not heard of them prior to the Tech Field Day 12 event, but I am definitely curious to see what they bring to the table. Doing some research, I found out that Igneous Systems currently holds 11 patents with the US Patents Office - so not a huge number, but it is an indication of some sort of innovation. One of those patents appears to be for their ‘distributed erasure-encoding protection (DEEPr)’ - I’m not sure what that scheme is, but hopefully we’ll find out. ...

I was fortunate enough to be selected into the Veeam Vanguard program earlier this year, and it is still something that holds a lot of meaning to me personally. I’ve touched on it very briefly in the past, but I wanted to share some insight into what makes this program so valuable. First off, the Veeam Vanguard program is aimed at advocates for their products, which is fair enough. Veeam employees cannot be part of the program, and in at least two cases now, Vanguards have made the transition to Veeam employees, and thus have had to relinquish their Vanguard status. There are currently about 50 of us, which creates a nice team-like environment where we almost all know each other by sight. ...

Rubrik will be presenting at Tech Field Day 12 on Day 2 (November 16th, 14:00 PDT), and I’m quite looking forward to hearing more from them. I had a chance to chat with some engineers from Rubrik in the Solutions Exchange at VMWorld 2015, and a couple of times at local VMUGs since. At the time the product struck me as unique in that it seems to revolve around simplicity, flexibility, and efficiency. ...