It is time to start blogging again, and there couldn’t possibly be better way then by starting on my invite to Storage Field Day 15 in Silicon Valley. Truth be told, not blogging was mainly due to building our own house, and we’re still very busy with building our dream house here in the Netherlands, but no more excuses for me and let’s start doing the previews for next week.
Second timer: Starwind
Last year at Storage Field Day 12 we had the first presentation from Starwind at a Tech Field Day, and I was really impressed by the technology they offer and more importantly the level detail they put in to their presentation as well as the knowledge they showed during the presentation. Most of the VMware techies will know Starwind for their ISCSI target technology they offered, which was used in many homelab environments. I know I’ve used it on multiple occassions in my lab at least. But they are moving on an during the SFD15 presentation we got more information on their HCI solution, AcloudA, Veeam VTL and Cloud replication and Starwind Scale Out and Log Structured File Systems.
There are a couple of great resources on the products they’ve talked about last time that I’ll provide a link to here:
When companies already presented at a Tech Field Day, I try to watch all the videos before we go in to a new one, although with some companies this really seems impossible because of the number of times they were at a Tech Field Day. With Starwind this is (now) still easy, and that is why I’ll also include the SFD12 Vimeo videos here as well.
Starwind Simple, Flexible, Scalable Storage
Starwind Fault-Tolerant Storage Demo
StarWind Scale Out and Log Structured File System
StarWind and AcloudA: Stairway to Cloud
StarWind and Veeam VTL and Cloud Replication
I’m really looking forward to meeting the Kolomyeytsev brothers again, and i hope you will follow us during the livestream at the Tech Field Day site:
Disclaimer: I was invited to this meeting by TechFieldDay to attend SFD15 and they paid for travel and accommodation, I have not been compensated for my time and am not obliged to blog. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or edited by any other person than the me.
During Tech Field Day 11 we had presentations from a lot of awesome companies. Some of them I knew, but others were new to me, and that while some of these already exist for multiple years. The first of these “older”companies was Netwrix.
When writing a couple of VMware designs in which compliancy was a big deal, I learned that a good auditing tool is a must have as the auditors will not approve anything if they you didn’t provide them with the right answers and tooling needed to be compliant. A tool like Netwrix can help a lot with this.
Netwrix History
So during Tech Field Day 11 I was pleased to see Netwrix do a great job at explaining where they came from and what they do. A couple of points that were told in this first presentation:
• The company is founded in 2006 (that’s right the company celebrates it’s 10th anniversary this year)
• The founders Michael Fimin and Alex Vovk, who both worked at Quest software before starting Netwrix.
• The company has no venture funding.
• The company has over 200 employees across the globe, and;
• They have over 7000 customers worldwide
But it might be better if you just watch part 1 of the presentation first:
The Netwrix auditor platform can help you audit and monitor multiple systems and application, the following are usable by default:
Microsoft Active Directory
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Sharepoint
Microsoft SQL server
VMware vSphere
Windows File Server
EMC
NetApp
Windows Server
Some of these are on-premises only, but a couple of them are also hybrid cloud capable, meaning you can audit your applications both on- and off-premises. Through the use of RESTful API’s both in and out bound you can leverage even more, but that is for a later blogpost :D.
Other TFD11 delegates on Netwrix
As always a couple of my TFD11 delegates also wrote some articles on Netwrix. Here are the articles already in the open (I’ll try to keep it updated, but I can’t promise anything :D):
And as always, all Netwrix information and videos are available at the Tech Field Day site: Tech Field Day Netwrix
As already mentioned I’ll try to keep this post updated if people will write more on Netwrix, and I will also try to do a part two and three on Netwrix, but first I want to write a couple of post on other companies presenting at TFD11.
When you look at the video you’ll notice all delegates began their IT careers at the starter level and worked their way up. We are all willing to tell our story whenever you ask us. And we are (as far as we can tell ;-P) normal people like you, just loving our job.
All of the delegates started their IT-career because of their passion for Computers. Most of them do not have a college degree in computer science. And still we were invited by Stephen and his team to come over to the states and listen, learn and discuss about some of the leading products and companies in the storage industry.
As told in the video the best way to start is going to a local User Group. As a member of the Dutch VMUG I’d suggest to find the User Group for a topic they suites you best. For me that was the VMware User Group, and I started by attending one in 2007, just be there and talk (ask) to the people that you think are the guru’s. They are normal people too, you know 😉
Writing a blog (which was the main reason why I was asked to join Tech Field) was just for myself. I wanted to write things down and be able to look it up (if needed). Don’t start a blog because you want to be like the guru, or want to be like us. Starting a blog is simple, but keeping it up to date and writing good posts will be a lot tougher.
Be yourself, but let people know who you are and ask for help. We (myself in the first place) started just like you and I (and others) are more than willing to help you, when asked. Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media platforms are also very good media to let yourself be heard (and promote you blog posts).
So if you want to become a storage field day 4 delegate, make yourself heard! And let Stephen and his crew know you want to be a delegate here:
