Recently I joined Commvault to discuss the challenges with data protection as organisations embrace the cloud.

You are able to watch the recent webinar where I spoke on this subject alongside Commvault’s Marc Lucas and Ronnie Kaftal here >> Commvault-Spotlight on Digital Transformation.

The doodle below summarises the areas for discussion in the webinar.

Most of us at the moment are seeing fast adoption of cloud based services such as SaaS like Microsoft 365 or IaaS with platforms like Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and more. Whilst these services help organisations accelerate innovation and remove the burden of many administrative functions, there is still the need to manage and protect the data.

In this situation it isn’t uncommon for many point fix solutions to be implemented. This fixes the problem in a specific area but equally leads to a fragmentation of points of management, policy and monitoring.

This is where Commvault comes in unifying data management and protection across on-premises and the cloud, across tradition applications and modern applications.

Metallic is Commvault’s data management as a service platform, it uses the same code base as the on-premises version but delivered a full cloud service and importantly you have a single point of management on-premises and in the cloud with their Control Center management plane.

Operators further get to choose where the data they wish to protect is stored with three different storage plane options.

1. Full SaaS storage plane delivered as part of the service in a local Azure Region or with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

2. Bring your own storage from private cloud, public cloud or on-premises options.

3. Commvault’s HSX appliances .

During the webinar we saw how the Metallic platform allowed data to be managed across all infrastructure and application areas.

• Demo One - Backup of a VM rom Nutanix being recovered to Azure

• Demo Two - An Azure VM being backed-up to Metallic Cloud Storage and recovered to AWS

• Demo Three - A SQL server database on-premises being recovered to a cloud based PaaS solution

• Demo Four - Kubernetes and Database backup via Metallic.

Conclusion

It has been really good to work with Commvault to understand their offerings for hybrid-cloud management. Commvault aren’t a company that has gone and acquired companies to fix gaps in their portfolio, they have built the integrations from scratch and importantly unlike some others this results in a single management plane.

If you would like to learn more about Metallic you can check out the website below

SaaS Backup & Recovery Solutions for Data Protection & Compliance (metallic.io)

Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Commvault to create content covering the Metallic product set. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Commvault.

Dell Tech World 2022 was important for two reasons. First, this was the first Dell Tech World since the spin-off of VMware. Second this was one of the first major in person tech conferences since the start of the COVID pandemic.  

I didn’t make it out to Vegas this year but tuned in online, after all we are now in the era of flexibility and freedom. Attend any major conference, from anywhere and on any device or something like that.  

As a long time, VMware vExpert, Dell Partner and Technologist, keeping up to date with what is going on in the world of infrastructure is of high importance to me.  

There were several themes covering Dell Tech World 2022, these being flexible and hybrid working, multi-cloud, cyber protection or resilience and the power of data.  

During Michael Dell’s Monday keynote, he spoke about the on-prem / off-prem debate being over. He said that the future is in multi-cloud with data flowing seamlessly across.   

90% of customers already have workloads on-premises and in public clouds and 75% are using three or more clouds 

Michael Dell – Dell Tech World 2022 Keynote 

Dell wants to be the leader in multi-cloud and at the edge. He spoke about the rise in use cases such as IoT and highly automated environments requiring new edge computing solutions near the source of the data. This is an area Dell will be able to excel in due to their hardware offerings and close relationship with VMware despite the spin-off.  

10% of data today is processed outside of datacentres, but by 2025 75% of enterprise data will be processed at the edge.  

Michael Dell – Dell Tech World 2022 Keynote 

However due to this growth in data, Michael Dell explained that the attack surface will also be bigger for cyberattacks.  

Ransomware attacks are the #1 threat for most organisations and are occurring every 11 seconds. With an average cost of $13m per occurrence.   

Michael Dell – Dell Tech World 2022 Keynote 

Dell have been innovating in these spaces and desire to create an end-to-end integrated path. What really stood out for me at Dell Tech World was many of the big announcements were all about services or software. Dell, a well-known hardware giant is certainly investing a lot in these areas to be relevant in this multi-cloud as-a-service world.  

Central to this is Dell APEX, Dell’s as-a-Service portfolio. Michael Dell spoke about APEX being focused on business outcomes and being accessible to developers. APEX was announced last year at Dell Tech World as a companywide transformation to as-a-Service. Chuck Whitten spoke of the principles of APEX being simplicity, agility and control in the multi-cloud world.   

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Previously announced within the APEX portfolio was APEX Cloud Service with VMware Cloud and APEX Backup Services.  

At Dell Tech World ‘22 we saw the announcement of APEX Cyber Recovery Services with the promise of further APEX services to come including high-performance computing, machine learning operations, VDI and more.  

APEX Cyber Recovery Services is run and managed by Dell, offering a secure immutable cyber recovery vault for workload replication. Customers should be able to be reassured of their ability to recover from a cyberattack whilst benefiting from being able to offload the day-to-day tasks to Dell.  

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But the innovation towards multi-cloud didn’t end there. There were announcements from both the data protection and storage divisions further embracing integration with the public cloud.   

CyberSense for AWS – Uses adaptive analytics, machine learning and forensic tools to detect, diagnose and help with cyber recovery operations. Dell say this will allow you to diagnose and recover quickly within AWS.  

PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Azure – Available from the Azure marketplace next month, this will allow you to isolate and protect workloads from ransomware attacks. You will get an isolated data centre environment via an isolated recovery vault. Data is replicated from production with minimal access for data protection. When it comes to recovery you can recover on-premises or within Azure.  

Also demonstrated at the conference was Project Alpine. Project Alpine offers Software Defined Storage capabilities to expand Dell’s storage portfolio to the cloud. Demonstrated was the ability to connect storage from a PowerStore device to the public cloud. Google Cloud, Azure and AWS were shown on screen during the demo.  

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The final big announcement was regarding a partnership with Snowflake, a cloud data platform vendor. With this partnership users of Dell’s object storage will be able to move data to Snowflake’s cloud platform for analytics and warehouse capabilities. Secondly, you will be able to leverage snowflakes capabilities on-premises without the need to move the data. 

For me, Dell Tech World is a positive step in the right direction for Dell. They are wanting to maximise their capabilities and reach with their hardware solutions by embracing the public cloud with their software solutions and services capabilities. For me it now all comes down to the execution and how we see these solutions being delivered and utilised by the customers. I look forward to seeing the Project Alpine and the APEX solutions in action.  

Today, the increase in cyber-security attacks and their related risk is top of mind for many IT professionals. As such, full consideration needs to be made regarding the appropriate protections that should be in place to mitigate this risk best.

Flowmon positions its Anomaly Detection System (ADS) module at the core of these efforts, ensuring that threats can be detected and responded to as early and quickly as possible.

When speaking to Flowmon, they highlighted the Security Visibility Triad, a framework used by Gartner and others to help examine the three key areas that should be in place to ensure you have true security visibility. The Security Visibility Triad talks about the importance of 1. SIEM and UEBA, 2. Network Detection and Response, and 3. Endpoint Detection and Response. Flowmon focuses its efforts on the Network Detection and Response area of this triad.

Flowmon ADS is a module for the Flowmon product set that is most commonly utilised for network visibility and troubleshooting. Because of this, the ADS module fully leverages the network architecture of Flowmon to collect its data from the network. Furthermore, it utilises network flows, enhanced with layer 7 application data provided by its probes for a unique view of what is going on within the network. You can read more about Flowmon in my previous blog.

Flowmon ADS does not rely on legacy signature-based approaches to detect the anomalies within the captured flows. Instead, it uses machine learning for wide-ranging detection, including zero-day threats.

Typical anomalies detected and alerted upon by Flowmon include:-

• Attacks

  • Port scanning, Dictionary attacks, DoS/DDoS, Telnet

• Traffic Anomalies

  • DNS, DHCP, ICMP, Multicast

• Internal Security

  • Viruses, Malware, Ransomware, Botnets

• Unwanted Applications

  • P2P Networks, Instant Messaging, Anonymisation Servies

• Device Behaviour

  • Change of device behaviour profile

• Operational Problems

  • Delays, Excessive load, Unresponsive services, Broken updates

Whilst how Flowmon detects the anomalies and the breadth of what it is able to detect is truly impressive, the biggest stand-out area for me was how the product allows this information to be used.

With many security products, such as NDR and SIEM solutions, they can be very good at collecting data, but in reality, they simply overload an already overworked administrator with information they can’t use. This is where Flowmon ADS is different.

Flowmon ADS not only detects the threats from the noise using machine learning but also does true route cause analysis. This allows administrators to quickly understand the type of threat, the source, the affected resources and the recommended actions.

With many sources speaking about the amount of time a threat actor may be within your network prior to detection, it is important that IT teams have the right tools to understand exactly what is happening across their network. For me, this is where Flowmon comes in, giving true visibility to Security Operations (SecOps) teams and others in IT to ensure that any threats are quickly and easily neutralised.

For more information about Flowmon ADS and how it can help with Network Detection and Response please check out their website.

Below you can see my doodle covering the subject

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Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Progress to create content covering the Flowmon product set. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Progress.

I have recently been doing some work with Flowmon to further understand Flowmon’s Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics (NPMD) functionality. Below you can see my doodle covering the technology.

In-brief Flowmon, which is now part of Progress, following the Kemp acquisition, gives network operators visibility and insights into network performance and issues. It does this by enriching flow data with level 7 application data, giving enhanced network insight without the overheads of full packet capture. Critical to this is the Flowmon collector appliance which can receive data as Netflow, IPFIX or any standard flow record like sflow, jflow or netstream.

With this collected data, Flowmon provides;

• Autonomous investigation for route cause of operational issues

• In-built expert knowledge of network error codes with remedial action

• Reduced and simplified toolset, allowing delegation of networking monitoring and troubleshooting

• Reduction of network diagnostic noise, allowing problems to be resolved quickly and easily

I was able to understand some of the use cases in action, this included following the process of an administrator trying to diagnose slow internet performance reported by users. Utilising the Flowmon toolset, the problems were able to be tracked down within a few steps. The root cause, diagnosed through Flowmon was an incorrect client configuration, resulting in increased network traffic. This was due to Windows updates being pulled down directly from the internet rather than from the local WSUS server. Without Flowmon, this may have taken Network Admins and other teams many hours to diagnose and resolve.

I was really impressed by what I saw of Flowmon, without tools like this, troubleshooting user issues is often a difficult task, with admins trying to understand where the problem lies between the applications, the network and the user. Flowmon gives network admins the tools they need, not only to resolve problems quickly but to be proactive in their troubleshooting.

You can find out more about Flowmon here

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Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Progress to create content covering the Flowmon product set. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Progress.

This week saw the Juniper Networks 2021 global summit for analysts, influencers and the media. I have covered my thoughts on this event and Juniper’s strategy in my earlier blog post. In this blog post, I am going to cover the three key announcements from the summit. 

1. Juniper Support Intelligence

2. New Wi-Fi 6E Access Points

3. Juniper Mist IoT Assurance

Juniper Support Insights

Juniper Support Insights is a cloud-connected, AI-driven support platform for customers using Junos OS devices such as ACX. EX. MX, PTX, QFX and SRX.

With Juniper Support Insights, there is no need to replace or upgrade your device to get this functionality - it is already included. You can choose to connect your devices directly to the cloud, like the Mist AI connected devices, or alternatively, you can use a lightweight collector appliance. The collector is a hardware appliance that can support up to 20,000 devices with a single collector. I think many organisations will choose to opt for the collector in their secure environments.

Once connected to the cloud, Support Insights will give operations actionable insights into their network to allow them to be proactive in their maintenance. In addition, Support Insights will use the small amount of data collected about your devices to give insights regarding the following:

• Product data

• Contracts

• Machine learning

• Install base

• Service requests

• Knowledge base

• PBN’s

• SIRTS

• RMAs

• EOL/EOS

As Support Insights uses machine learning, the more devices that are connected to the cloud, the more accurate and relevant the insights that will be delivered. 

I like the fact that Support Insights is readily accessible without additional cost, upgrade or replacement of existing Junos products. It will undoubtedly help operations teams get better insights into their install base and hopefully assist them in moving from reactive to proactive support. Whilst Support Insights is a read-only freemium offering, at a cost, Juniper also has products that offer read and write interactions with the network, with solutions like Paragon Insights. 

Juniper Support Insights solution

Juniper Support Insights blog

AI-driven Wi-Fi 6E Access Points

The second announcement covered two new AI-driven Wi-Fi 6E access points. The two new access points leverage the Mist cloud and AI engine for rich insights, enhanced troubleshooting and optimisations. The two access points that were announced are both tri-band and quad radio with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy Support).

The AP45 access point offers Juniper’s patented virtual Bluetooth LE technology. This will be attractive to organisations that need enhanced location-based services.

Product webpage: Juniper Wireless Access Points and Edge

• Product datasheet: AP45 Datasheet

• Product datasheet: AP34 Datasheet

Juniper Mist IoT Assurance

The final announcement focused on the lifecycle of IoT devices on a wireless network, particularly those that lack the support for 802.1x (WPA3 Enterprise).

With IoT devices increasingly being added to our corporate networks and at scale within many networks, it's essential that this process is quick, easy - and importantly, secure. Unfortunately, many IoT devices aren’t enterprise-ready and will lack the necessary features to secure and isolate traffic, all resulting in security issues or configuration complexity. This is where IoT Assurance comes in.

IoT Assurance is a cloud-based service that leverages a Multiple Pre-Shared Key mechanism (MPSK) to easily onboard devices at scale, offering micro-segmentation of devices as well as traffic engineering and full policy management. IoT Assurance provides a full suite of access control functionality using MPSK or Private Pre-Shared Keys, all without relying on having a client MAC address available in advanced or a configured NAC device.

Once the devices are on board, IoT Assurance takes control of day two operations, including automatic PSK expiration in conjunction with automatic key rotation, making sure that keys are regularly rotated whilst ensuring there is no downtime. Some additional tools are integrated, such as the ability to monitor active device utilisation per PSK, a fully-featured API and the ability in the future to create self-provisioning portals that can be used for BYOD workflows.

IoT Assurance Datasheet

Final Thoughts

These announcements further build upon Juniper’s portfolio of products as well as their vision of experience-first networking. With tools like Support Assurance and IoT Assurance, admins can streamline workflows, take proactive actions, and deliver higher levels of reliability, security, and service to end-users.

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Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Juniper to create content following the Juniper Networks Analyst, Influencer and Media Global Summit 2021. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Juniper Networks.

Juniper Networks Analyst, Influencer and Media Global Summit 2021

This week saw Juniper present an update on its vision, strategy and latest innovations at the company’s virtual global summit for analysts, influencers and the media. Leading up to this event, I have been lucky enough to meet a number of Juniper execs to understand first-hand its strategy, vision, and latest product offerings.

Juniper has a laser focus on experience-first networking. This is much more than a marketing spin on its products and this was clear throughout the summit and across the company’s product innovations. Experience-first networking for Juniper is all about simple operations for network admins and a superior end-user experience for IT users. Anyone who knows me will know that I'm a simple soul, and while I love enterprise technology, I firmly believe it doesn't need to be complicated. So this messaging and focus both sit well with me.

How is Juniper delivering experience-first networking?

Often when you hear terms like experience-first networking, you will think it is just about marketing spin on top of the same old products. It is clear with Juniper that it goes much deeper than this. It appears to all start with the 2019 acquisition of Mist Systems and particularly the AI offerings surrounding the Marvis technology. If you haven't seen Marvis in action, head over to Tech Field Day to learn more. During the summit there was a short demonstration of the Marvis technology in action, initially showing troubleshooting of a wired network where the root cause had been diagnosed as a faulty network cable. Secondly and most impressively to me, the technology was able to troubleshoot and pinpoint an end-user's issue with Microsoft Teams. These kinds of quick and straightforward troubleshooting abilities make a real difference to both the end-users and the IT teams, allowing them to focus more time on innovation and moving forward, rather than tackling business as usual issues.

The image below was discussed during the summit. It depicts logged support tickets over time and how they were resolved. The green portion shows the tickets resolved (and logged) without human intervention, and the red portion indicates tickets with human intervention. As you can see, with AI technology built into the systems and more nodes being added to improve intelligence, tickets are being resolved before IT even needs to intervene.

Juniper discussed that, moving forward, networking was about much more than speeds and feeds alone. Of course, speeds and feeds are still important, but now it's about delivering real business value - and for Juniper Networks as a software company, this is all about the experience.

What was announced?

Building on the experience-first networking approach and maintaining its leadership within its products, Juniper Networks announced three new offerings during the summit:

• Juniper Support Insights

  • Allows you to connect any Junos OS device securely to the cloud to offer AI-led insights to help operations proactively support the network.

    Juniper Support Insights solution

• Two new Wi-Fi 6E AI-powered Access Points

  • Leveraging the Mist AI technologies, these Wi-Fi 6E access points offer the latest Wi-Fi standards and are combined with technologies such as BLE, other location-based services and much more.

    Wireless Access Points and Edge | Juniper Networks

• IoT Assurance

  • With more and more IoT devices being added to corporate networks, it can often be a challenge to manage the lifecycles of these devices. Whilst some IoT devices will support 802.1X for onboarding, many more devices do not. IoT Assurance allows operations to manage this full lifecycle across all IoT devices using Private Pre-Shared Key (PPSK) technology.

    Delivering Better User and Network Operator Experiences with New Wi-Fi 6E APs and IoT Assurance Driven by Mist AI | Official Juniper Networks Blogs

I have expanded on these announcements in this blog post, but these products further help operations deliver a better experience to end-users, with better uptime, quick resolution to issues, better performance and in-built security.

Final Thoughts

I have been really impressed to hear and understand Juniper's vision, and importantly, how it plans to achieve it. Juniper has been on a journey to modernise its business, and the focus on software and innovation around AI results is a real differentiator that will matter to customers.

Personally, moving forward, I look forward to learning more about Marvis and seeing it in action for myself.

Here are two of my Doodles from the event. Please click them to see them in more detail.

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Disclaimer: Tech Doodles through Tech Crossing Limited has been paid by Juniper to create content following the Juniper Networks Analyst, Influencer and Media Global Summit 2021. Whilst Tech Crossing Limited and the authors of this blog post have been paid to create the content, there has been no influence or editorial control by Juniper Networks.

Today saw the start of Microsoft Ignite November 2021, this keynote focused on hybrid work with Microsoft 365. Jared Spataro Corporate VP of modern work spoke about the key elements and innovations regarding hybrid working.

Jared spoke about organisations requiring a digital fabric to successfully adopt hybrid ways of working, this is made up of communication, collaboration and creation.

Announced today was Microsoft Loop a new app acting as a collaborative canvas allowing you to bring multiple elements together for interactive collaboration.

Within Loop there are 3 core elements, Workspaces, Pages and Components. This is the evolution of fluid components and the elements can be copied from Loop into Teams, Outlook and more and importantly still remain live and interactive.

Read more about Loop here.

Next was ContextIQ, allowing users to get recommendations regarding content and resources directly in the editor to improve productivity and making it more simple to include the elements that matter where you need them.

Read more about Context IQ here.

Finally, I was pleased to see there will also be improvements to Teams webinars including virtual green room, structured Q&A as well as curated experiences allowing specific people and content to be shown within the webinar when required.

Read more about improvements to Teams Webinars here.

You can see my doodle summarising this session below.

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Today Pure Storage have announced three new offerings during their #PureLaunch event. Above you can see my doodle covering these announcements.

Announced was

• Pure Fusion

  • A SaaS Management layer that pools storage arrays into availability zones and automates complex tasks such as

    • Workload placements

    • Workload mobility

    • Fleet rebalancing

Find our more about Pure Fusion

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Portworx Data Services

• The first database as a service platform for kubernetes

• Allow developers to easily rollout stateful managed services such as DBs without vendor lock-in whilst ensuring all day two operations are taken care of including

  • Monitoring

  • Backups

  • HA

  • Disaster Recovery

  • Migration

  • Auto-scaling

  • Security

Find our more about Portworx Data Services

Pure1

• A cloud based data-management platform

• A single hub that is automated by the AI driven Pure1 virtual assistant

• Allowing you to optimise, streamline, analyse and empower your data services quickly and easily

Find out more about Pure1

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This week I have attended #TFD24 as a delegate, the first sponsor to present was Cisco leading with their IoT Solutions. Cisco demonstrated a wide range of IoT ready solutions including both data centre and rugged products for use in the field. During the presentation there was a full review of the IoT portfolio including switching, routing, embedded devices industrial WiFi and their full stack service Industrial Asset vision.

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There were a couple of areas that were of particular interest to me, the first being a discussion on the LoRaWAN architecture. LoRaWAN is a low-powered wide-area network technology that is well suited to IoT use cases. Whilst LoRaWAN is capable of only low data rates (300 bps - 5.5kbps) it is capable of distances up to 15km in rural circumstances and can offer a battery life for devices of up to 10 years! So if you need to track a herd of cattle in a field, or how full a set of bins are in a rural park an IoT solution utilising LoRaWAN might be the right solution for you.

The second interesting part was the Cisco Industrial Asset Vision solution. This was an end to end, customisationable but standardised and ready to deploy IoT solution, including sensors, gateways as well as a cloud-based dashboard to monitor, report and troubleshoot.

This solution will fit a wide amount of use cases due to the large array of sensors available and will be ideally suited to organisations that want an out of the box IoT solution to their business needs, rather than developing something specific from separate parts.

Here is my third and final doodle from the F5 NGINX Sprint 2.0 event that I have been attending with the Tech Field Day Delegates.

During the sessions the specialists at NGINX ran the journey of modernising enterprise applications incorporating the components with NGINX including, NGNIX, NGINX Plus, NGINX App Protect, NGINX Instance Manage, Contoller and much more

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I’ve enjoyed learning about NGINX and the NGINX portfolio during the Sprint 2.0 event. I hadn’t previously had much experience with NGINX, and now after Sprint 2.0, I understand how enterprise organisations are using NGINX’s open source applications and commercial applications to solve day two operational issues.

I think it is excellent for NGINX and their customers that there will be further investment and focus on open source products and engagement. This is clearly an area that attracts new customers through the developer community but then drives new customers to the commercial products when day 2 problems need to be solved by the operations team.

I was also particularly impressed by the F5 integration in the portfolio with technologies such as App Protect but as well as this there is claear delination between NGINX and F5 Big-IP with Big-IP focusing on traditional applications and NGINX on modern adaptable applications.

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As described in my earlier blog post I have been attending F5 NGINX Sprint this week, this blog post focuses on the second half of the initial day which looked at the announcements, commitments as well as a Q&A with Gus Robertson and Rob Whiteley.

During the first day of the conference, there were three commitments and three (and one bonus!) announcements.

These were as follows

Commitment 1

Increase open source development and encourage community contribution

Commitment 2

Continue to innovate the data plane of modern, cloud-native applications

Commitment 3

Create a clear and consistent open-source vs commercial demarcation

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Announcement 1

NGINX is joining forces with the Kubernetes community

Announcement 2

NGINX will release new open-source projects at every layer of the delivery stack

Announcement 3

NGINX Modern Apps Reference Architecture

Bonus Announcement

NGINX unveiled a new interactive community experience that is now arriving.

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Thoughts Regarding the Announcements and Commitments

The commitments and announcements were firmly focused on the community, whether that is the user community or the wider open source community. Learning about NGINX’s history it is clear that their commitment to open source and the community has been core to their business, now part of F5 they are wanting to renew this commitment and demonstrate how being part of F5 means they are able to dedicate more time, people and money to the community and open source programmes which undoubtedly would have been a concern for some after acquisition.

The Modern Apps Reference Architecture (MARA) is aimed to help people spin up a complete and fully operational microservices architecture quickly and easily. MARA integrates open source solutions from NGINX and partners that are pre-wired and preconfigured meaning it is fully production-ready. This means that DevOps teams can easily access MARA from the GitHub repo and deploy it in production with minimal frustration.

You can access the MARA GitHub Repo here.

Tech Field Day Q&A with Gus Robertson and Rob Whiteley

To finish the day I was lucky enough to be part of the Tech Field Day panel for the Q&A with Gus Robertson and Rob Whiteley. I highly recommend watching this session when available and I will update this post with the link. During this session, there were some great questions from the delegates looking at the technology, community, open-source commitment as well as the commercial model and why people should choose to opt for a paid commercial model at the appropriate time. I was particularly impressed with how NGINX has not only managed to appeal to the operation teams via their commercial offerings that meet day 2 needs around scale, performance and security as well as appealing to developers with the open-source offerings and community engagement.

I was particularly interested in the possibility of AI and ML services being developed in the future leveraging the position of the NGINX technologies in the data plane. They spoke about looking to leverage this position in the future in conjunction with AI and ML to offer, predictive analytics to help scale and grow or prevent issues but also to offer business insights regarding the customer journey based upon the insights they could see.

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You can re-watch the sessions from NGINX Sprint 2.0 and find out more about the NGINX technologies at https://www.nginx.com

With my fellow Tech Field Day delegates, we attended NGINX Sprint 2.0. Below is my first doodle from the first day's sessions.

This doodle covers the changing face of applications and the impact the Covid period has had on transformation. Some of the thoughts NGINX customers Audi and Blackrock had on why they selected NGINX for their modern applications. I particularly liked Blackrocks session that explored their R3SPs for application deployment and how NGINX met these. These were

Resilience

Scale

Security

Stability

Performance

Finally, the doodle shows the significant changes that NGINX has made to their platforms since the last sprint event.

As NGINX is relatively new to me, what impressed me was the ability for their products to support both developers and ops with modern application deployments, allowing scale, simplicity of deployment and flexibility alongside enhanced security thanks to the integrated F5 technologies.

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The below graphic shows the different components within the NGINX portfolio, these include

NGINX Plus - An all in one load balancer, content cache and web server

NGINX Controller - Manage load balancers, API gateways and service mesh deployments at scale

NGINX App Protect - Modern app security powered by F5 WAF technology running on NGINX Plus

NGINX Unit - Dynamic application server with a REST API driven configuration

NGINX Ingress Controller - Ingress load balancing on kubernetes platforms

NGINX Instance Manager - Configure, Scale and manage your open source and enterprise configurations across your business

NGINX Service Mesh - Secure service to service management of both north south and east west traffic in kubernetes environments

NGINX Amplify - Cloud hosts monitoring and statistical analysis for NGINX and NGINX Plus

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There are so many tips and tricks that we could share to ensure you make the most out of VMworld. Whilst these tips differ slightly than if the event were in person (where we would be telling you to wear comfortable shoes), below we have included our top tips to ensure you make the most out of this year's virtual event (and fingers crossed the last virtual one we have to attend).

If you have not yet registered for VMworld 2021 VMware’s Premier Multi-Cloud event - register now!

Once you have registered, take a look at all the amazing sessions and build your schedule!

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Book the time out!

The problem with a virtual event can be the temptation to tune in whilst you are still trying to keep up with business as usual! So our advice would be to treat it like an in-person event, get permission from your boss to attend and dedicate the time to it!

Think about what you want to achieve by attending the conference

Before picking your sessions, think about what you want to achieve by attending the conference. What projects are coming up at work, or what skills gaps do you or your organisation have that you can use your time attending VMworld to achieve? Maybe write yourself a shortlist of questions to answer with your attendance!

Build your agenda

Taking the above in mind, take the time before the event to look at the session catalogue and add the sessions to your agenda using the session builder. Without doing this, it can be overwhelming selecting which sessions to watch during the event due to the pure amount of content to choose from (like a child in a sweet shop).

Filter sessions in the session catalogue

With so many sessions and fantastic content, it can sometimes be difficult to filter through to find relevant information. Therefore, in the session catalogue, we recommend using the filters on the left of the page to filter by session type, product, track, topic, level and more. This will help you find the sessions that are relevant to you.

Get involved in the community

One of the best bits of VMworld is the community engagement throughout every aspect of the event, whether during a keynote, walking around the exhibition hall or during the events in the evening. This is definitely one of the key elements that we miss with events being virtual at the moment, but that isn't to say that the community feel isn't there. So get involved in the conversation on Twitter using #VMworld2021 and engage with the community, share your thoughts, opinions and of course, share others content to help promote their content too!

We will be joining the conference and sharing our thoughts with the community on Twitter, so follow us at VirtualisedReal and BizTechMeg!

Get comfortable and avoid the distractions

When the time has come for your to tune in for VMworld 2021, get comfortable (maybe tune in from your TV in the lounge!), bring your snacks, set your out of office, turn on do not disturb in Teams and tune in! We recommend taking notes during the sessions, but if that doesn't suit you, reserve time in your agenda to reflect on what you have learnt and note the actions you wish to take with this newfound knowledge!

We hope you find these tips useful and enjoy your virtual trip to VMworld 2021!

Register for VMworld 2021 now and build your schedule!!@

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It's that time of year again where I start looking forward to conference season and at the top of my agenda is always VMworld, VMware’s multi-cloud event. Sadly with COVID still lingering on, I won't be making my usual pilgrimage to VMworld in Barcelona but enjoying it from the comfort of my own home.

VMworld this year will be the first VMworld since 2012 (I believe) where Pat Gelsinger is no longer CEO, but don't threat, VMware is in safe hands with Raghu Raghuram at the helm. Raghu Gaghuram isn't a new face at VMware, and those who have attended VMworld before like I will be very used to seeing him on stage. Nonetheless, it will be exciting to see Raghu take the stage and see what the future of VMware looks like under him.

If you haven’t already registered for VMworld, ensure to head over there now and get registered.

For me, there are three important things about attending VMworld 

1. Understand where our industry is going, how VMware is talking about their technologies, and the shifts we are seeing. For this, I look for strategic and high-level sessions.

2. Dive deep into the Technology so I understand how it works and how it will benefit my customers. For this, I look for architecture and deep-dive sessions.

3. Spend time with the vCommunity including, community members, VMware employees and partners. This is more difficult when the conference is virtual, but head over to Twitter, connect with the vCommunity and follow the hashtags! You can follow me @virtualisedreal

As Chief Technologist, I have a broad remit of technologies I follow and talk to customers about. So the list below represents some of the areas that are of interest to me. I have tried to link to all the sessions so you can easily find them and then add them to your schedule when the schedule builder is launched.

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Inspire Change

Accessibility with Productivity Apps - Design Studio [UX2553]

Join us as we dive into what accessibility is and how we are working towards a future that includes all people regardless of limitations in tech - Does your organization offer solutions that adhere to current accessibility standards? Learn and give us feedback on what is important to your organization when it comes to accessibility for your teams. VMware Design Studios are interactive sessions exploring technical previews and early design ideas. Participants will be asked to sign an NDA.

Ajayan Subramanian, UX Designer, VMware

 Any App, Any Cloud, Any Device Is Not Enough – We Need to Add Any User [IC1351]

VMware's solutions strive to achieve secure digital transformation without disruption for a digital foundation, and deliver any app, on any cloud, to any device. This is frequently summarized as the three anys in VMware's advertising. The missing any is any user. This talk will address what VMware is doing to add the fourth any—any user, including users with disabilities. It will also discuss what users need to do to integrate the fourth any in their organizations.

Sheri Byrne-Haber, Senior Staff Accessibility Architect, VMware

Security

Addressing Malware and Advanced Threats in the Network [SEC2027]

Today’s reality is that security breaches are a given. Sophisticated attackers are too numerous and too determined to get caught by perimeter defenses. Hear insights into how the adversaries are evading defenses and focuses on how the Network Detection and Response capabilities of NSX Advanced Threat Prevention provide the visibility, detection and prevention of advanced threats.

Chad Skipper, Global Security Technologist, VMware

Giovanni Vigna, Sr. Director Threat Intelligence, VMware

A Practical Approach for End-to-End Zero Trust [SEC2733]

Digital transformations around app modernization, multi-cloud infrastructure, and remote users has accelerated the need to move away from perimeter-only security to a more distributed security with tighter access controls to resources. Zero trust approach aims to address the security challenges but can seem complex - from where to start and what’s in scope. In this session, we will discuss specific capabilities that will enable you to achieve a zero trust architecture that’s aligned to the NIST guidance and covers secure access for users as well secure access to workloads. 

Shawn Bass, CTO End User Computing, VMware

A Practical Guide to Implementing Zero Trust [SEC1028]

What is Zero Trust, and how can you get started? A new model of working from anywhere on any device requires a new model of network security. Zero Trust, born from the concept of “never trust, always verify,” assumes that no device, person, network or packet can be trusted, and builds access privileges from there. Zero Trust network access moves from a network-centric security process to an identity- and context-based security approach. These modern concepts help leverage the security and benefits of a cloud-hosted solution, while easing IT deployment and maintenance of costly remote access services. In this session, we will take a practical approach on how to start on your Zero Trust journey using VMware Secure Access.

Peter Bjork, Principal Architect, VMware 

Better Secure Remote Workers with VMware Carbon Black Cloud [SEC2666]

The Anywhere Workspace brings together management and security for remote workers. Although this vision solves the challenge of remote work for IT and security teams, it begins with an innovative approach to security. This session will focus on how VMware Carbon Black Cloud can meet the endpoint security needs for your organization within the context of the VMware Anywhere Workspace vision.

Elizabeth Schultheisz, PMM, VMware

Simplified Security with VMware Carbon Black Cloud [SEC2490]

As network breaches become more prevalent, are you confident your network can fend them off? Does the complexity of network security seem like a daunting task? If so, you will want to join us for a conversation about how VMware Carbon Black Cloud can make security easier and more efficient. Join us for a discussion on tips and tricks to make managing your endpoint security a little more effortless.

Jamie Kaushik, Senior Technical Trainer, VMware 

Multi-Cloud

A Guide to Application Migration Nirvana [MCL1264]

Have you experienced application migration paralysis? We have. Join this session to learn how VMware vRealize Network Insight uses application discovery and migration planning to understand your applications before migrating them, and then uses an integration into VMware HCX to seamlessly start migrating. We will spill the beans on how VMware IT and our customers solved their migration headaches. Through mostly demos, we will show how to: • Discover your application workloads • Map out application dependencies • Analyze network traffic to make informed decisions • Seamlessly move the discovered applications into VMware HCX • Migrate the applications to VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, and Google Cloud VMware Engine

Martijn Smit, Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

Azure VMware Solution Best Practices for Implementation and Migration [MCL3114S]

Join us for an interactive discussion on best practices when implementing, migrating and managing your Azure VMware Solution environment. Learn from our Azure VMware Solution experts and their experiences working closely with customers throughout deployment, including how to optimize for different scenarios and how to leverage the best of VMware and Azure services.

Jeramiah Dooley, Principal Cloud Advocate, Microsoft

Shannon Kuehn, Cloud Advocate, Microsoft 

Azure VMware Solution: Platform Deep Dive [MCL3078S]

Explore the latest releases from Azure VMware Solution, including technical overviews for new integrations of popular disaster recovery and backup solutions such as VMware Site Recovery Manager and Zerto. Learn more about how to take advantage of new connectivity between your Azure VMware Solution environment and other Azure services for storage, management, security and more.

Ramprasad Gowrishankar, Principal PM, Microsoft

Benefits of Azure Virtual Desktop and VMware Horizon Cloud Service [MCL3093S]

Learn about the latest product updates and benefits. Ask your critical questions to our panel of experts from Microsoft and VMware.

Gabe Knuth, Sr. Product Line Marketing Manager, VMware

John Jenner, Microsoft

Strategy and Vision to Accelerate Cloud Provider and MSP Growth [MCL2075]

The opportunity for cloud providers, MSPs and other partners continues to grow. VMware is committed to helping our world-class ecosystem of cloud providers, MSPs and solutions providers take advantage of the multi-cloud opportunity. In this session, you will hear from our product leaders and experts on our strategy and vision for cloud partners. You will learn about our latest products and solutions to help providers develop hyperscaler-class clouds, new services available through an asset-light model, and how we’re embracing the multi-cloud world to help partners grow and thrive with greater choice for their customers.

Rajeev Bhardwaj, VMware  

App Modernisation

Adopting Containers Through VMware Tanzu - The Benefits [MCL2874S]

Adopting agile and cloud-native development methods and tools is key to the future success of many businesses. Most businesses adopted virtualization many years ago to increase the efficiency and utilization of their IT estate and are now seeking ways to take that investment forward into the cloud-native world. For VMware customers, Tanzu provides a clear path towards that goal and the business benefits that it can yield. As one of VMware’s top partners and also a Gartner leader in Multicloud, helping customers adopt a more developer-centric approach to cloud-native development through the adoption of containers and Kubernetes is core to Rackspace Technology VMware services.

Amine El Badaoui, Product Architect, Rackspace

An End-to-End Demo of Day 0 to Day 2 VMware Tanzu Management with vRealize [APP1586]

In this session, we will take you through a Day 1 and beyond demonstration of how VMware vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, and vRealize Network Insight can come together to deploy, manage and troubleshoot Kubernetes...

Matt Bradford, Sr. Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

Sam McGeown, Staff Technical Marketing Architect, VMware

 A Guide to vSphere with VMware Tanzu: Day 2 Operations for the VI Admin [APP1718]

This session will cover the basics of Kubernetes architecture, and day 2 operations when deployed on vSphere. As the Virtual Infrastructure administrator, the more you know about the software that runs on top of your platform, the better service...

Simon Conyard, Senior Solution Engineer, VMware

Dean Lewis, Senior Solutions Engineer – Cloud Management, VMware

What's New in vSphere [APP1205]

This is the anchor session for all VMworld attendees interested in VMware vSphere, and it is a VMworld staple. We will provide an overview of all that’s new in vSphere this year, discuss key technology trends and customer challenges, share how the latest capabilities in vSphere help customers meet the needs for key use cases, and highlight some real-world customer successes. We will also provide guidance on key sessions on related topics that attendees should not miss at VMworld. This session is where you want to start your VMworld 2021 journey.

Himanshu Singh, Group Manager, VMware

Ken Werneburg, Director of Technical Marketing, VMware

Application Migration Patterns [CODE2750]

Every organization is looking to migrate their applications to the cloud or cloud-native. I will share my learnings from the application modernisation/migration experience at VMware (for customer) and in enterprises (pre-VMWare). I begin where the 5R discussion ends. Answering the critical "How" part of the undertaking.

Yogi Rampuria, Advisory Platform Architect, VMware

End-User Services

Advanced Architectures for Deploying Horizon in the Cloud [EUS1129]

This session will dive into many of the advanced VMware Cloud on AWS design considerations and topologies that impact delivering VMware Horizon on VMware Cloud on AWS. These design considerations and topologies are not limited to Horizon. We will also dive deep into integration with AWS and connectivity options. We will review architectures deployed by VMware Professional Services to show real-life applications of how Horizon on VMware Cloud on AWS met desired business outcomes. We will review additional cloud offerings that can host Horizon, such as Azure VMware Solution and Google Cloud VMware Engine, and outline the similarities and differences of these solutions.

Bob Barna, Consulting Architect, VMware 

Architecting Multi-Cloud Horizon [EUS1547]

Learn how to architect multi-cloud VMware Horizon deployments. This technical session will cover the deployment options and platforms available, including Horizon, Horizon Cloud Service on Microsoft Azure, Horizon on VMware Cloud on AWS, Horizon on Azure VMware Solution, and Horizon on Google Cloud VMware Engine. Find out how Horizon Control Plane Services, such as Universal Broker and Image Management Service, aid in both administration and user access.

Chris Halstead, Senior Staff Architect, VMware

Hilko Lantinga, Staff Architect, VMware 

Ask Me Anything from the End-User Computing Experts [EUS2636]

Meet the End User Computing experts, bring your questions and ask us anything (as long as it is slightly related to EUC)! These experts are prepared to answer your toughest questions spanning from virtual desktops and apps, unified endpoint management, security, to practical tips and tricks, successful implementations...the list goes on.

Christopher Dayton, Director, VMware

Spencer Pitts, Chief Technologist, VMware 

Drop It Like It's Hot Reloaded: The Windows Dropship Session is Back [EUS1581]

A DeskCon experience session. With IT teams and employees working from home and offices facing extended closures, how are you provisioning and deploying new Windows desktops and laptops to new hires and employees due for a refresh? Planning a Windows 10 zero-touch device provisioning experience for your users? We will deep dive into everything you need to know about drop-ship provisioning, including factory and connected provisioning. Modernizing deployment can be challenging and overwhelming with many dependencies on other technologies. Come learn what it takes to make this a reality.

Ameya Jambavalikar, Senior Product Manager, VMware

Josh Burris, Staff Architect, VMware 

Now, Next, and Beyond: Innovation Showcase with VMware EUC CTO Shawn Bass [EUS2467]

Shawn Bass, CTO for VMware EUC, gives a closer look at the new innovations in Workspace ONE, Horizon, and Anywhere Workspace. Learn how VMware thinks about the future of technology for end-user computing, Zero Trust security, and distributed work. This session also serves as the introduction to our VDIscover track for Day 2 of VMworld.

Shawn Bass, CTO End User Computing, VMware 

The Accidental VDI Admin: Carl Webster’s Analysis of Horizon 8 [EUS2460]

He’s back. Last year, Carl Webster spent six weeks testing VMware Horizon 7.12, building and tearing down his lab 5 times and shared his findings in a wildly popular VDIscover session. This year, Carl will share his experiences with Horizon 8. Carl’s background includes independently working with VDI and app publishing products like Citrix for over 30 years. Whether you were or weren’t able to attend his session last year, this is going to be one you won’t want to miss.

Carl Webster, Owner, CarlWebster.com

Brian Madden, Distinguished Technologist, VMware 

Vision and Innovation

Fireside Chat with Michael J. Fox and VMware CMO Carol Carpenter [VI3148]

Emmy-award-winning actor, author and patient advocate Michael J. Fox sits down with VMware Chief Marketing Officer Carol Carpenter to discuss his life and his passion to help find a cure to Parkinson’s disease. Other topics include maintaining inherent optimism while managing many challenges, balancing a career, family and charity work and sharing how technology and research can help pave a path for a cure Michael J. Fox is an award-winning actor, best-selling author and patient advocate. Fox was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease and years later launched The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research in 2000. Since then, Fox has been a steadfast advocate for research and patients and through it all, has continued his acting career and written 4 books including his most recent memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, published in November 2020.

Carol Carpenter, CMO, VMware

Michael J. Fox 

Accelerating Innovation: Strategies for Winning Across Clouds and Apps [GEN3103]

What’s the best way to speed up business innovation? How can you deliver apps and services faster to improve the customer experience? Is it possible to maximize cloud advantages while avoiding the slow-you-down trade-offs of the past? There’s no better way to open VMworld 2021 than with a look at strategies to accelerate your business. Join CEO Raghu Raghuram as he lays out his vision for the future of multi-cloud technology, providing a view into the innovations VMware is driving at the intersection of clouds and apps. He will explore how leading organizations are challenging the status quo to move fast, gain a competitive advantage and stay secure. VMware President Sumit Dhawan will share a perspective on how VMware is delivering the critical capabilities that every digital business needs, with a special focus on the first-hand experience of VMware customers around the world. In this must-see session, you can expect a mix of new insights, practical info and a good dose of inspiration for accelerating your own business and technology success.

Raghu Raghuram, CEO, VMware

Sumit Dhawan, President, VMware

If you have not yet registered for VMworld 2021, register now and start building your schedule!

With VMworld just around the corner and coming around before we know it, now is a great time to look at the schedule, understand what sessions will be included, and build your schedule for the event.

If you have not yet registered for VMworld 2021 - register now!

Once you have registered, take a look at all the fantastic sessions and build your schedule!

This year I am taking a keen interest in security and employee experience. With so much changing throughout 2020, I perceive these two areas as the biggest impacted and needed to adapt quickly. Furthermore, these changes need to be future proof for the world of 'new normal'. Below are the top sessions I recommend you add to your schedule for VMworld 2021!

Achieving Happiness: The Quest for something new [IC1484] – Amanda Belvins & Steve Athanas

After 2020 and 2021, not the years we had planned, it has changed our view on many things. Ensuring I always put my happiness first is crucial, and the pandemic highlighted the importance of this for me. I think the fact that VMware are including sessions around wellbeing, happiness and people in the agenda is incredible and speaks volumes.

Digital Employee Experience: The Key to a Successful Anywhere Workspace [EUS2069] – Amit Sharma

With a large percentage of the workforce now working remotely, employee experience from day 1 has changed drastically. Not only has the technology needed to adapt to accommodate this for onboarding, but the people, processes and culture have needed to adapt also. Technologies such as Workspace ONE enable businesses to monitor and automate employee engagement to allow businesses to proactively remediate actions to improve employee experience and further engage their workforce.

Another session related to this subject is: How to support a remote workforce with Workspace ONE [EUS1723] – Pooja Chengappa & Dany Leclerc

Next Year's News: EUC's Vision and Announcements with CTO Shawn Bass [EUS2470]

I always find that Shawn Bass’ EUC keynote session is one of my favourites at VMworld and one that I have always ensured I attend when I am at VMworld. It is not only great to hear the latest announcements about new features from VMware, but it is also always insightful to hear from Shawn about the reason behind the new features and bring it into context for businesses.

How to Improve Your Endpoint Security and Simplify Your Workflows [SEC2662] – Justin Flack

With data being completely segregated and dispersed due to the pandemic, businesses have to manage and secure data in new ways. This session will be engaging to understand VMware’s vision for security in terms of protection, detection and response.

Becoming a Force for Good: A Panel on Adapting to a Changing Tech Community [IC1352]

After the ex-CTO of VMware, Pat Gelsinger announced that Technology needs to be used for a force for good at VMworld 2019; it will be great to hear from the panellists about how VMware and their employees have been innovating and working to constantly deliver upon this vision.

The Time Is Now – Align Your Cybersecurity Needs and Objectives [SEC2390] – Martin Redler

With the cyber-security landscape constantly changing, businesses are having to change how they manage and secure data. This session will cover building a secure strategy to meet your businesses security objectives and protect data.

Multi-Cloud: Can It Solve Future Business Challenges? [MCL3016S]

With many organisations beginning to look at moving to the cloud, this session will inform and interesting to understand from real-life experiences how multi-cloud can solve business challenges. This session will deliver a large amount of advice for people looking to move to multi-cloud and hopefully answer some questions about it.

Register for VMworld 2021 now and build your schedule!

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If you are managing Microsoft 365 for a large organisation CoreView will allow you to easily create actionable reports to maintain organisational standards, securely delegate administrative tasks to the relative parties such as HR and maximise the use of your Microsoft 365 licencing with licensing optimisation reports and related actions.

You can learn more about CoreView over at their website https://www.coreview.com

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The doodle above was created as part of a paid engagement with CoreView to understand the features of their platform and to doodle my thoughts. There has been no expectations set or influence on the content of the doodle or this blog post by CoreView. All thoughts are my own.

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Doug Hazelman - Senior Vice President and Cheif Evangelist of CoreView. Many like me from the virtualisation community will know Doug from his time at Veeam and it was great to catch up with him to hear all about CoreView.

CoreView is a SaaS platform designed to help enterprises that have a heavy reliance on Microsoft 365 within their organisations.

A quick look on their website summarises the product quite well in three given areas;

• See it - Action Enabled Reporting

• Manage it - Granular Privileges for Each User

• Automate it - With cross-SaaS workloads

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The reporting functionality is the core element of the platform with over 240 inbuilt reports and the ability to fully customise and filter what is included. The word ‘reporting’ to describe this functionality doesn’t really do it justice, the reporting within CoreView is fully actionable, so once you have found the information that is relevant to you, for example, users who aren’t configured with MFA, you can then undertake the relevant corrective action directly from inside CoreView. Even more impressively you can schedule these reports to run regularly including the corrective actions to easily maintain standards.

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Reporting is available for all areas of Microsoft 365 and of particular interest to me, was licensing optimisation and user management as well as the application-specific reports including SharePoint and Teams.

One of the areas I was most impressed with was the ability to delegate administrative access to Microsoft 365 to anybody in the business, including none technical members of the team whilst maintaining security and governance.

CoreView has the concept of virtual tenants or V-Tenants, this allows you to granularly carve up administrative functionality to specific subsets of users within your business. With Microsoft 365 taking such a large role within organisations today there is increasingly becoming a large burden for IT teams to be able to manage the associated administrative tasks. This is exactly where virtual tenants within CoreView comes to the rescue, whether this is delegation from a central Microsoft 365 admin team to certain controls to a service desk or even delegating user management to a representative of an HR department.

The virtual tenant allows you to initially configure which users are within the virtual tenant (this is useful for dept specific delegations) and you are then able to granularly control which permissions are allowed and what should be included in the user interface for these users. Together this allows you to securely and effectively delegate granular administration tasks within Microsoft 365 without risk.

As previously mentioned there are full licensing optimisation reports available allowing you to review per user utilisation of features and functionality in line with the licensing that is in place across the organisation. With the virtual tenants mentioned above, it is possible to take this a stage further and carve up licensing into the virtual tenants, allowing departments to manage their own licensing and to review the relevant reports.

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The final component I want to talk about is the ability to review and filter the Microsoft 365 audit logs, from the day you configure CoreView by default it will store a rolling years worth of history with the option to pay for further retention. The audit review capability allows you to quickly and easily search and filter the audit logs to get drilldown to the elements that matter to you. Further to this there are a number of out of the box reports that highlight certain activity from the audit logs such as failed logins and logins with impossible travel.

I was really impressed by what I saw from CoreView and whilst it is focused on enterprise use cases I could see how the functionality would be useful to other organisations and managed service providers. I am hoping to get some time looking into the platform myself and will post any thoughts that I have.

Be sure to checkout CoreView for yourself https://www.coreview.com

Directly following the launch of Scality ARTESCA the Tech Field Day delegates were asked to share their thoughts and opinions on the product.

Delegates Reflect: Tech Field Day Presents Scality and HPE - Gestalt IT

In the video below the delegates reflect on the following points

• What is ARTESCA?

• What is it about ARTESCA that Scality is doing right?

• What does ARTESCA do to appeal to developers?

• ARTESCA is built on a number of open-source tools, which should make it developer-friendly as well, right?

• ARTESCA isn’t just about storing and retrieving data thought, its about data management as well.

• What is our reaction to the launch of ARTESCA alongside HPE?

• Reflecting on the launch itself.

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Following the recent launch of Scality ARTESCA with Tech Field Day I have been investigating the architecture behind ARTESCA a little bit more.

If you would like to read more about the architecture behind Scality ARTESCA check out this whitepaper > https://go.scality.com/l/893901/2021-05-11/3zjqn/893901/1621255966fkouGUtc/artesca_wp_v4.pdf

Depicted within this doodle is the ARTESCA architecture which is able to be deployed in a single node configuration prior to scaling via multiple nodes to petabyte scale. ARTESCA runs within containers on Kubernetes (MetalK8’s today) and is accessed using the standard S3 protocol which makes it easy for developers to quickly and easily develop against whilst the UI, replication features and more will give IT operations confidence to manage through into production.

Initially, ARTESCA is exclusive with HPE for 6 months and is available with a wide variety of configurations, these include all-flash, hybrid and hard disk-based configurations to meet the needs of the individual workloads. There is also a 50TB starter licence available free of charge for you to try prior to scaling further. It is not yet known what will happen after the first 6 months but I assume it will be available as a software-only solution as well as continuing to be made available by HPE and maybe others.

Within ARTESCA there has been a lot of consideration made into the availability of data with local codes to protect against data loss from disk failure as well as parity stripes to protect against simultaneous disk failures, network repair codes for multi-node solutions and of course multiple replication options not only to ARTESCA but also to their RING product and cloud-based S3 storage.

ARTESCA is a really interesting solution for object storage requirements, it is software-based, leverages Kubernetes, has multiple configuration options to meet edge and core use cases and unites developers and operations by offering ease of adoption for developers via the use of the S3 protocol, Kubernetes architecture and full API and for operations, it is easy to manage and monitor, has full monitoring capabilities and is backed by HPE! What’s not to like!

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You are able to see my first doodle and blog post containing information about the launch of Scality ARTESCA here.

During the second half of the Scality ARTESCA launch we switched from the ActualTechMedia webcast and came over the the Tech Field Day portion. You are able to watch the videos once available here.

The Tech Field Day session started with a discussion led by James Governor and Joey D’Antoni focusing on dev-ops and the edge. There was much discussion around kubernetes and the need for object storage as well as the need to automate processes at the edge. We then saw a demonstration by Scality of the new ARTESCA UI. The UI seemed very mature offering you the ability to not only manage ARTESCA platforms but also Scality RING and other S3 compatible repositories such as AWS and Azure Blob.

Whilst in many cases theses systems will be managed and accessed via API’s by developers and then via DevOps automations I believe certainly at the edge there is a need for a fully featured UI to allow operational troubleshooting and maintenance.

One of the elements that was pleasing to see is that the ARTESCA UI allowed for visibility and reporting of the underlying infrastructure layers including Kubernetes and the HPE hardware status. I was also very impressed by the including analytics, including predicted analytics as well as the integrated object browser where you couldn’t only browse objects but add and edit meta data.

Please see above my doodle from the second part of the Scality ARTESCA launch and below some of the UI screenshots.

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You can learn more about Scality ARTESCA here >> SCALITY ARTESCA | scality

and you can see more from HPE on Scality here >> HPE Object Based Storage for Scality Solutions | HPE