Panel Discussion of Abandonware (in an IoT Context)

During the past couple years, the good folks over at Gestalt IT have been working to find more ways to make sure that the Tech Field Day delegates feel that their time has been valued and put to good use. One of the ways they’ve been doing that is to use some of the down time to record podcasts.

At one of the Storage Field Days I attended, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to sit on a podcast panel to discuss “abandonware” — especially in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT).

What’s abandonware? It’s what happens when you have a networked device that still works, but is no longer supported by its manufacturer — or worse, whose manufacturer has gone out of business. Lack of support for the device means no more software updates, which means no security patches. Unpatched devices on your network leave your network vulnerable. Continue reading

VMware releases NSX 6.2

Last week, VMware released version 6.2 of their software-defined networking (SDN) product, NSX. One of the things that’s interesting to me is that VMware no longer refers to NSX as an SDN solution. Instead, they’re playing a bigger game with it and call it “the network virtualization platform for the Software-Defined Data Center” (SDDC). This is in line with VMware’s overall message lately, positioning themselves as an SDDC solution, not just as one for server virtualization.

I’ll walk through what’s in the new release below. Continue reading

Cisco Expands Storage Networking Porfolio

Today, Cisco announced the expansion of their MDS storage networking portfolio with the addition of three new products. These new products bring increased performance, automation, and ease-of-use to an already great product line.

The new products announced are:

  • MDS 9148S Fabric Switch
  • MDS 9706 Multilayer Director
  • MDS 9700 FCoE Line Card

I’ll walk through the new offerings below. Continue reading