What Differentiates Servers in a Commodity x86 World?

Dell and servers have been on Stephen Foskett’s mind after visiting Dell’s Austin headquarters with Tech Field Day 16 and Dell EMC in Hopkinton for Storage Field Day 16. The newest generation of Dell servers have just about every feature you could ask for, but after testing out a PowerEdge R7415, Stephen says what really differentiates them from the competition is the management platform. Dell EMC’s Quick Sync 2 technology as the integrated iDRAC management platform is a huge upgrade from previous versions and easily beats out the competition.

Accessing Security Insights with SolarWinds Network Insight For Cisco ASA

Tom Hollingsworth takes a look at SolarWinds Network Insight For Cisco ASA, which he saw at length at Tech Field Day earlier this year. He looks at how this enables admins to analyze complicated access lists and determine exactly what they are doing, without a bunch of manual configuration.

HCI Isn’t the Only Simplified Management

In this piece, Alastair Cooke looks at why Hyperconverged Infrastructure doesn’t deliver the comprehensive simplified management it often is associated with. He then looks at how since HCI first hit the market, simplification is now offered for a variety of modern products that may better service IT operations.

The case for Cloud Access Security Brokers in small business

Sonia Cuff takes a look at the Cloud Access Security Broker offered by Forcepoint, which she heard of at Tech Field Day earlier this year. This serves as a buffer between users and SaaS applications, allowing IT teams to exert some control and enforce security policies.

SolarWinds, Not Just On-premises, There Is SaaS Too

Alastair Cooke looks at how SolarWinds is offering an increasingly compelling SaaS monitoring portfolio, which he saw at two past Tech Field Day presentations. In this post, he runs down their Pingdom, Loggly, Papertrail, and AppOptics offerings.

Redfish support for DellEMC PowerEdge

Andrea Mauro got to hear from Dell EMC’s automation and configuration team at Tech Field Day earlier this year. They outlined their new iDRAC9 version, but also support for iDRAC9 version on the newest generation of PowerEdge servers. Andrea thinks for organizations in a heterogenous vendor environment this support is vital for implementing automation.