I don't want to say that dedupe was the only reason that NetApp was named Microsoft's Storage Solutions Partner of the Year, but I can dream can't I ?....
Steve Ballmer: DrDedupe, on behalf of our bazillion Microsoft employees, I'd like to personally thank you for your contribution to our success.
DrDedupe: Aw shucks Steve, it was nothing really. Just a couple hundred lines of code the team wrote over a long weekend. We were kind of bored you see and it seemed like a fun project...
OK seriously, as Hyper-V begins to gain in popularity, there is some real synergy going on between NetApp and Microsoft. Check out this video, where can you see a demonstration of a Hyper-V LUN being created and then easily re-sized after being dedupe'd.
Using NetApp storage with Microsoft apps seems to makes alot of sense not only for Hyper-V but also for some other apps you might have heard of such as Exchange, SQL, and Sharepoint.
SQL and its nephew Sharepoint offer some interesting (and largely unexplored) use cases for dedupe that I will discuss in upcoming blogs. Exchange, as I noted in a previous blog, has jettisoned single instance storage (SIS) in 2010, presenting yet another compelling opportunity for NetApp dedupe. Yes - I know that Microsoft often espouses server-attached storage for Exchange, but sooner or later they'll realize that people stopped doing that around a decade ago - for many good reasons. (Microsoft are you listening?)
Speaking of blogs, here's a good one that Nick Triantos posted about one of our newer features, SnapManager for Hyper-V. This feature brings automation to Hyper-V for DR and D2D Backups and is integrated with Microsoft's Volume Shadow Service (VSS). Very cool indeed, and OK maybe the real reason we won the partner award...
Anyway, if you are a Microsoft app user (sorry Sun) you owe it to yourself to check out what NetApp can do for you. Our latest issue of Tech OnTap also features an article on the 5 best practices for Hyper-V.
DrDedupe

