NetApp - Storage Nuts & Bolts

NetApp 50% Virtualization Guarantee Program

There has been a lot of storage vendor hand waving recently about green storage and storage efficiencies.  While everybody has a story to tell, what it boils down to is "How real are these benefits?"

Furthermore, how many times have you heard perspective customers question the  validity of various "Storage Efficiency vs the Competition" studies vendors provide, claiming the results are skewed in favor of vendor X simply because vendor X paid for the study? After all, It is a logical assumption and it is part of human nature to always question those who provide such reports. So, why should customers believe our Efficiency claims? Because we're ready to firmly stand behind them in a manner than no else in the industry has.

VMworld 2008 thoughts

Got back home last night after 4 days in Vegas which, by the way, is probably the only place on earth to openly promote and advertise mis-behavior..."What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".

Like most people, I had a great time, attended a few sessions, spent some time in the NetApp booth, met a ton of people, some of whom I knew, like Scott Lowe and others that I didn't, like Chad Sakac and Mike Laverick.

NetApp Best Practices for VMware VDI

Back in December I read thru a survey conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group titled "The Impact of Server Virtualization on Storage". In fact portions of the survey later appeared at a monthly edition of the Infostor magazine.

It was extremely  insightful and provided a good idea as to the direction customers are moving as well as their concerns when it comes to Server Virtualization deployments.

One of the survey questions was regarding an Organization's biggest  challenges when it comes to implementing Server Virtualization technologies. Among 311 respondents, the top 3 responses were (multiple selections were allowed):

1. Performance - 51%
2. General lack of information and Best Practices - 34%
3. The need to conduct testing - 35%

We've heard that loud and clear. So over the past few months we've published both internally to our partner network and externally,  a tremendous amount of information and storage best practices around VMware deployments. For example, detailed Proof of Concept  (POC) Test Plans covering both a typical VMware deployment as well as VDI deployments, SRM and NetApp, Metrocluster and VMware, a joint NetApp-VMware performance report that quantifies performance across all supported protocols, VMware and NetApp Storage Best Practices, Disk to Disk Backup for VMware environments, and several other VMware on NetApp technical reports.

Today, we've released yet another VMware related Technical Report (TR-3705) titled "NetApp and VMware VDI Best Practices" that addresses capacity and performance requirements, sizing techniques, system configuration validations, VDI boot storms, Login storms and the potential effect on storage as well as the role of the Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) as a secondary cache in VDI environments.

Good reading

Technorati Tags: VMware VDI,NetApp,VDI,VDI Best Practices

iSCSI HBAs: Is this the end of the road?

In 2003, right after the iSCSI standard was ratified, the first iSCSI HBAs that hit the market were the Intel Pro/1000 T IP Storage Adapter and the Adaptec 7211C/F.

The basic premise of the iSCSI HBA has been to offload TCP/IP and iSCSI processing overhead to the card thereby freeing CPU cycles that could be used for greater processing. It was a good thought, however, in hindsight, it was based on the assumption that most servers were already running at high CPU utilization rates.

NetApp @ VMworld 2008: No Marketing Gimmicks, Just Technology

It's that time of the year again where over 15,000 visitors will flock to Las Vegas for what it promises to be yet another exciting VMworld. With more than 150 sponsors, exhibitors and 300 breakout sessions, VMworld is one of the largest IT events in the world.

For NetApp this will be the largest event of the year and like everybody else we've been preparing for it for some time now. This year, by far, we'll have the largest presence in the show and we'll be ready to showcase various technologies that solve some very real and hard to solve business problems.

Clarification: By "...largest presence" I mean comparable to what we had in previous years at this event.

First of all, I'm happy to report we won't be holding any car winning contests.  Rather than attempt to entice prospective customers to our booth with marketing gimmicks, and taking a stab at solving personal transportation challenges,  we've chosen an approach that fits our business. We are a storage company, not a furniture company or a car dealership.