NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy

VCE-101: Oracle On VMware Without Limits

After a brief hiatus I am very eager to return to the ‘Virtualization Changes Everything’ series, and today’s post is an impromptu addition to our syllabus. Recently fellow VMware vExpert Steve Kaplan of INX published a rather thought provoking post rallying for the acceleration of the transformation to a 100% virtualized datacenter. Steve waxes poetic advocating acquisition decisions spanning compute, storage and network should be driven by their contribution to data center virtualization success and I would encourage everyone to read it.

In today’s post I’d like to highlight and expand upon the following comment in Steve’s post:

‘Creativity overcomes most obstacles to a fully virtualized data center such as the minority of software manufacturers still refusing to support their applications on VMs. An easy resolution for organizations running vSphere over NFS on NetApp is to FlexClone a Virtual Machine's virtual disk into a LUN and simply present to a physical server. Voila, instantaneous V2P.’

Attention CEOs: Pay $75 per Virtual Desktop for Storage

Recently both NetApp and EMC published VDI whitepapers with our mutual partners VMware and Cisco. Both papers are very solid and should result in robust infrastructures; however, the solutions are far from equal and I’d like to take 5 minutes of your time to share with you some interesting points of comparison.

Sure the EMC paper focuses on UCS platform while the NetApp paper focuses on a Nexus infrastrucutre, but that’s not what I want to discuss. Yes, the EMC architecture running on Fibre Channel over Ethernet and the NetApp solution is leveraging NFS, but that’s not what I’d like you to consider either.

The level of differentiation I want to highlight is the cost per desktop in both of these solutions. Why cost? Simple, it is the number one hindrance to virtual desktop adoption.

VMworld 2009 – Storage Integration Sneak Peek

I trust you are as excited as I am with VMworld just around the corner. In case you missed it, we have a lot going on in San Francisco. Brian Gracely has a published number of posts covering the details of our Breakout Sessions and the sessions featuring either NetApp Partners or Customers over at the Virtualization Effect.

For more details click here, here, and here.

If you’d like some insight as to Dave’s plans to present during our Keynote presentation check out this post in the NetApp Communities.

The Storage Most Integrated with VMware

In yesterday’s post I made an effort to clarify the level of integration between VMware and a storage vendor claiming to have the greatest level of integration. While I craft the follow up to that post I’d like to offer you a preview of one of the integration technologies that will be made available and on display at VMworld.

A Customer's Findings: VMware on NetApp vs EMC

It must be ‘Brief Post Friday’ as I keep getting pinged with great info to share all the while I have several other deadlines to meet (I guess its another evening of working until midnight).

I have the privilege of sharing with you the following report compiled by a rather large customer which compares the results of virtualization consulting engagements completed by EMC and NetApp.

VCE-101: Deduplication: Storage Capacity and Array Cache

Welcome to the first session in a series of blog posts entitled ‘Storage 101 - Virtualization Changes Everything’

Data deduplication was originally introduced in Data ONTAP 7.2 in July of 2006 as a technology that enhanced the NetApp Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup offerings. Coincidentally VMware released VI3 around the same time in June of 2006, and shortly thereafter customers began using these two technologies together to virtualize their servers and storage footprint.

For today’s post we’re going to dive into the realm of storage efficiency and discuss data deduplication and it’s impact in production storage capacity and storage array cache specifically within a virtual data center.

The Format of this Series

As I stated when I decided to kick off these posts I want to share these topics with a wide audience and in order to do so each session will begin with a high level overview of the technology and its value followed by the technical details.

Storage 101 – Virtualization Changes Everything

Updated July 12th - Syllabus revised

Welcome all to Storage 101, I’ll be brief below is our syllabus and the topics we will cover leading up to VMworld. The format of these posts will begin with a high level introduction to the technology followed by all of the technical gory details. I am hoping that those who want the ‘why’ can be satisfied up front, and these who want the ‘how’ can continue reading.