NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy

VCE-101 Thin Provisioning Part 2 – Going Beyond

This is the second installment of a two-part post focusing on the thin provisioning capabilities native to vSphere. If you haven’t read Part I - The Basics, I’d suggest you do so before proceeding. We've covered a lot of content which you really should have a solid grasp of before proceeding.

In part I, I covered the basics of thin provisioning and how it operates with any storage platform. In part II we are going to expand upon a number of the points introduced in part I with a focus on how the storage virtualization functionality in Data ONTAP enhances VMware's thin provisioning and the over arching goal to reduce both the CapEX and OpEx associated with storage in the virtualization space.

Anatomy of a Virtual Disk

Let’s begin where we started in part I, by reviewing different disk formats. This time let’s consider them with the virtual disks operating at 70% storage capacity.

- The Thick Virtual Disk

Again this is the traditional virtual disk format which we all know rather well. From this image you will notice do not receive any storage savings in the datastore, yet we do receive 30% savings on the storage array.

If you're asking, "how can a thick VMDK consume less storage on the array?"
You'll need to go back and read Part I

- The Thin Virtual Disk

In this image we have the thin provisioned virtual disk and as you can see we are receiving a 30% storage savings in both the datastore and on the array.

- The Eager Zeroed Thick Virtual Disk

In this last image we have an eager zeroed thick virtual disk which provides us no savings at either the datastore or on the array.

VMware SRM 4.0 and NetApp SRA 1.4 Details

This week VMware and NetApp released new versions of SRM and the SRA which add support for vSphere and the rapidly expanding NFS install base. I'm sure many have questions regarding this much anticipated release and if you are one of these you are in luck! Yesterday our SRM expert Larry Touchette has published an in-depth post that covers the details, which can be found here.

A Follow-up on HP TechDay 2009 with an Invitation for You!

This week HP demonstrated several of their technology offerings to the storage community, and as a part of this event HP provided a hands on lab where attendees to 'kick the tires' of their storage technology offerings. As a part for this lab attendees were able to complete the same tasks with storage arrays and management tools from EMC and NetApp.

These types of educational experiences can really benefit the community by showcasing one’s enhancements and differentiation. I fully endorse these types of labs, sharing information empowers the user community and raises the bar in terms of what we must develop in order to remain an industry leader… except this isn’t what happened.

According to multiple tweets attendees were stating that tests designed to demonstrate storage integration with Windows systems and VMware were the command line interface and Filerview. This caught my attention as these aren't the tools NetApp recommends for our install base. A quick glance at a few of the sites covering the event confirmed the use of these legacy tools.

In fairness I need to highlight that HP did follow the steps provided in our storage best practices documents for VMware TR-3428 (VI3) and TR-3749 (vSphere). I would like to share with you that we are in the process of updating these documents with a goal of reducing their sizes by approximately 40%.

We hear the VMware community loud and clear - simplicity equates to scaling an environment.

vSphere on NetApp Book Available at VMworld

This morning the VMworld bookstore opened and for the first time NetApp customers are able purchase a NetApp technical book! Early reports state that sales have been solid, so if you’re interested in a copy I’d suggest you grab one soon. Should you miss your opportunity to grab one the books will be available for sale in the next few weeks on Amazon.com.

Meet me and the co-authors Mike, Larry, & Peter at the NetApp booth. We are all on hand to answer your most technical questions.

VCE-101: What's Next with Deduplication?

Welcome to the latest post in our series entitled ‘Virtualization Changes Everything’

In our last post we discussed the CapEx savings provided by data deduplication of both production storage capacity and storage array cache. Deduplication is fundamentally changing the data center and it appears that there’s more on the horizon. I’d like to share with you what I call ‘Data Center Ethernet Acceleration’.

Overview

“"Some call it a software mainframe others call it cloud, it depends on when you were born" – Steve Herrod, CTO, VMware

When discussing multiple applications on a single hardware platform I prefer the term ‘software mainframe’. I think this is due more to my time working with VMware products rather than my age. I still recall my introduction to this concept back in 2001.

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.

vSphere on NetApp Best Practices Released

I am please to share with you that this morning our new Technical Report, TR-3749: vSphere on NetApp Storage Best Practices, has been released. I’d like to thank Mike Slisinger, Larry Touchette, and Peter Learmonth for all of their assistance in the production of this TR.

I’d like to take a few moments to share some of the core enhancements covered in the report.

VMware Co-Brands TR-3428

There's an update to our VI3 storage best practices technical report. There's no technical content updates to be concerned with, instead I would like to share that TR-3428 version 4.5.2 has been officially co-branded by VMware.

This update is basically a quality assurance seal which states that the engineering teams at VMware and NetApp have reviewed and verified the contents of this technical report and the recommendations included within are truly best practices.

This wasn't always the case as some of the content in TR-3428 were truly ground breaking not too long ago. For example the dual VMkernel network designs had on occasion lead to additional discussions and configuration validations prior to implementation.

Kudos to all involved, now I think we've come to a time to let this document rest and focus on the vSphere TR.

VI3 on NetApp Best Practices Update

Today we've published a minor update to our VMware on NetApp: Storage Best Practices Technical Report TR-3428. After posting the blog announcing version 4.4 I received a number of comments and emails asking to share and comment as we publish future updates, so without further adieu here's the highlights of version 4.5.1...

A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual NFS customers using VMware

We were quite a bit surprised to see how popular our “Multivendor iSCSI” post was. The feedback was overwhelming and very supportive of industry leaders partnering to ensure customer’s success with VMware. While writing that post, we (Vaughn Stewart from NetApp and Chad Sakac from EMC) discussed following up the iSCSI post with one focused on deploying VMware over NFS. The most difficult part around creating this post is that we couldn’t do it with our iSCSI-focused colleagues.

Since the original post, we’ve been busy assisting our customers and partners. We apologize for the delay, so without further ado we present to you the followup: a “Multivendor NFS” post for our joint customers. One of the goals of this post is to dispel the FUD customers often hear around NFS. Heck, if EMC and NetApp can agree – then you KNOW this post is FUD-Free!

VMware on NetApp Best Practices Update

As one might imagine

Several of us within NetApp receive a fair amount of feedback around the content in our VMware on NetApp Best Practices Technical Report, TR-3428.  A few of the areas where we receive a large amount of inquiry are related to the frequency of the updates to the document and requests for notification of when updates are posted. I’d like to use this post as my way of saying we hear you, to follow up on these questions and ask for some feedback as we move forward with the document and begin work on our ESX 4.0 on NetApp Best Practices document.

An update has been posted

Version 4.4 went live on November 24th around midnight EDT.  As this is update closely followed version 4.3, which posted in November, I’d like to share with you some of the key updates and additions to the content that have been introduced in the past 30 days.

The World is Taking Notice

I am rather excited to see Pushan Rinnen and the good folks at Gartner tackle the subject of storage choices with VMware in their recent report “Choosing Network-Attached Storage for VMware: What You Should Know”  (Gartner report ID G00159391 published July 16th, 2008).

I’d like to share with you a few highlights from this report:

“Gartner found that most adoption of NFS to support VMware infrastructure is driven by ease of management especially when dealing with a large number of VMs”

“The current dominance of FC SANs in a VMware environment is further influenced by the fact that early versions of VMware did not support iSCSI SANs or NFS”

“For those who have decided to adopt NFS for VMware, they should be aware that not all NAS products are created equal and need to carefully evaluate specific NAS products that can cater to their requirements”

The content of the report is spot on with what we have experienced with our customers. Note: there was a wealth of additional information in the report, but you’ll need to leverage your Gartner and check it out for yourself.

Welcome...

We all have friends, family, and coworkers who operate on different social timelines. Some of them arrive to an event early, others right on time, and a few consistently arrive ‘fashionably late’ (like it’s ingrained within their DNA).  I guess I fall into this later category, as today is the first day of the rest of my life in the blogosphere.