NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy

Mike Laverick on vStorage Plug-in Integration

This morning began with catching up on my VMware related reading. Like many of you I have a list of ‘must reads.’ Over at RTFM Education Mike has shared his PowerPoint presentation on vStorage integration, which he delivered at the 1st Scottish VMware User Group Meeting.

Mike thanks for sharing! This slide deck provides a great overview of the current state of the union and what customers can deploy today (or in the very near future) from NetApp & EMC.

I'd suggest that you check out the PPT and just in case you were afflicted by temporary insanity and have yet to subscribe to RTFM, do so now!

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.’

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.

VMware Communities Roundtable iSCSI Podcast is Live in iTunes

If missed joining us for the VMware Communities Podcast featuring the 'iSCSI Super Friends' you missed an excellent podcast. John shared with us that episode #66 set a new Communities Podcast record in terms of the number of attendees on the call.

Thru the magic of the 'interweb' you can can catch (and even subscribe to) the podcast via iTunes.

Major props to my partners in crime for making this podcast and accompanying blog post a reality: John Troyer and Andy Banta (VMware), Adam Carter (HP/Lefthand Networks), Eric Schott (Dell/EqualLogic), and Chad Sakac (EMC).

Coming soon: A New Multi-Vendor Blog Post from NetApp, EMC, HP, Dell, and VMware

I’m not giving away any secrets at this time, but let’s just say you may want to stay tuned. Have a good weekend everybody!

Just like Sam and Ralph - Competitors while on the clock, friends when off!

Mike & Scott - Thanks

I’d like to take a minute to personally thank Mike Laverick and Scott Lowe for participating in our preview of the Rapid Cloning Utility 2.1 and the Virtual Storage Console. These technoilogies and more will be on display in the NetApp booth at VMworld.

Neither Mike nor Scott require introductions. Both are respected leaders in the virtualization market and both were kind enough to share their thoughts in online reviews.

How Heavy is your ESX Load?

I can’t tell you how often we are asked for tips around optimizing the performance of virtualized applications. Resolving performance related issues can require investigating a number of variables ranging from the virtualized application including the GOS settings and the data layout, and all the way down to the configuration of the ESX/ESXi server itself.

Vote for the Top 5 VMware Blogs

Eric Siebert has asked the VMware community to make their voices by submitting their votes in a survey of the top 5 VMware related blogs. If you’re a reader of this blog and you haven’t casted a vote please head over to vSphere-Land and do so, it will only take a minute.

Join Rick Scherer on today’s TechTalk: Virtualizing SQL

Today, May 28, 2009 at 11:00am Pacific Time you have an opportunity to join Rick Scherer of VMwaretips.com and a fellow vExpert for a discussion on how the San Diego Data Processing Corporation overcame server sprawl by successfully implementing SQL Server® on VMware®.

In addition to Rick, experts from NetApp and VMware will host an interactive discussion on best practices that will help you weigh your deployment options.

Topics for today’s call include:

* What You Should Know and How to Get Started
* Gain performance advantages when virtualizing SQL
* Optimize storage utilization without impacting performance
* Implement centralized and cost-effective backup and disaster recovery

You can register for the call here

Enjoy the TechTalk. Rick really knows his stuff and has an enormous amount of valuable information to share.