Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The latest in the NetApp Data Fabric cloud portfolio delivers on simplicity!

What is the latest in the NetApp Data Fabric cloud portfolio?

I've had a chance to play with a few of the latest solutions and services in the NetApp cloud portfolio and in a few words, it delivers on simplicity!

  • Cloud Sync Service - Move and synchronize data between on-premises storage and S3.  The way it works is the service allows you sync any NFS filesystem with an S3 bucket in AWS. Two licensing options are available - subscribe through the AWS MarketPlace (pay as you go model) or BYOL (purchase a license from NetApp).  The NFS data can be synchronized to the S3 bucket and also in the reverse direction.  The interface has a cloud manager look and feel and I found it to be extremely intuitive to use.
  • Cloud Backup Solution -  My personal favorite. This solution delivers simplified end-to-end cloud backup for NetApp ONTAP® customers using NetApp SnapMirror® technology. Through integration with AltaVault and SnapCenter, customers can now easily assign hybrid cloud backup targets and quickly search and recover files from on-premises and public cloud repositories.
Two topologies are supported as shown below.  The key drivers in this solution are ONTAP 9.1 SnapMirror, AltaVault, and SnapCenter 2.0.  SC 2.0 adds data protection for NAS File Services. A new file catalog is available for fast and easy search and retrieval of files from on-premises or cloud storage. The drag and drop GUI supports configuring replication and retention policies.



Tuesday, May 9, 2017

NetApp Hybrid Cloud Solutions

NetApp Hybrid cloud solutions provide a wealth of functionality.  The NetApp cloud solutions are NetApp Private Storage, Cloud ONTAP and the AltaVault Appliance.   In this post I will introduce a few of capabilities.

NetApp Private Cloud, Cloud ONTAP, and AltaVault Appliance


NetApp Private Storage (NPS) is NetApp storage systems - such as Fabric-Attached Storage (FAS) or an all-flash - residing in co-located facilities worldwide.  NPS is directly connected to public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or IBM Softlayer.  Since most public cloud storage services are used to support cloud computer, IO performance is often unpredictable and slow, while control is out of IT's hands.  In contrast, NPS supplies Data ONTAP IO services for public cloud compute instances that can (1) provide predictable, high IO performance through direct connections to the cloud, (2) improve data control by guaranteeing data locality, and (3) maintain security and compliance by securely storing data on NetApp storage systems.


NetApp also offers Cloud ONTAP, which is ONTAP software that runs in the cloud and uses premium cloud services as its underlying storage.  Issues with cloud storage services include limited functionality and inadequate or nonexistent integration with on-­‐premises storage. However, with Cloud ONTAP,on-­‐premises NetApp storage can be replicated to the cloud as often as needed in an efficient deduplicated and compressed manner. Moreover, the cloud compute environment can now ease the administrative burden for cloud applications using Cloud ONTAP’s advanced storage management functionality. However, unlike NPS, which is a hybrid solution that combines on-­‐premises and cloud-­‐based resources, Cloud ONTAP is a purely cloud-­‐based solution.


Finally, NetApp offers AltaVault Appliance (AVA) in physical, virtual, and cloud-­‐ based implementations. With an AVA running in your data center, you can simultaneously use local disk storage and cloud storage to hold backup data. Further, the AltaVault Cloud-­‐based Appliance is an AVA software implementation that executes in the cloud, which means you can use AVA cloud backup data to restore backups within the cloud compute infrastructure, such as for disaster recovery, data validation, and testing purposes. The AVA performs inline data compression and deduplication, and it automatically encrypts and replicates all backup data to cloud storage. The AVA offers cloud replication services to many public cloud storage such as Amazon S3™/S3-­‐IA/Glacier, Microsoft Azure™ Blob storage and Google cloud standard/nearline storage, as well as private cloud storage services such as NetApp StorageGRID™ Webscale, IBM Cleversafe and EMC Atmos™.

IT organizations that take advantage of NetApp hybrid cloud offerings can provide a deeper data protection repository, a more readily available DR solution and a faster way to supply current customer data for engineering activities. NetApp hybrid cloud solutions enable IT to take advantage of cloud offerings in order to reduce costs and improve services for their users, customers and internal engineering communities.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

ONTAP 9.1 has been GA since January 2017

Back in January 2017, ONTAP 9 GA was released.  It is loaded with new features. Over the last five months I have delivered solutions on hardware that is part of NetApp's biggest Hardware Platform refresh in its history. Deployments included the FAS2620, FAS2650, FAS8200, A300, A700. These new platforms are all powered by ONTAP 9.1. The feedback has been overwhelming positive.

What are my customers saying?

  • 50% Performance improvement.  9.1 supporting more CPU cores, more memory, and higher Ethernet and Fibre Channel has made a huge difference in their workload performance.
  • Simplicity Onboard encryption key management and setting up AFF in <10 minutes has simplified the deployment.
  • Flexibility They can now encrypt data on storage with standard SSDs and HDDs.  Data on existing systems can be encrypted using volume move. Unique protection for every data volume delivers the flexibility they need to better meet their requirements. 
Some of the major features:

  • System Manager improvements include FlexGroup GUI, storage efficiency reporting, and a new cluster setup workflow.
  • NetApp Volume Encryption (NVE)
  • 12 Node SAN Clusters
  • Native Foreign LUN Import with AFF support
  • 32 GB FC
  • 40 GB Ethernet
  • FlexGroup massively scalable containers 20PB, 400 billion files, 200 constituents
  • Mobile Autosupport (Storage efficiency display, Capacity forecasting, Performance monitoring)

Software Defined Storage:

ONTAP Cloud:

ONTAP running in a hyperscaler service provider environment
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure
License model designed for cloud consumption mentality

Use cases:
  • Cloud replication/DR
  • Dev/test, file services, database applications

ONTAP Select:

ONTAP running on-premise on commodity hardware
  • NetApp-qualified major server vendors
Flexible capacity-based licensing

Use cases:
  • Primary storage for Tier 2 and 3 workloads
  • Private cloud storage services
  • Disaster recovery/secondary storage


Good luck!

Thursday, May 4, 2017

First blog post

I started this blog to share content and my views on a variety of storage related topics. The posts will revolve around data storage – storage of the data, protecting the data, and managing it.