Plain Virtualization

When I join NetApp from VMware after spending a good 13 years, I was amazed and taken aback how much NetApp got to offer to customers. It not just a Data fabric company but lots more in the space of how data are managed, stored, secured, and much more surrounding data. The first thing I learnt about is ONTAP, the powerful software operating system that powers all NetApp hard and soft boxes at the very beginning. It also not just a storage but it is the King of Files for a reason. The unique of NetApp is in its way of storing data, Write Anyway File Layout ( WAFL ). Its ability to handle large amount of small files makes it elite on its own. NetApp also have acquired a few solutions over the years specific to how data are created, managed, used and secured. Let's leave that to another post for now. Let me drill into 3 key takeaways on why NetApp how it differentiate itself as the only one. 1. Most Secure Storage on the Planet A very bold statement is true in every aspect. The ONLY s...

Looking at the trend of data referencing from here . We can see that data has been growing phenomenally. In actual fact, looking at the trend, the boom started in 2020 and has not stop ever since. Source: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/data-generated-per-day  In today infrastructure, we have two major solutions for data management. One is our traditional storage array and the other is HyperConverge Infrastructure (HCI). The latter only started picking up in early 2011 where some of the known names such as pivot3 and the major players after such as Nutanix and VMware vSAN which exist most commonly in most data center infrastructure. As data volume increases and the the adoption of AI, capacity and performance for data management become a crucial requirement. Taking example from the like on virtualization, you can have all the compute resources for your virtual machine, but if your workload data IO and capacity cannot be serve, the bottleneck still exist.  In the wor...

You hear me right. Was browsing through some documentation and wanted to see any storage vendor is supporting Proxmox, the new player in virtualization. To my surprise, NetApp not only support, but all functions of ONTAP are also supported just like how it supports other virtualization platforms such as VMware, RedHat, Microsoft. Any virtualization platforms that support external storage solutions.  Check the virtualization overview documentation site . NetApp has extensive partnership with VMware to support day zero feature function. This can be seen from the support of vSphere vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) on vVols. RedHat OpenShift, Microsoft Hyper-V and Promox. NetApp allows customers to choose to consume storage in any shape and form namely, on premies physical storage array, in the cloud as first party files services from AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, Cloud Volumes as third party service in CSP's market place and ONTAP Select (virtual appliance). With tr...

This week marks my 90 days in NetApp. It was truly an eye opener to what thought to be a storage company can do beyond just data storage. NetApp has evolve over the years and with the amount of R&D and investment made to its portfolio that I believe most are not aware just like myself. In my 90 days, I should address what NetApp offers in a nutshell: 1. The only true hybrid and multicloud solution that allows customer to consume storage solution in any shape and form with the same skillset and knowledge. NetApp's secret sauce, ONTAP is the underlying software that empowered its storage solution since the very beginning as the King of NAS. Of course as a software, it has been able to support block and object similarly well. ONTAP One is the only soft license that comes in all NetApp unified storage solution at no additional charges. But the power of ONTAP does not stop there, ONTAP Select , a virtual machine offering allows customer to consume the same ONTAP storage, right off ...

Yes you hear me right. Check out the vSphere 8.0U3e  release notes . VMware is releasing the ESXi 8.0U3e as an entry-level hypervsor.  To download, head to https://support.broadcom.com/ and create an account if you have not done so.  Follow the screenshot below: Software> VMware Cloud Foundation>My Downloads Next click on Free Software Downloads available HERE. Scroll down to VMware vSphere Hypervisor and click on it. You will be lead to it. You will be able to download it. It will be about 618Mb That is definitely a good news for those who needs it for Home lab testing. But not sure if this going to be a one off. Also to note, it is on a 60 days trial but not sure if it behaviour the same as pre-broadcom after expiry. Thanks to Joey Ware for tipping off in Facebook group.

As per the article and confirmation from email from Broadcom to all their partners, there will be a minimum purchase for New VCF license purchase for new order starting 10th April 2025.  What will be your impact to customers like yourself? Basically for any new project, a minimal purchase of 72 cores license is required whether or not your compute workload is going to be lesser. This does not change the minimum purchase of 16 cores per CPU which still stand. While that is true, the above statement only applies to new purchase, if you are doing expansion or renewal of licenses, this does not change. So if you really just need a small setup using 3 servers each, taking a supported Dell PowerEdge R350 with vSphere 8.0U3 as per VMware site , with a minimum of 8 cores per CPU, you will need 24 cores license which will have a surplus of 48 cores (72-24). That is a bumper. For the above example, this will be wastage. However, as I mentioned, expansion and renewal are not impacted....