Plain Virtualization

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 ...

Back in the days of VMware, I was fortunate to talk to many customers and involved in numerous discussion on helping them from on premise to private cloud, hybrid cloud to public cloud and MultiCloud to today, Intelligence running in the cloud. Many thought that might change when I move on to my next career. In fact, I carry on that discussion with my customers today the same way I did in the past. That was also one great reason I joint NetApp. Let me show you where this happens: Reference link As changes of IT evolved, the amount of data customer have to collect, manage, protect and secure is way more than before. More so around complexity and managing the amount of data threats. In 1996, NetApp introduced ONTAP to solve the issue with local data siloes with NAS to help customer manage the large amount of data in files and block. When virtualization take place, NetApp supported a wide range of solutions such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, etc. helping customers manage that data growth. Even...

  Recently, took an exam at the test center during this Covid lock down time. It definitely my first time wearing a mask to a test center throughout the exam. To share my experience on preparing for the exam and as well on how I felt about the exam format comparing with other exam that I have taken and written. Yes, I am part of the team who developed VCP and VCAP over the last two years. Experience I took the AWS SAA course last year with no experience with AWS. This was really my virgin experience with AWS from interface to using it in the lab. I even sign up for the AWS fundamental class which is one day before the three days course. After which, I also took the exam preparation course for half a day. Do note there are two exams, I took the one that is retiring. The different is the retiring exam has one more section while the new one removed it. So if you are new like myself, it is really good to do all the above courses that I have attended. It really gives me the great unders...

With the launch of VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS in Singapore back in April 2019, there has been lots of talk and questions. VMUG Singapore will be having a session with VMware on VMC and they will be addressing all the questions if you have any. This will happens on 30th May, Thursday in VMware Singapore office. Wait no further if you are in town or in Singapore, head over here to register. It will be two heavyweight speakers for this session from VMware. See you guys there!

Catch up with all these articles with the announcement page. Day 1 VMware Cloud on AWS It is now LIVE! https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed.VMware-and-AWS-Announce-Initial-Availability-of-VMware-Cloud-on-AWS.2184706.html AppDefense Beyond what NSX provide you with micro-segmentation, today with AppDefense you will be able to identify and realize misbehavior in your VM and action on them if you have NSX for distributed enforcement. https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2017/08/introducing-vmware-appdefense-expanding-beyond-micro-segmentation-threat-detection-response.html NSX-T 2.0 Extension of supporting VM and containers alike and AWS workloads.  Ability to support vSphere and KVM. https://blogs.vmware.com/networkvirtualization/2017/08/nsx-t-2-0.html/ OpenStack 4.0 Multiple vCenter Servers and containers support is one of the key release feature. https://blogs.vmware.com/openstack/vmware-integrated-openstack-4-0/ Simplified ...

Over the last few weeks of new over the announcement of VMware Cloud on AWS partnership.  This brings lots of attention to the IT market where two of the domain giant come together to make it bigger. Why is this a Win-Win?  Let's take a look. AWS With the partnership, VMware will definitely lease the data centres spaces from AWS irregardless AWS doing well or not they got another constant revenue. It make more sense to use AWS services e.g. S3 storage, etc. as your workload can be directly accessing it within AWS's Data Centre. With VMware's partnership, it adds another valid reason for AWS's customer or VMware's customers to consider AWS external services and this brings business opportunities for AWS tapping into VMware's customers base. VMware Leverage on AWS's Data Centres, VMware can now achieve more public cloud offering around the world in terms of locations. Able to leverage on AWS presence, VMware will allows customers to achieve ...

Network Virtualization (NV) and Software Defined Network (SDN) has been a hype over the last 2 years through media and lots of news publicity. The adoption for many is still new.  In fact, most customers around the world has either yet to start, or just starting, or have a setup just running not at full scale. Over the last two years, we see lots of solutions ranging from NS from VMware NSX via software to SDN from Cisco ACI via hardware.  This then also started up many new comers from companies like Nuage Networks to vArmour. Having meeting many customers from different industry and verticals the questions often been asked are like the below: why this and not that? what the different from your competitors? isn't going to SDN or NV makes visibility more complex? how secure is logical compare to physical? While some of the questions and more cannot be explained in details, from a personal point of view it often drive down to a few factors: 1) Will the company be a...