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. Today NetApp is the ONLY vendor able to handle File, Block and Object all at the same time with ONTAP. 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 ...

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...

If you have not read about what was on Day 1 check out here .  There ain't much announcement on solutions here on the second day.  There are quite a lot of announcements on EUC space and that you can read it here .  There are also mentions of CloudVolumes which was recently acquired by VMware just last week, a few partnership with Google and nVidia on Chromebooks and Horizon DaaS which lightly further expansion from the acquisition done on Desktone . Also VMware has joined as a Gold Partner in the Open Compute Project as reported by AMAX . With VMware been the first partner of SAP with AirWatch and SAP Mobile Secure into the mobility space on security and experience stated here . On vCloud Air, there is on demand which was previously mentioned and as well as vCloud Air  Object Storage offering.  Check out all the new announcement by Bill Fathers. To sum it all, the second focus much on the EUC and mostly partnership betwee day 1 and 2.  If you ar...

With VMware World 2014 at San Francisco there are so many great news and one of them is VMware EVO:RAIL.  A hardware appliance that comes in 2U and have up to 4 nodes and expandable to 4 appliance.  Read this article .  Also in a tech preview is EVO:RACK which you can read more about it here . You might have thought, is VMware selling hardware?  Nope you will purchase from VMware partners and not from VMware.  This is build from bottom up tuned to fit vSphere with vCenter LogInsight and Virtual SAN. You can take a look at the interface of how VMware EVO:RAIL interface looks like here . Next the vRealize Suite which was announced which comprises of vCloud Automation Center, vCenter Operations Management Suite and IT Business Management which available for outside the vCloud Suite customers or non VMware customers who need a comprehensive Cloud Management Platform (CMP). This also add to vRealize Air with beta sign up .  This enables customer on to ...