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 ...

References vSphere Metro Storage Cluster white paper released! Stretched Clusters and VMware vCenterTM Site Recovery Manager VMware KB: VMware support with NetApp MetroCluster VMware KB: vSphere 5.x support with NetApp MetroCluster Been encountering a lot of questions on Metro clustering on VMware as well as active-active data center setup.  I would like to bring this out to help anyone who is consider doing a metro cluster to understand what are the main requirements and the cost involved as well as the scenario cases which need to be understand before you make that decision. Many wanted to do a stretch cluster mainly to meet a active-active data center setup.  Some wanted to have a a easier disaster recovery. I must clarify some misconception here.  Metro clustering is Downtime Avoidance (DA) .  It is not disaster recovery (DR).  DR has a downtime to recover.  Metro clustering is a active active setup for near zero setup if storage is synchr...