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 ...

VMware vSAN is a Hyper-Converge Infrastructure solution which is part of VMware Cloud Foundation  (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) bundling.  While VMware vSAN helps customer to achieve a SAN like storage pooling using local HDD on each server together, it is still limited on features it encompasses in comparison to a physical SAN. This is where NetApp ONTAP Select which will complement the missing gap. ONTAP Select is the virtual appliance of the well known ONTAP that runs on all NetApp Unified Storage appliance. One of the major function that ONTAP Select brings to vSAN is on Data management and Protection. This is very useful for protection specific applications especially application aware application by ONTAP Select. Some of the enterprise applications supported can be found here . A detailed kb from Broadcom can be found  here . With ONTAP Select, these applications that are supported can be protected via SnapMirror which can provide an application consiste...

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...