The Virtual Storage Guy

An Interview on Twitter? A Twitterview!

My blog posts have been sparse as of late. With all that's been going on in recent weeks; from the VMworld events to the upcoming NetApp Insight events and a massive fall product launch, I haven't had much time to sleep let alone blog!

I promise I'll correct the latter and return to a regular cadence soon.

It took an opportunity to sit down with storage industry pundit, Stephen Foskett, and the self proclaimed 'Cloud Czar of NetApp' Val Bercovici (who's actually in the Office of the CTO much more often than he's in Moscow) to get me to take a break and join in an online interview via Twitter.

I believe this is our inaugural Twitterview!

So what's on your mind?

Have questions about the future of storage technologies?

Maybe it's a question around Cloud Infrastructures and the integration available to our virtualization & orchestration partners?

Heck, maybe it's as simple as wanting to know who cuts our hair!

It doesn't matter what the question is, you have the floor!

So join us won't you, today at 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET. To participate, just make sure you follow us and show up. I'll see you on Twitter!

Stephen has started sharing thoughts around 'What is Flexible IT?' over at his blog. I share as you may want to give it a read before the interview kicks off.

Cisco NetApp VMware Announce our Enhanced SMT Solution

This week the Imagine Virtually Anything Alliance announced our Enhanced Secure Multi-Tenancy Solution. This architecture allows customers and service providers who have internal or external cloud infrastructures to securely isolate shared, virtualized data storage, network fabrics, and servers as a single end-to-end entity. Limiting potential security risks associated with the deployment of multiple tenants within the same physical infrastructure. Tenants can be thought of as various business units, departments, customers, etc.

With the shift to IT as a Service and shared IT infrastructure, the issue of security has become a key priority. With the traditional silo approach security is ensured, as the infrastructure is comprised of dedicated resources. While secure, these types of architecture have proven to be inefficient, inflexible, and cost prohibitive from an IT service provider model.

In order to deploy a shared infrastructure without compromising security, it is necessary to provide strict isolation between the different tenants within the infrastructure. Customers deploying cloud architectures with traditional storage architectures lack end-to-end isolation within the infrastructure stack. This gap can limit the opportunity to virtualize some environments (due to regulatory or government requirements).

I Love Google Trends (aka See Who is Checking Out NetApp)

Have you ever used Google Trends? With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.

So today the following search of NetApp on Google trends returns with the following results...

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=netapp&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0

These results raised my curiosity... Why would so many queries on NetApp are originating in Westborough, MA (USA)?

Free Book - VMware View 4.5 on NetApp Solution Guide

I’m pleased to announce that NetApp is giving away published copies of our NetApp and VMware View 4.5 Solution Guide! This offer is open to the first 1,000 eligible individuals who have a shipping address in the US or Canada. The View on NetApp book has been extremely popular and now is your chance to scoop one for free! This is the same soft-cover book currently available on Lulu.com for $15.99 plus shipping (USD).

If you are a NetApp customer or partner, run VMware on FAS, vSeries, or IBM N-Series arrays this book is the ‘how-to’ guide for implementing VMware View on NetApp. Below is the book's description from Lulu.

 

This book highlights the NetApp best practices in a VMware View 4.5 environment. It focuses on design, architecture, deployment and management of NetApp technologies that allow customers to design and implement space efficient AND high performing AND cost effective virtual desktop solutions without negative trade-offs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The book runs 82 pages and the authors of book are Chris Gebhardt & Abhinav Joshi, both recognized by VMware as vExperts for 2010!

You can register for your free copy of VMware View 4.5 Solutions Guide here.

Accelerating Virtual Infrastructures via Cisco Validated Designs Built on NetApp

As the first day of VMworld Europe 2010 begins to wind down, I can’t help but to be in awe at the rate at which data centers are evolving. A recurring theme in each of my customer briefings/meetings has been a thorough appreciation for the depth and breadth of the cloud based solutions being driven by NetApp and Cisco.

These solutions began in January with the formation of the Imagine Virtually Anything Alliance with Cisco, NetApp, and VMware where we released the Secure Multi-Tenancy architecture (SMT 2.0 was released today at VMworld Europe – more on this announcement in a later post).

Since then Cisco and NetApp have expanded the virtualization solutions portfolio to include architecture designs built on technologies with Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle Database Server, and Citrix XenServer & XenDesktop (as a part of the Virtual Desktop Alliance with MTM).

These solutions are designed by the principal partners (vendors) and leverage our core infrastructure components such as 10GbE Unified fabric, Cisco UCS and Nexus, and NetApp FAS arrays. These solutions have successfully completed the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) certification process. If you’re looking for thoroughness in an architectural design it’s hard to beat Cisco’s process.

A CVD as it consists of systems and solutions that are designed, tested, and documented to facilitate and improve customer deployments. These designs incorporate a wide range of technologies and products into a portfolio of solutions that have been developed to address the business needs of our customers.

To qualify as a Cisco Validated Design Guide, the design must meet the following criteria: