NetApp Releases our First Virtual Storage Array!

On November 24th Fujitsu announced the global availability of the Primergy BX400 blade server. The Primergy BX400 is a green ‘datacenter in a box’ that delivers the first NetApp virtual storage appliance (or VSA) running Data ONTAP-v. For my North American brethren who may not be familiar with Fujitsu, I'd like to share that Fujitsu is the 3rd largest IT services provider in the world behind HP & IBM and they are NetApp’s largest partner throughout EMEA.

The Primergy BX400 blade server is a 6U chassis that includes eight half-height server or storage blades and has a mid-plane with three different fabrics. The NetApp VSA is enabled via the SX960 storage blade, which in provides ten hot-pluggable 2.5-inch disks. The NetApp VSA runs Data ONTAP-v 8.0.1 and is powered by VMware ESX 4.1.

The VSA will provide storage stack management of local Fujitsu disks while also providing IP-based data access (CIFS, iSCSI, NFS) for VMware datastores, home directories, and business applications for small and medium (SMB) size companies.

 

This ‘news’ isn’t news to those who attended NetApp Insight in Las Vegas, Prague, or Macau, where the VSA obtained a significant amount of attention. Actually it is because of the Insight sessions that I had to wait to publish this post. Suffice to say, Insight is over and I'd like to share with you why the release of our first VSA is huge news...

ONTAP is ONTAP

First the VSA is a prime example of the flexibility and evolution of our unified storage architecture. Data ONTAP-v is a fully compatible with NetApp data management tools and integration with physical FAS arrays, vSeries virtualization gateways (for 3rd party arrays), and the IBM N-Series. Architecturally speaking Data ONTAP and Data ONTAP-v run the same code-line.

Obviously I'm not trying to marginalize the engineering efforts required to bring this technology to market; however, as 'ONTAP is ONTAP' customers considering Primergy will be able to leverage our portfolio of integrations and functionality with VMware. As an example...

• The Virtual Storage Console, our vCenter plug-in for storage, VM, and VDI provisioning, storage management, and snapshot based backups.
• Our Storage Replication Adaptor (SRA) for VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) for replicating back to a FAS (or vSeries or N-Series) array in a main datacenter.
• VAAI support of Full Copy, Block Zeroing, and Hardware Assisted Locking (via iSCSI)

I should clarify, Data ONTAP-v includes the same set of APIs as our physical arrays; however, as I write this post I do not have confirmation that Fujitsu has completed the QA process for official support of these points of VMware integration. I’m confident all of these tools will complete any required certifications soon.

Virtualization Changes Everything!

Just imagine the impact the Primergy solution can have in transforming remote IT process in the remote offices where it is deployed. These virtualized data centers in a box can leverage our snapshot-based backups (via the NetApp VSC or partners like CommVault via Sympana 9) with SnapMirror replication to eliminate the need to maintain a remote backup infrastructure and services. Snapshots provide for local recovery points and supports the replication of these backups to another NetApp powered array.

This solution automates yesterday’s backup model and natively provides support for VMware’s Site Recovery Manager. Snapshot backups replicated via SnapMirror can be accessed by SRM in order to restore services in the event of a disaster. The ability to have a single array replicated copy of one’s data that provides offsite archiving and DR access is unmatched in the storage industry.

With the Primergy solution those responsible for backups in remote offices can say ‘goodbye’ to local backup software, tape drives, and offsite tape services!

Wrapping Up This Post

What can I say, I truly excited about the VSA technology and the out-of-box thinking and strategy of Fujitsu. The datacenter in a box concept is simply brilliant! I’d like to suggest (without tipping our hand) that the Primergy solution is the beginning of new generation of storage solutions from NetApp and our technology partners.

The Fujitsu BX400 / SX960 solution is an example of the flexibility that Data ONTAP-v provides NetApp to complement our current storage system portfolio by expanding the use and reach of Data ONTAP for storage and data management in the IT ecosystem. This level of interoperability and integration is unmatched by any current VSA offering!

Data ONTAP-v is currently available exclusively with the Fujitsu SX960 blade via Fujitsu and their worldwide-authorized resellers. For NetApp and NetApp partner engineers interested in learning more about the Fujitsu Primergy solution and Data ONTAP-v please review the FAQ on the NetApp Field Portal.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Primergy solution please checkout Fujitsu.com or contact Fujitsu sales directly at [email protected].

If you have thoughts or suggestions on solutions powered by Data ONTAP-v please let me know. While we have a number of initiatives lined up, we'd love to hear your thoughts!

Comments

[Jon Kohler]

Will the VSA ever be available outside of this offering, potentially with a "learning" or Eval license so non-netapp centric people can experience what NetApp / ONTAP is all about?

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Jon - Today (DOT 8.0.1) is available as a simulator prepackaged as a VM to customers and partners. The capabilities of the ONTAP-v powered VSA will enable a number of new solutions and capabilities and one on our roadmap is a freely distributed VSA for public test/eval. It's coming sooner rather than later, so please be patient.

[DuncanYB]

Couple of things:
- diagram says "Vmware"
- Are there any prices available?
- Will it also hold SSD?
- Any performance numbers around storage?

Excellent piece of kit for SMB type of "Cloud in a box" or "VDI in a box" type of deployments.

[Dan Pancamo]

Now this is what I've been waiting for, I think! A complete all in one virtual solution?

Gonna need to think about this for abit; If ONTAP-v is a VM, and get its disks from vmware, then where does VMware get it's disk from? The SAS array? Will ONTAP-v volumes then be used for the other VMs? via what protocol?

Lots of question here... like do you really need raid inside of ONTAP-v if it's already being provided via hardware?

interesting!

[MLD]

Interresting, but It's hard to understand why a VM is hardlinked to a Fujistu blade server.

Will Ontap-V be supported on any x86 server ?

[Scott McD]

This sounds a lot like Lefthands/HP 's VSA. I had looked at that solution in the past but wasn't sure of the performance of it all, but seeing as this is DataOntap, I'd be more likely to give it a go.

I think @DuncanYB is correct in saying, Cloud in a Box.. Vmware has already stated that ESX is being phased out as of 4.1 and moving strictly to ESXi which can be installed on a usb drive or SD card internally on most modern servers.

So now we can re-purpose all that DAS in our servers and serve it up to the DataONtap-V filer as raw storage. Then image you had two ESX hosts each running Ontap-v and Snapmirror...

Really interested to see where this is all going... going to start with 8.0.1 Sim..:)

[Michael Nauen]

Does the netapp appliance have metrocluster functionality ?
Can it be used with dell and hp servers?

Allthough emc is moving in this direction
http://www.techhead.co.uk/webcast-recording-install-run-the-emc-celerra-virtual-storage-appliance-vsa#comment-12371

[Shawn T]

I'm confused how WAFL/ONTAP would work without a physical NVRAM card present. Isn't the interplay of NVRAM and WAFL a fundamental part of ONTAP? Does the VSA virtualize some of the Fujitsu RAM for this function?

I've always wondered what prevents ONTAP from being installed on any generic x86 server since the vast majority of FAS hardware is commodity. I assumed the NVRAM card is actually NetApp proprietary and what is checked by the BIOS during the OS install. Similar to how Compellent's Storage Center software checks for the presence of their proprietary cache card.

[NK]

If all SAS IOs go through hypervisor layer, it will be extremely slow and will be of little use.

If there is only one Data ONTAP VM running the entire blade, why VMware? Is data ONTAP stack split into multiple VMs (file system, data mgmt)? That will require lot of testing and create need for recertification of APIs.So in that sense ONTAP-v is not ONTAP.

[Ole Andre Schistad]

"If all SAS IOs go through hypervisor layer, it will be extremely slow and will be of little use."

Actually, no.. Hypervisors add very little latency in comparison to the latency of the disks and the end-to-end infrastructure. The primary issue will probably be the lack of a proper write cache on the virtual filer - it most likely has to immediately commit all writes to the cache of the onboard SAS-controller.

But the presence of a hypervisor isn't really all that relevant in this case. The real limiting factor is the storage blade itself; since it can only hold 6 disks you would probably limit this solution to small-scale production such as a remote office, and in my opinion it is an excellent solution for that use case.

Your performance will most likely be limited by the IOPs that those 6 disks can deliver, and by the speed of the medium used to access the filer (most likely 1GbE, possibly spread across multiple NICs for multipath iSCSI).

[Ole Andre Schistad]

I have one question though: Will ONTAP-v support snapshot replication (eg snapmirror)? And specifically, will it support snapmirror between two instances of ONTAP-v?

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Andre - Ontap-v supports replication from virtual to physical systems today. Where the future goes will be driven by partner & customer requests. All functionality is in the VSA, any limitation is merely a software imposed limit.

@Shawn - We have virtualized the NVRAM layer. As I can't find public references I don't believe I can share any more info here. If you're a customer you can contact your sales team and we can setup a NDA briefing to discuss in greater depth.

[Chris]

Great to read, but I don't get why it's tied to a particular hardware platform. That doesn't really let us take advantage of it being a VSA if we can't run it on existing ESX servers we already have and it's functionally equivalent to buying another physical SAN array...

[Vaughn Stewart]

@Chris - I believe we have followed a well established model by delivering a new software based solution on a certified platform. This model is very common, for example VMware ESXi is only supoorted on a number of server platforms. Can ESXi run on non-supported hardware? Absolutely.

With our initial foray into the VSA marketed we needed to ensure consistency in delivering our capabilities to the customer, and our internal metrics show that we've accomplished this goal.

At this point I'd love to share with you the VSA roadmap, but unfortunately I can not share NDA roadmaps in my blog. What I will share is we have plans to continue to innovate and the VSA is an interesting platform for us to innovate with.

Stay tuned, I'll share more when it is appropriate.