The Virtual Storage Guy

Cisco Live Q&A – EMC vSpecialists Tee Glasgow, Scott Lowe, Rick Scherer & Nick Weaver

As Cisco Live comes to a close I was able to sit down with some good friends in the vSpecialist organization at EMC to share their perspectives on Cisco Live and the adoption of Cloud computing. Joining me this morning is (from left to right):

Rick Scherer - VCDX, Author of VMwareTips.com and vSpecialist at EMC.

Tee Glasgow - Former WAN Engineer, UNIX SysAdmin, Solaris bigot, VMware employee #700-ish, and current EMC vSpecialist. Husband to 1, father to 2, and homeslice to many.

Scott Lowe - An IT pro specializing in virtualization, VMware, storage, servers, and Macs; currently working for EMC Corporation

Nick Weaver – IT Architect & geek extraordinaire. VMware vExpert, EMC vSpecialist, Cisco junkie, Microsoft coder, Linux lover. I make things.

Note: This interviewed originally occurred on Thursday, July 14th; the last day of Cisco Live. I should also point out, that while these guys are employees of EMC, the views expressed in this interview are their own and are not official statements of EMC.

Vaughn: "Good morning guys, my sincerest thanks for making the time to get together to chat. It can be tough to find the motivation to make it to the show floor early on the last morning of a conference. With that said, let’s jump into the interview. I’m rather interested in your thoughts around the types of conversations you were having at with the Cisco Live attendees around the show and cloud computing."

Tee: "This week we’ve had a lot of discussions with attendees that are well beyond the scope of storage. Theses conversations may start with storage but quickly expand into areas like the network or virtualization layers. It’s apparent that Cisco Live has evolved from a network-centric tradeshow to one focusing on advancing the capabilities of the data center."

Cisco Live chat with Abhinav Joshi of Cisco & Wade Holmes of VMware

My week here in Vegas started with breakfast with Cisco’s Abhinav Joshi, VMware’s Wade Holmes, and NetApp’s Friea Berg. You probably already know this bunch from Twitter or their blogs, but for those who may not know them allow me to share a quick intro:

Abhinav is a Sr. Cloud Solutions Architect at Cisco. He was recognized as a VMware vExpert in 2011 & 2010, and has many technical certifications from VMware, NetApp, Cisco, EMC, & Citrix. His blog can be found at http://blogs.cisco.com/author/abhinavjoshi.

Wade is a Technical Solution Architect at VMware focusing on cloud solutions. He is VCDX#15, and holds a number of industry certifications including VCAP-DCD, VCP4, VCP3, VCP2, CISSP, CCSK, and ABCP. His blog posts can be found at: http://vWade.com.

Friea works in NetApp's alliance organization and is passionate about 'all things' involving Cisco & NetApp like FlexPod.

Here's our conversation from Monday morning...

VMware to Announce the Next Generation of their Cloud Infrastructure Offerings

On Tuesday July 12th, VMware CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod will announce the next generation of VMware cloud infrastructure offerings. This worldwide event titled “Raising the Bar, Part V” begins at 9:00AM PDT. The event will be broadcasted live.

Agenda:

• 9:00-9:45 Maritz and Herrod present
• 10:00-12:00 five tracks of deep dive breakout sessions
• 10:00-12:00 live Q&A with VMware cloud and virtualization experts

By viewing the live stream you will become eligible to win a free pass to VMworld.

Look for a number of posts from our cloud and virtualization experts following the event. I expect there's a lot to discuss. :^)

Thank You VMware for the vExpert Award

From time to time I tend to overcommit myself, which results in a drop in blog posts. My sincerest apologies for the recent dip. I have number of posts and conversations I have to follow up on and to begin I’d like to extend my sincerest gratitude to John Troyer and everyone at VMware including me in their list of community advocates who they have recognized as VMware vExperts for 2011.

A vExpert is someone who shares their technical expertise and experience, provides guidance and direction, and evangelizes the value of VMware virtualization solutions. One of the best attributes of the vExpert community is it’s diversity. As it is comprised of administrators, engineers, and architects from VMware, their customers and technology partners; they collectively bring an unmatched breadth of perspective, knowledge, and innovation to help others achieve their virtualization goals.

I'd like to acknowledge and congratulate all of the NetApp vExperts for 2011. They are all rock stars who if you aren’t already following, I’d encourage you to begin.

Chris Gebhardt aka ‘Dr. Desktop’ @chrisgeb

Scott Baker @lilbaker83

Nick Howell @that1guynick

Glenn Sizemore @glnsize

Thanks again VMware!  

 

Storage for Desktops - Simple Versus Complicated

I’ve had some great meetings with a number of customers this week and in one of them they were very interested in understanding NetApp’s value proposition with VMware View. They were specifically interested in understanding how NetApp could deliver high levels of storage I/O from a dense, and cost-effective, storage footprint.

As a point of reference they drew what they perceived as a ‘simple’ storage layout on the whiteboard. They believed that such a storage configuration was an optimal means to deliver performance, cost savings, and operational simplicity for a View deployment of 500 users.

I was really surprised at what they drew and thought this would be a simple example to share with you how different NetApp arrays are from offerings from the traditional array vendors.

The image they drew included the layout I have recreated below.

NetApp Releases VSC 2.1 vCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere

NetApp has released the Virtual Storage Console 2.1 (VSC); our VMware vCenter plug-in. Behind the scenes the VSC is actually a framework from a number of sub-plug-ins (VSC, Rapid Cloning Utility and SMVI) delivered in a single installation. We created this sub-plug-in architecture as a way to enable new plug-ins without having to create multiple NetApp tabs in vCenter.

The main feature in the VSC 2.1 is a rewritten infrastructure discovery process. As I don't write code I am challenged to share with you the details of the changes made; however, I can share with you that a 30 node vSphere cluster, booting from SAN, with 1,505 virtual machines stored on 69 datastores used to take 35.45 minutes to discover. With version 2.1 the baseline discovery process now completes in 1.94 minutes and subsequent updates complete in 16 seconds!

The VSC also includes a new version of MBRAlign that supports I/O offload for correcting misaligned partitions in VMs running on NFS datastores. This capability reduces load on the hypervisor and storage network in order to reduce the time required to align the partition in the VMDK.

The VSC is the recommended best practice for deploying VMware on NetApp. It's also a free product available on the NOW site. Note, the backup and store capability requires a SMVI license.

Here's an overview of the capabilities of the VSC and enablments available in vCenter:

Supported Configurations

Introducing NetApp SnapProtect Backup

Over the past 5 years, server virtualization has changed the data center forever and these changes have had a far-reaching impact on data center architectures and operations. One of the areas often discussed as having been affected, is the ever increasing shared storage footprint. I’d suggest to you, that in my customer engagements storage costs are concern 1A closely followed by concern 1B, backup and recovery.

The shared physical infrastructure required with server virtualization has made completion of backup operations difficult. These challenges have led us to reevaluating how we accomplish business continuance goals, and the most logical place to start is the area with the most pain; backup and recovery. Gartner’s recent Magic Quadrant report for Enterprise Disk-Based Backup & Recovery highlights the changes customers are facing and reinforces change is in tow.

• By 2014, at least 30% of organizations will have changed backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity and/or capability.
• By 2014, 80% of the market will choose advanced, disk-based appliances and backup software-only solutions over distributed VTLs.
• By 2014, deduplication will cease to be available as a stand-alone; rather, it will become a feature of broader data storage and data management solutions.

In order to increase our ability to meet the business continuance goals of today and tomorrow NetApp has announced the release of SnapProtect. The SnapProtect management software is our latest backup and recovery application that enables businesses to combine the benefits of our integrated data protection and storage efficiency technologies with applications and virtual infrastructures, provides a backup catalog supporting disk backups and tape archives, and provides the framework for enhanced disaster recovery capabilities (enabled by our virtualization partners) that are truly unmatched in the industry.

SnapProtect provides a plethora of capabilities that are too much for a single post to cover, so for today allow me to introduce you to some of the core constructs of SnapProtect.

The Industry’s Fastest Backup

SnapProtect provides a single interface to provide NetApp snapshot backups for physical and virtual servers. Snapshots are hardware based recovery points on the production array. They are created almost instantly and with almost zero impact on the production environment.

Voting for VMworld 2011 Sessions Ends Today

Just a gentle reminder that today is the last day to cast your votes for the break out sessions presented at VMworld 2011.

The list of NetApp-related sessions is here.

My comments on some of the multi-storage vendor panel sessions is here.

Why are you reading this line, Go Vote!

New vSphere 4.1 Report: Measuring SAN & NAS Performance

NetApp and VMware performance engineering have completed a new storage performance technical report, TR-3916. This new report provides the relative I/O performance available from SAN and NAS storage protocols with vSphere 4.1 and a NetApp FAS array.

The testing in the new TR-3916 is a leap forward from our previous reports as it includes results obtained from shared and non-shared datastores, has VAAI enabled, and measures the gains provided by the Paravirtual SCSI adapter.

NetApp and VMware engineering believe that these tests result in the most accurate measurement of the performance capabilities of the storage protocols in vSphere as the test bed remains consistent throughout the testing. In fact, switching between SAN protocols with a NetApp array is as simple as mapping a different igroup (aka LUN mask). No reconfiguration or migration was required in completing the FC, FCoE, and iSCSI tests; just a simple rescan of the storage adapters from the hosts.

For the NAS (NFS) tests, our engineers simply created a FlexVol and connected it to the hosts in the cluster. The remainder of environment was unchanged, i.e. we leveraged the same arrays, disks, converged network adapters, etc… with the exception of the LUN we deleted.

The Test Bed

The test bed was comprised of a 8-node vSphere 4.1 cluster. Each host was powered by a Fujitsu Primergy RX200 with 2 Quad-core Intel Xeon E5507 Nehalem CPUs & 48GBs of memory, Qlogic CNA & HBAs, and Intel NICs. The I/O load was generated by 128 VMs, each running IOMeter.

VMworld 2011: Offering More G14 Classified Information from Storage Experts

Two of the mostly highly rated sessions presented at VMworld 2010 were TA8133: Best Practices to Increase Availability and Throughput for VMware & TA8623: Storage Super-Heavyweight Challenge. I believe part of the reason these two sessions were so highly rated was that they both presented the role and future direction of storage in a shared cloud infrastructure from multiple storage industry experts including NetApp, EMC, HP, and Dell.

Topics discussed by multiple storage vendors tend to be very popular with the public. Their appeal has also resonated in the blogosphere where joint efforts like the iSCSI & NFS posts are some of the most read on my blog.

Well some of us are back at it again, submitting a number of sessions for your consideration as sessions presented at VMworld 2011. If you’d like to get the inside scoop, literally G14 classified information on storage integration, performance, and capabilities, then please consider voting for the following sessions.

1623
Storage Super heavyweight Smackdown 2011
(NetApp, EMC, HP, Dell, VMware Professional.com)

VMworld 2011 Session Voting is Open – Viva la community!

As a means to ensure the content presented in the breakout sessions at VMworld & VMworld Europe are cutting edge, real world, and appealing VMware allows customers, partners, industry analysts and VMware employees to participate in the content creation process. Frankly, I’m not sure any worldwide conference can compare to VMworld in terms of the amount of the influence their community directly has on determining the content presented at the shows.

“Viva la Community!”

Many in VMware responded to the April 12th call for papers. To those who submitted a session abstract, thank you! There are some truly great ones in consideration. The call for papers was only the start for the selection process.

If you plan to attend either the US or Europe event or have attended in previous years, it is time for you to cast your votes for the submissions that will comprise the breakout session catalog this fall. We need help whittling 1,1664 submissions down to approximately 170 unique sessions for the US and roughly 130 for Europe.

Don’t Dawdle. Don’t Hesitate. Don’t wait, procrastinate, stall or delay…
cast your votes today!

Note: If you don't have a VMworld account, it appears you can create a one and complete the process at a later time in order to cast your votes today.


The Submissions from NetApp

New FlexPod CVD Released – Microsoft SharePoint 2010

One of the key goals of the FlexPod architecture is accelerating the adoption of tier 1 applications. In delivering this goal Cisco & NetApp work with our infrastructure partners to producing and validating best in class architecture design guides that ensure solution design, supportability, availability and scalability. The use of these Cisco Validated Designs result in a reduction of resources required bringing a solution online.

We’ve released increase the FlexPod CVD library with the release of our SharePoint 2010 enterprise deployment design guide. This CDV details how to deploy Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for a real-world workload of 50,000 users. The design validation was completed using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate workloads and Visual Studio Load Test agents.

 

Wikibon Survey - VMware Storage Integration

Running VMware on NetApp? Maybe you run on a traditional storage array? Wikibon is conducting a survey looking to determine what storage capabilities and integrations are valuable to you within your VMware environment. If you take a minute to share your thoughts, you might just win an iPad 2!

The Wikibon Project, with it's mission to help IT practitioners learn from each other, is looking for your assistance with a brief survey on storage in VMware environments. Your information will give valuable detail as to how the industry is doing on "The Value of VMware Integration Journey" - see the 2010 research at The Value of the VMware Integration Journey. If you are a company that has installed storage for VMware environments or is in the business of selling/consulting on these environments, we ask you to take this 10-15 minute survey.

Click Here to Start the Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5KCSR8K

Survey participants who provide their contact detail will be entered in a drawing. The drawing will take place immediately after the survey is closed. The winner of this drawing will receive an iPad2. Your contact detail will only be used to contact you for the prize or for follow-up if you opt-in.For any questions on this survey, please contact us by clicking here.

Welcome Scott Baker and Virtualutopia

Ever feel like you're on a roll where everything is going your way, like the gods are looking down on you favorably? Well, that's how I've been feeling while we've been growing the virtualization solutions business unit and it is my pleasure to introduce you to one of our latest additions, Scott Baker!

Scott has over 20 years of IT industry experience, including 6 years at EMC and a leader in the vSpecialist team. He provides a wealth of knowledge ranging from developing code to helping customers understand and consume technology.

I'd like to share with you a compliment a current (and unnamed) vSpecialist shared he once paid to Scott. He said, "Scott's so talented that rumor has it that Peyton Manning is often referred to as the Scott Baker of the NFL." While it may read as hyperbole, in my opinion that comment is spot on!

I've known Scott for a while now and I suspect you will share the same opinion should you begin following Virtualutopia. Heck, his first post includes Star Wars, NetApp, and EMC! What more could you want?

Partners Love FlexPod - Success Stories

At VMware Partner Exchange, I was blown away with the number of success stories our partners shared around the impact FlexPod has made within their customer accounts. As I prepare for CiscoLive, the Empired Cloud Symposium, and a number of visits with partners in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth I’d like to share with you some additional partner feedback.

In these clips Paul and Robert discuss how FlexPod for VMware is accelerating their customers’ needs to reduce the time required to bring solutions to market. With unmatched flexibility, efficiency, partner ecosystem for providing on-demand resources, and catalog of validated application design guides, FlexPod is clearly the most complete private cloud architecture available today.

Don’t Take My Word For It

Below Paul Sorgiovanni, Data Management Practice Manager at Empired LTD, shares his thoughts on how FlexPod has helped Empired evolve from a traditional systems integrator to as a trusted advisor while accelerating their customers adoption of a private cloud.

Welcome Nick Howell and the Virtual Arcade

Our Cloud and Virtualization Technical Marketing Engineering Team recently added the well-know and highly respected industry expert Nick Howell (aka That1GuyNick). I get jazzed every time I’m in the room Nick. He has this energy he brings in the combination of lethal technical chops and unbridled passion to share with others.

Nick’s opened the Virtual Arcade which promises to focus on ‘all things VMware vCloud’ including Director, Connector, Hybrid Cloud, Backup and Business Continuity etc. Knowing Nick's work in area such as virtualizing Oracle, the vArcade looks like it might be one well worth subscribing to.

Virtual Storage Tiering and Desktop Virtualization

Last week I presented our portfolio of desktop virtualization solutions to a group of Cisco engineers and account managers. These solutions are built on FlexPod and include desktop virtualization technologies from VMware and Citrix, include automated configuration instructions, and each is certified as a Cisco Validated Design (CVD). In short, we are working together to deliver integrated solutions intended to address the broadest set of IT and user requirements.

Today I want to share with you some of the data presented during this call that is truly amazing and clearly demonstrates why NetApp is the market leader in providing storage for virtual desktop solutions with Cisco, VMware, and Citrix.

Allow me to level set the discussion before going deeper

In terms of I/O load, desktop virtualization has two distinct operational modes that I’ll refer to as ‘Steady State’ and ‘I/O Storms’.

Is NetApp Missing from your Datacenter?

On behalf of NetApp, I’m writing to you with a simple proposition:

For your next storage purchase, you should consider NetApp.

Things move at a fast, if not exponential pace in the data center. The advent of virtual infrastructures and cloud computing has introduced a new set of requirements that redefined the value proposition of storage arrays within a cloud infrastructure stack.

The storage array that you ultimately select is responsible for maintaining most (if not all) of your organization’s intellectual property. This means that the success of your organization is dependent on the infrastructure that supports it and is tied to you ability to affect change in the quality of the storage you introduce.

Gone are the days when a shared storage platform simply provided high performance and data availability for a select set of business critical applications. Today, arrays MUST serve all of the data in the data center with greater than five (5) 9’s of availability while bringing to bear key enabling technologies such as: storage efficiency, data mobility, disaster resilience, continuous data protection, security and many, many more. Oh, did I mention that all this is predicated on a solution that must be repeatable, operationally consistent, non-disruptive, easy to manage, and able to grow with you and your business without adding unnecessary burdens to the adoption process?

What I have just articulated are array-specific requirements I have seen across the board – whether you are a small to medium business, a medium to lower-end enterprise, or a full on enterprise class customer. In every customer engagement that I have, these are always topics of conversation, and to you my fellow reader, I can only hope that many of these requirements are ringing true in your mind.

Now, if you do have a traditional storage array, then your existing vendor is likely a large and successful company with a long history of delivering big-iron solutions. Ideally, they have been there for you through the time of mainframes and open system through today’s emerging virtualization technologies, but you should ask yourself: “are they still offering a multitude of platforms under one banner, each offering a unique a specially tailored feature-set to address some portion of you virtual datacenter needs and ultimately your organization’s requirements?”

If you answered “no”, then let me thank you for being a NetApp customer ☺, otherwise, I encourage you to read on.

If you are open to new possibilities to extend your datacenter capabilities, especially for virtualization initiatives, or haven’t taken a closer look at NetApp’s technologies recently, then I’d like to offer you some compelling reasons as to why you should.

FlexPod for VMware Deployment Model CVD Now Available

Customers are moving away from silos of information and moving toward shared infrastructures to virtualized environments and eventually to the cloud to increase agility and reduce costs. As a means to accelerate customers move toward a shard cloud platform Cisco, NetApp, and VMware released FlexPod™; a preconfigured and validated cloud architecture built on the Cisco® Unified Computing System™ (UCS), Cisco Nexus® data center switches, NetApp® FAS storage components, and a range of software partners.

Today Cisco & NetApp published our latest Cisco Validated Design (CVD) titled the FlexPod for VMware Deployment Model. This document describes the basic architecture of FlexPod for VMware as well as the general procedures for deploying a base FlexPod for VMware configuration. This document is intended for engineers who want to deploy a FlexPod for VMware architecture.

The CVD program consists of systems and solutions designed, tested, and documented to facilitate faster, more reliable, and more predictable customer deployments.

Why Partners Love FlexPod

I’ve caught a little break in my schedule here at VMware Partner Exchange, and thought I’d take a moment to share with you some of the 'keys to success' NetApp partners are having with FlexPod for VMware.

1. Flexibility of the Size of the Platform

The ability to be able to scale a solution, from diminutive to colossal, FlexPod provides a means to deliver custom-tailored solutions designed to fit a project’s requirements versus attempting to fit a project to a fixed architecture.

2. Enhanced Service Offerings

FlexPod allows partners to lead the delivery of the platform and it’s associated services. Customers win as they receive turnkey solutions with high-touch service from a trusted advisor. This delivery model allows partners to deepen their relationship with their customers.

Partners are providing a wide spectrum of services for FlexPod in areas such as:

• Business Justification
• Assessment
• Architectural Planning
• Implementation
• Providing level 1 & level 2 Support

3. Integration with Systems Management Platforms

The FlexPod architecture provides a set of open APIs that enable IT service management with third-party infrastructure and systems management solutions. This capability provides partners with an advantage when positioning FlexPod in their customer’s environments. The decision to offer FlexPod complete with systems management and orchestration capabilities can be determined on a customer-by-customer basis.

4. Density Wins Deals

It’s fairly well understood that the ability to increase the density of one’s infrastructure can provide a significant benefit in lowering operational expenses of a data center. FlexPod is unique as it is the only validated stack architecture which extends the increase in density provided by vSphere, UCS, and Nexus by providing unmatched storage efficiency via data deduplication for production applications.

What is interesting is partners are leveraging the costs savings provided by dedupe in a number of creative ways including:

• Passing the cost savings on to the customer
• Ensuring their margins
• Financing an increase in solution capabilities without increasing the customer’s original budget

Partners stated a number of examples ranging from an increase in UCS nodes to adding in business continuance components with VMware Site Recovery Manager.

I commend the ability of our partners to turn a technical capability of a NetApp array into a means where they demonstrate their expertise in designing cloud based architectures that increases their value in the eyes of the customer.

Wrapping Up

I feel very fortunate to work with such a great group of partners; you guys (and gals) truly rock! Thank you for being a partner and sharing your success stories with me. I need to run, but hope to find time to share more thoughts before Partner Exchange wraps up.

Thoughts on 2011 - Technical Trends for Clouds

Recently, a number of us at NetApp were asked to share our thoughts around our expectations for 2011. The topics shared by thought leaders at NetApp from the likes of Val Bercovici to Jay Kidd ran the gamut from global economic conditions to ITaaS offerings to object-oriented storage architectures. As one might expect, the thoughts I shared were a bit more technical in nature and focused on the integration of storage technologies with virtualization and cloud-based constructs.

Over the past several years, I’ve been providing this type of guidance regarding product requirements, technical advancements, partner solutions, and the like relating to the product managers and technical Directors responsible for developing our virtualization related solutions. After sharing my thoughts within NetApp, I thought you might be interested in some of the guidance I provided for 2011.

I will admit as I write this post that I am thrilled by the concept of sharing, receiving feedback, and eventually reviewing the accuracy of my ”predictions.” Before I do, I would like to stress that the views I share are my own. They are not to be considered official NetApp statements.

So with that disclaimer out of the way, here are my predictions for 2011 pertaining to how storage will advance within cloud & virtual infrastructures…

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...

BMC is Leading Cloud Infrastructure Management

Today BMC Software and Cisco announced a strategic alliance to develop and market new solutions for large-scale multi-tenant cloud computing infrastructures. This is phenomenal news as last year NetApp and BMC formed our strategic alliance to provide joint customers with the solutions and infrastructure to accelerate the adoption of cloud infrastructures.

Today's announcement will result in end-to-end solutions with the ability to provision and manager servers, networking, storage arrays and virtual machines. The combination of these mutual alliances provide joint BMC, Cisco, and NetApp customers the benefit of a fully automated end-to-end cloud infrastructure beginning with the initial service request to “one click” provisioning, deployment, management and decommissioning, which extends to address the most complex & demanding deployments like our joint Secure Multi-Tenancy solution or FlexPOD architectures.

So What’s Available Today?

Today customers who deploy cloud services via BMC Business Service Management platform can have the NetApp storage catalog as an integrated component via BMC’s Atrium Orchestrator. This means a storage administrator can define the policies for NetApp efficiency, availability, provisioning and protection, and have storage provisioned automatically as part of an enterprise service catalog. This integration includes NetApp Provisioning Manager and the VSC 2.0 via the BMC Cloud Extension Pack for Cloud Lifecycle Management.

Cisco VXI Ups the Ante

Last week NetApp rocked the industry with our most significant product launch ever. Cisco played a key role with the release of FlexPods, a validated, pre-designed, base configuration built on Cisco UCS and Nexus and NetApp FAS storage components designed to be elastic and to scale incrementally both up and out.

This week our positions are reversed.

Cisco today announced the Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI), a vision that includes a comprehensive desktop virtualization reference architecture and solution spanning collaboration, borderless networking and data center technologies. The VXI design incorporates Citrix XenDesktop and VMware View to offer solutions that have been built and validated through extensive three-way collaboration between Citrix-Cisco-NetApp and VMware-Cisco-NetApp.

Announcing FlexPod for VMware from Cisco & NetApp

Today we held our ‘Future Ready’ event, which was the largest product launch in the history of NetApp. This launch was so extensive it included updates to three quarters of our portfolio and introduced a slew of net new features, products, and solutions.

Am I excited? That’s an understatement!

Current global economic conditions are reshaping business and success is becoming increasingly dependent on the ability of IT to transition to a flexible and efficient shared IT infrastructure that enables IT and accelerate business. NetApp is innovating to meet these challenges and id like to highlight just a few of the key announcements included in today's launch!

• High End FAS & vSeries 6200 platforms: Defining high-end performance


• Mid Range FAS & vSeries 3200 platforms: Delivering outstanding value and efficiency
• New disk drives & shelves: Increasing efficiency and performance via a 2.5” form factor and the introduction of SSD
• Data ONTAP 8.0.1: Includes delivers support for VAAI & inline data compression (to name just a few highlights)


• Unified Connect 10 GbE CNAs: Providing 'one wire' for all I/O and workloads
• OnCommand Management: Software for managing shared IT Infrastructures


• FlexPod for VMware: Introduces a new enterprise data center solution that is pre-sized and integrates NetApp, Cisco, and VMware technologies to help customers deploy shared IT infrastructures more efficiently and effectively

There’s so much content to dig into and share that you should expect a significant number of posts from many at NetApp over the next few days. Per my norm, I will share with you details on a number of these technologies specifically as the pertain to virtual and cloud infrastructures starting with FlexPod.

Cisco and NetApp Announce FlexPod for VMware

As a part of Today’s Future Ready Launch we announced FlexPod for VMware, a infrastructure designed to enhance and accelerate the adoption of private and public cloud. FlexPod was developed in partnership with Cisco, NetApp and VMware and were modeled after the infrastructures delivering services for the world’s largest cloud service providers.

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).

One Day Remaining to Vote for the Top VMware Virtualization Blogs

Only one day remains for avid blog readers to cast their votes for the top 25 VMware / virtualization based blogs. vSphere-Land (aka Eric Seibert) has been running this poll for the past few years and the number of blogs nominated have grown immensely over this period of time. In fact, this year's poll contains 100 blogs!

If you have a list of blogs which you read religiously and find valuable, please share them with the community by voting! Go vote now before it’s too late!

VMworld 2010: Storage Super Heavyweight Challenge Video

At long last, I was able to find a video copy of the panel session TA8623, the Storage Super Heavyweight Challenge. Thanks to Simon Seagrave for the recording and posting the video.

This session was very rewarding on multiple levels, first it was a reunion of sorts for Adam, Eric, Chad, and I (we contributed on the multi-vendor iSCSI best practices post and on the VMware communities podcast #66).

The session was hosted by Cody Bunch and Mike Laverick, which featured an open format where the audience posed a question to the panel and each member had 2 minutes to respond.

It was very rewarding to see this session materialize as Chad and I have been attempting to have such a session for three years!

I'm confident that I speak for all of the panelist when I share that this was way too much fun for it to be considered work! I'd like to thank all who participated and attended in this session. Give the session a watch or listen (thanks Techtarget for the MP3), I'd love to read your feedback.

(you can also download a copy of the video for your iPod/iPhone here)

VMware HA, VM-Host Affinity Rules, and how they apply with Metrocluster

Duncan Epping of VMware and Yellow-Bricks has posted a nice write up on running VMware on a NetApp MetroCluster with VM-Host Affinity Rules (new in vSphere 4.1). In summary this new capability allows one to restrict the boundaries of HA capabilities to a limited number of ESX/ESXi hosts within a HA cluster for a set of VMs.

As you may imagine, this works very well when your cluster is stretched across two data centers which are 100 kms apart.

For more details, I'd suggest you check out Duncan's article over at Yellow-Bricks.

If you need more of a primer on VM-Host Affinity, I'd suggest you hit Frank Denneman's blog as he has a crafted a great post on this technology which some may find useful to read prior to heading over to Yellow-Bricks.

If you are looking for more information on running vSphere on a MetroCluster, please see TR-3788 written by Larry Touchette.

Thanks VCDX007 & VCDX029 for sharing this info!

Updated: vSphere on NetApp Storage Best Practices v2.1

Quick heads up, our VMware vSphere on NetApp: Storage Best Practices Technical Report TR-3749 version 2.1 has been released.

Here's a quick summary of what's new in version 2.1:

Have Your Questions Asked at the VMworld Storage SuperHeavy Weight Challenge

We are just weeks away from VMworld 2010 in San Francisco, and we need your help with the Storage Super Heavyweight Challenge (breakout session TA8623). The hosts of this session Tom Howarth & Cody Bunch are seeking your input and interests regarding the topics discussed in this session.

What questions would you like to see posed to the panel?
Please post your questions as a comment here
Please provide suggestions beyond an EMC - NetApp slugfest ;^)

For this post I borrowed two cells from 'The VM Crowd' episode 1, thanks to Hany Michael for the laughs!

NFS, VMware, and Unintended Consequences!

When it comes to storage interconnects for VMware deployments I'm rather biased; unified multi-protocol storage platforms like NetApp FAS should be the ONLY consideration for any sizable installation. Unified multi-protocol platforms allow for customers to receive the benefits of both NAS (NFS) and SAN (FC, FCoE, iSCSI) based connectivity from a single array. Once one collapses their FC & Ethernet networks into a unified storage fabric (ala Cisco 10GbE) i would seem rather odd to not consider deploying unified array platforms.

It's been well documented that for shared datastores and most applications NFS delivers the greatest amount of flexibility, scalability, and storage virtualization. The true value of NFS is not a technical discussion but rather one of operational savings as NFS provides unbelievable simplicity when managing massive numbers of VMs. Think 'set-it-and-forget-it.'

For applications that have requirements to be ran on a block-based storage protocol, say for reasons like block-based data management toolsets or out-of-date technical support statements, FC/FCoE/iSCSI fulfills these areas of need and completes the value of a unified storage platform.

I understand those who have yet to experience VMware on NetApp NFS maybe skeptical of my statements. Such is fair criticism, as always one should be skeptical of all claims made by all vendors.

As a means to help validate some of the points shared around the usage of NFS I'd like to introduce you to a recent post from Martin Glassborow, aka the StorageBod, entitled, "NFS, VMware, and Unintended Consequences!" Martin is a serious data center architect and storage expert who knows his stuff.

Check out his short post and comments section on running Vmware on NFS and the unexpected results it delivers for Martin. BTW - I love this quote from the post, "(NFS) moved VMWare firmly and squarely into NetApp's sweet spot."

FACT: VMware vSphere on NetApp is Faster and Greener

 

I'd like to ask you, do you think the following statements are generally considered to be true?

1. Virtualization is software, and hardware is simply hardware
2. RAID10 out performs all other RAID types that provide data protection (redundancy)
3. Fibre Channel provides greater I/O performance than NFS for virtualized workloads
4. Deduplicated data sets perform slower than traditional data sets

I believe that for most these statements are considered true and why shouldn’t they? These views originate from historical validation in our physical infrastructures. Moreover, most of us are not storage experts, intimately familiar with nuances in arrays architectures and capabilities. For most SAN & NAS storage is just a black box and thus storage is simply hardware; or as my good friend Duncan Epping likes to say, ‘just spinning tin’

 

Spinning Tin

Duncan’s comment of spinning tin led me to ponder, does hardware matter with server virtualization? On one hand no, it does not as the hardware layer has been abstracted to a point where customers at any time can non-disruptively migrate to a net-new platform.

Yet on the other hand hardware does truly matter.

The level of intelligence and capability in the hardware provides greater performance, solution sets, functionality, and points of integration (both direct like VAAI and indirect like dedupe).

Free Book - vSphere on NetApp Best Practices

I’m pleased to announce that NetApp is giving away published copies of our vSphere on NetApp Storage Best Practices book! This offer is open to the first 1,000 eligible individuals who have a shipping address in the US or Canada. The vSphere on NetApp book has been extremely popular and now is your chance to scoop one for free! This is the same 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 vSphere on NetApp. Below is the book's description from Lulu.

Ensure your VMware vSphere on NetApp deployment delivers the highest performance, functionality, and storage efficiencies. This book will cover all basis including ESX/ESXi storage connectivity with FC, iSCSI, FCoE, and NFS; and array configurations including data deduplication and optimal datastore/Virtual Machines layouts. The Second edition highlights new vStorage capabilities and integrations available to VI admins with the NetApp vCenter plug-ins.

The book registers at just under 26,000 words and runs 124 pages and the authors of book are employees of NetApp and Cisco.

 

Grab a Discounted VMworld Full Conference Pass from NetApp

NetApp is providing a discount for the purchase of a full conference pass for individuals attending either VMworld in San Francisco or VMworld in Copenhagen. The NetApp discount reduces the price from $1745 to $1495 (USD) and € 1150 to € 950 (Euro).

You should also be aware of additional discount rates available from VMware for VMworld Alumni, students and faculty (aka educational rate), government employees, and VCPs.

You can take advantage of the NetApp when you register for VMworld via this URL:

http://www.vmworld.com/registration.jspa?sponsorCode=NAPP

Simply use one of the following codes when completing your purchase:

San Francisco 
code: NETAPP_EB_US2010
Copenhagen code: NETAPP_EB_EMEA2010

Once you register, don’t forget to sign up for a one-on-one meeting with a NetApp vExpert in our Genius Lounge!

Update: According to Nick Howell the NetApp discount can be applied retroactively, so anyone who has already purchased a full access pass can still receive the discount by sending an email request to: [email protected].

Attend VMworld 2010 and have a one-on-one meeting with a NetApp vExpert

One of the best parts of attending VMworld is the wealth of information shared in breakout sessions, hands-on labs, and in vendor booths. This year NetApp is making our vExperts and subject matter experts available for one-on-one meetings and/or demos for attendees of VMworld 2010 in San Francisco!

We expect these spots to go quick so if you're interested discussing the following topics I'd suggest you hit the NetApp Communities and request your meeting today!

• VDI & VMware View on NetApp (View integration, hardware assisted cloning, dedupe, FlashCache, etc)
• vCloud & Orchestration (vCloud integration ponts, orchestration partners & partner capabilities, etc)
• Solutions from the Cisco, NetApp, & VMware Alliance (LDVM, SMT, E2E FCoE, and more)
• Virtualizing Enterprise Business Applications (Best practices, Snapshot backups, SRM, data mobility, etc)

P.S. Rumor has it if you're not already a member of the NetApp community, you might want to join before attending VMworld. ;^)

End-To-End FCoE: ONLY available from Cisco, NetApp, & VMware

Today the Imagine Virtually Anything Alliance (IVA) of Cisco, NetApp, and VMware announced the industry’s first certified end-to-end Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) solution for VMware cloud deployments and virtual infrastructures.

This certification is a significant milestone in the evolution and maturation of FCoE and converged 10Gb Ethernet networks. The adoption of this architecture reduces the total number of storage networking devices and the network cabling required within a data center drivingmeasurablecost savings in both CapEx and OpEx.

Cisco, NetApp, and VMware are currently the ONLY networking, storage, and virtualization vendors providing a joint certified end-to-end FCoE solution that includes the CNA (FCoE initiator), network (Cisco Nexus 5000 series) and storage target (NetApp FAS Unified Arrays) with VMware (vSphere).

On Certification

The validation of the End-To-End FCoE design was completed as a part of the VMware Hardware Certification Program and is currently listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide.

(click to view at full scale)

Support for deployments build on architecture is provided jointly by Cisco, NetApp, and VMware.

Virtual Storage Console 2.0 is Available for Download

This morning NetApp released our unified vCenter plug-in for VMware vSphere the Virtual Storage Console 2.0 (aka the VSC2). Customers running NetApp FAS or 3-party storage arrays virtualized with vSeries can download the VSC via NOW.

(click to view at full size)

Last week I shared many of the details around the capabilities of the VSC 2 such as audit, optimize, provision, clone, backup & restore and more; in the following posts:

• Licensing Details for the VSC 2.0 vSphere Plug-in
  
  
• NetApp VSC 2.0 vCenter Plug-in Announced

I left out a few items in these posts including...

• The VSC is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions
  
• The use of the VSC2 is our recommended best practice for vSphere deployments
• We are close to posting an updated release of our vSphere storage best practices document, TR-3749 which will include the addition of the VSC2 along with details around vStorage integrations
• We are working with IBM to get the VSC2 available to N-Series customers and once I receive an update I'll pass it along.

As always, thanks to all who have commented and shared their thoughts and questions in the comments sections of these posts. You help keep the information flowing.

Data Storage for Virtual Desktops (VDI)

Do you know John Martin? If the name doesn't ring a bell then allow me to introduce you to John. He's worked for a number of storage vendors in his 25 year career including Legato, Veritas, StorageTek, EMC, and NetApp. His blog, Storage Without Borders, is a fantastic resource for those looking to understand the technical differences between NetApp and Traditional Legacy Storage Array architectures.

I'd like to highlight some of John's recent work, his 'Data Storage for VDI' series is top shelf. It informs the reader as to limits found with all traditional storage hardware and how NetApp engineering has implemented intelligence specific to the array which is optimized for virtual infrastructures and cloud deployments.

Trust me on this one; there's nothing more difficult than for a storage array to provide a high level of data protection, can meet the mass burst-ability requirements associated with VDI, and is cost effective. If it were easy, VDI would be common place on traditional storage arrays.

I encourage you to read John's posts. I promise you, you will understand how NetApp is making VDI a reality in many massive deployments. It'll also provide you with some insight as to how customers can leverage NetApp storage to provide virtual desktops at $25 a user per month (more on this in a future post).

We have many 5 figure deployments (in terms of seat-counts) with one soon about to surpass 6 figures (or greater than 100,000 seats).

Data Storage for VDI – Part 1 – A Personal View
Data Storage for VDI – Part 2 – Disk Latencies
Data Storage for VDI – Part 3 – Read and Write Caching
Data Storage for VDI – Part 4 – The impact of RAID on performance
Data Storage for VDI – Part 5 – RAID-DP + WAFL The ultimate write accelerator
Data Storage for VDI – Part 6 – Data ONTAP Improving Read Performance
Data Storage for VDI – Part 7 – 1000 heavy users on 18 spindles
Data Storage for VDI – Part 8 – Misalignment
Data Storage for VDI – Part 9 – Capex and SAN vs DAS

Licensing Details for the VSC 2.0 vSphere Plug-in

In an attempt to make up for my oversight, I wanted to share some details related to software licensing requirements that weren't included in my post 'NetApp VSC 2.0 vCenter Plug-in Announced'.

If you were looking for this information, please thank those who posted the comments identifying my omission.

Although Virtual Storage Console (VSC) 2.0 is a free download for NetApp customers via NOW, use of the 'Backup and Recovery' and the 'Provisioning and Cloning' capabilities are optional and require software licensing on a NetApp FAS series, IBM N-Series, or 3rd party array virtualized with a NetApp vSeries.

vSphere 4.1 and vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

What began in late 2005 with Vanderpool continued today with the release of vSphere 4.1…

Vanderpool was the code name of Intel’s Virtualization Technology of x86 (or VT-x), which introduced extended page tables and enabled multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on an x86 computer in a safe and efficient manner. VT-x was the first means of hardware acceleration for VMware and the other x86 hypervisor vendors.

With today’s release of vSphere 4.1 VMware has delivered the first set of vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). VMware and key storage partners, led by Dell, EMC, and NetApp, have continued the direction originally established by Intel to extend the scaling of virtual infrastructures by enabling hardware acceleration with storage arrays serving ESX/ESXi clusters.

Today’s post is on VAAI, which is merely one of the three primary vStorage constructs available with vSphere 4.1. The other two are:

• Storage I/O Control (SIOC) - Set storage quality-of-service priorities for each virtual machine to guarantee access to storage resources
• Performance Reporting - Deliver key storage performance statistics regardless of storage protocol

Either I or one from the vSolutions Engineering team will post more on SIOC and Performance Reporting later this week.

VMware vSphere VAAI Demo with NetApp

With today’s release of vSphere 4.1 I’m confident that some may want to see the vStorage APIs for array integration (VAAI) in action with NetApp arrays. If you count yourself in this group you can catch the NetApp demo of the APIs from VMworld 2009 (September, 2009).

If we had the APIs in Data ONTAP ready back in the fall of 2009, just imagine where we might be with the next release of VAAI APIs…

NetApp VSC 2.0 vCenter Plug-in Announced

In support of the release of VMware vSphere 4.1, NetApp has announced version 2.0 of the Virtual Storage Console. Obviously, with today’s release, VMware has delivered on a large number of new capabilities in the many areas such as…

vCompute: Memory Compression & DRS Host Affinity

vNetwork: Network I/O Control

vStorage: Storage I/O Control, performance reporting, and Array Integration

… and many, many more. For all of the details on the full capabilities in vSphere 4.1 please head over to VMware.com. I will devote a fair amount of time diving into the vStorage enhancements in 4.1 in my next post. Trust me, engineering the VSC was tough with all of the work netApp and Vmware already had going on in support of VAAI.

Many of you may be familiar with version 1.0 of the VSC, as it has been highlighted as one of our key enablers to simplifying operations thru integration in many formats including:

• Technical Report 3749 – vSphere on NetApp: Storage Best Practices v2.0
• Blog Series: VMware Admins are Storage Admins part 1, part 2, & part 3
• Now Available: The Virtual Storage Console vSphere Plug-in

Internally we refer to version 2.0 of TR-3749 as “the picture book.” This moniker is actually high praise for the engineering efforts that enabled us to replace almost every manual process associated around storage management with a vCenter Integration.

Videos from the Charlotte VMUG Annual Conference

As I shared in a previous posts, the 2010 Charlotte VMUG Annual Conference was hosting a vExpert panel. This session was hosted by Rich Brambley of VMetc.com, Veeam & the Virtumania podcast (seriously rich - do you sleep?) The panel consisted of Mike Laverick of RTFM-Ed.co.uk and SearchServerVirtualization.com, Chad Sakac & Scott Lowe of EMC, and yours truly. Honestly, how often do you find 5 vExperts on stage simultaneously?

Here's the video of the panel session.

Charlotte VMUG Annual Conference - a mini VMworld?

All – please join Chad Sakac, Mike Laverick, Scott Lowe, Charles Gautreaux and I at the Charlotte VMware Users Group Annual Conference on June 11th. this event is shaping up to almost be a “mini-VMworld”

In addition to the original crew we are confirming the addition of additional VMware experts such as Rich Brambley and there's a high probability of others (waiting for confirmation)!

(thanks to Chad for the text in this post – hope you don’t mind my recycling)

• While there are loads of storage folks on that vExpert panel, none of us are “storage centric”, any and all discussion topics will be welcome.
• We’re discussing topics people might want – thinking what we’re seeing impeded ongoing adoption of virtualization, what we’re seeing in the vCloud space
• There will be more details on what’s going on with vStorage APIs for Array Integration

There are a ton of other great topics, and great sessions – including hands on labs with View, discussions around Springsource, customers, and other great VMware partners.

What topics would you like to have us discuss?

For those interested I've posted the agenda below.

One Day Remaining to Vote on VMworld 2010 Sessions

Just a quick reminder that you can influence the sessions that you'll be able to attend at VMworld 2010 and voting closes tomorrow. As with previous events, this year's VMworld is gearing up to be fantastic. If you are interested in hearing about solutions, successes, and technologies from partners, customers, or NetApp - I believe there's a session for you!

Below I've provided a list of all NetApp related sessions with partner and customer presentation listed ahead of NetApp driven sessions. Frankly, I find it very impressive to hear customers and partners share what works, how it works, and what they want to work better!

NetApp Releases Unified Adapter for VMware SRM

Last week I presented this topic at the VMware TechSummit, and today I am happy to share with all of that NetApp has released version 1.4.3 of our VMware Site Recovery Manager adapter (available for download here). The new adapter is our 'Unified Adapter' replaces the SAN & NAS adapters (versions 1.4.2 & 1.0.0.4 respectively) with a single adapter.

With this adapter we support NFS, iSCSI, FC, FCoE, FAS & vSeries 2000, 3000, 3100, 6000 series, IP & FC replication, and synchronous, a-synchronous, and semi-synchronous replication.

 

The Unified Adapter also supports replication of FAS to FAS, FAS to vFiler, vFiler to vFiler, FAS to vSeries, and vSeries to vFiler. Remember all NetApp arrays support bi-directional replication, so there's no need to provision single purpose arrays (as in one for production and another for DR).

In addition to all of the combinations shared above, one can also run a FC storage network in one datacenter and failover to an Ethernet storage network with SRM. With all of this flexibility I like to refer to this release as 'one adapter to rule them all.'

Storage Architectures with LDVM: Faster, Less ComPlex

While attending the VMware TechSummit this week, someone asked why I thought storage was relevant in light of server virtualization, the virtual datacenter, cloud deployments, the software mainframe, etc…

OK - This individual didn’t actual say software mainframe but I though I'd inject it into their synonym roll call. Mmmm… Synonym Rolls. Sounds yummy! (OK - running on 4 hours of sleep may be impacting my sense of humor).

In response to this question I replied, “There is one thing I can guarantee, which is by the time I finish this statement your company will have generated and stored more data than when I began.”

Consider the similarities with, and the diametrically opposed aspects of, the adoption rate of server virtualization and the data growth rate in your data center.

• Server virtualization separates the compute layer from the physical layer resulting in a means to enable application mobility
  
  
• Data growth is rampant, commonly growing at 50-100% year over year. A single copy is a minimum, redundant copies aren't free, and replication requires more bandwidth each year. These force work to keep data sedentary in nature

So why do I, like most of the engineers at NetApp, find the storage aspect of data center virtualization interesting? Simple, it's because we are developing ways to make application mobility a reality by addressing the shackles restricting data to an individual datacenter.

Cisco & NetApp Power VMware TechSummit Labs

Quick post (on my iPad) in between presentations from the VMware TechSummit where I wanted to share with you that Cisco and NetApp are powering the self paced labs.

That's 200 lab stations running concurrently on UCS, Nexus, and FAS 3100.

Not too shabby for a mid-tier storage platform, huh. ;^)

Poll Results - What is the Size of Your Average & Largest Datastores

You may recall on March 25th I shared that I have learned from a source what I believe to be the largest know VMware datastore. I suggested quid pro quo, you share the average size and the largest size of your datastores and in exchange I'd share what I've learned.

First, I'd like to thank everyone who participated, we had 326 share their averages and 253 share their largest. Without further adieu here's the results...

Average Datastore Size

81.4% of VMFS datastores range between 500GBs and up to 2TBs
80.2% of NFS datastores range between 1TBs and greater than 2TBs