I recently had the privilege of participating in NetApp’s Insight 2016 Las Vegas conference. With over 5,000 technical experts and industry leaders, 500 sessions and a unique hands-on lab, the conference served as a great opportunity to see solutions in action.
Day 1 kicked off with NetApp CEO George Kurian’s keynote highlighting digital transformation, stating that data is the currency for the digital economy. This will require businesses to transform their existing operations to create a more real-time environment that will allow them to be more nimble, gain insight, and respond quickly to customers’ requirements. NetApp can assist you with these changes by eliminating data silos for a more efficient data center, providing module storage that bridges the gap between on-prem and off-prem, and with their extensive flash portfolio improving performance to the highest levels.
Throughout the course of the conference there were announcements about ONTAP 9, NetApp’s portfolio, and SolidFire. Here are the highlights:
ONTAP 9 software enhancements and additions:
- NetApp Volume Encryption includes built-in volume level and software-based encryption to improve data security. There is no need for self-encrypting drives, making it simple to add encryption to existing NetApp environments.
- FlexGroup NAS containers support massive scalability. A single container can scale up to 20PB and 400 billion files!
- ONTAP Cloud supports Microsoft Azure. ONTAP Cloud, a software-defined storage running in Azure, allows ONTAP data services to efficiently share, move, protect and manage their data in the cloud.
- ONTAP Select now supports all-flash commodity servers
NetApp’s Portfolio enhancements and additions:
- AFF A700, an all-flash system in the FAS family for high performance and simple setup, now offers 2x the performance of prior NetApp systems, with one-half the latency. The system supports 15TB SSDs, and systems are easy to set up in under 10 minutes.
- AFF A300, an all-flash system in the FAS family for midrange and simple setup, now offers 2x performance compared to prior NetApp systems, with half the latency. The system supports 15TB SSDs, and systems are easy to set up in under 10 minutes.
- FAS8200, a new hybrid system in the FAS family for enterprise workloads, now offers 200-percent higher performance than earlier NetApp systems as well as integrated NVMe NetApp Flash Cache intelligent caching.
- FAS2650, a new hybrid system in the FAS family for small enterprise workloads, now offers 200 percent higher performance than earlier NetApp systems and integrated NVMe NetApp Flash Cache intelligent caching.
- For midrange workloads, the new hybrid system in the FAS family, FAS2620, offers 200-percent higher performance than earlier NetApp systems and integrated NVMe NetApp Flash Cache intelligent caching.
- FAS9000, the new hybrid system in the FAS family for business-critical workloads, now provides massive scalability up to 14PB in a system and 172PB in a cluster.
- NetApp is launching a 32GB FC target adapter and a 40GbE adapter in ONTAP 9.1
Prior to NetApp Insight, NetApp acquired SolidFire, expanding the already rich NetApp flash portfolio. NetApp made it a point of emphasis to re-introduce SolidFire as the next-generation data center solution providing a scale-out, predictable and fully automated all-flash storage solution. I heard several references to “AWS-like,” “cloud-based” and “next-gen.” These statements are supported by the ways you can consume SolidFire all-flash storage:
- SF Series storage is a typical storage array acquisition with hardware and software options, offering a single price for both hardware and software.
- SolidFire CLA offers capacity-based licensing with hardware and software options. Software is provided with perpetual licensing separate from hardware, and you can choose enterprise-wide, SW ELA license for multiple sites.
- Element X offers software-only licensing to support software-defined clients.
NetApp closed out Insight with a cloud strategy forum that included clients and partners discussing the state of hybrid cloud adoption in enterprises today. This forum delivered insights into what clients are looking for in cloud technologies – a simple, repeatable method to manage their hybrid clouds for both applications and data. NetApp’s hybrid cloud provides a flexible and simple platform with multiple options for on-prem and off-prem workloads.
Sirius and NetApp are working together to give users the performance, agility and economics they need to get the most out of their data centers. If you’re interested in learning more, connect with a Sirius representative today to get started.
