NetApp Solutions for VMware’s Virtual Volumes

Software defined storage provides customers with a vision and roadmap to the next generation data center including cloud deployments.

NetApp, Inc.‘s announced solutions that increase and simplify automation of software-defined storage elements and provide fine-grained management of VMware VM data, including evaluation software that interoperates with VMware’s Virtual Volumes to help customers achieve more efficient IT operations at a lower cost.

Additionally, NetApp is announcing new OnCommand software with enhanced data protection and improved reporting capabilities, and flash-optimized FlexPod, a converged compute, networking, and storage solution developed by Cisco and NetApp, with VMware Horizon View for end-user computing.

Software-Defined Storage for the Cloud Era NetApp is a design partner for VMware’s Virtual Volumes, a new storage architecture designed to enable granular, VM-level management of storage resources and data services, based on application-centric policies. NetApp’s solution for VMware Virtual Volumes will deliver policy based software-defined storage management. NetApp’s support for Virtual Volumes builds upon NetApp’s patented Virtual Storage Console (VSC) for VMware that improves storage efficiency and reduces cost and complexity in a VMware virtual infrastructure environment.

Also part of this announcement, NetApp is releasing new offerings for VMware solutions. They include an update to Virtual Storage Console with one-click clustered configuration enabling simple deployment of clustered Data ONTAP into vSphere, NetApp Certification for VMware Horizon View Composer API for Array Integration (VCAI), and via partner Blue Medora, a new vCenter Operations Management Pack for NetApp storage that provides end-to-end visibility, analytics and capacity planning for workloads running on NetApp storage.

“Software-defined storage is a foundation for the cloud that allows NetApp and VMware to deliver agile, simple, and easy scalable IT infrastructures,” said Dan Neault, SVP, datacenter solutions group, NetApp. “Our new solutions for VMware environments accelerate our customers’ businesses with automated, simple, and efficient IT operations. NetApp is focused on simplifying data center deployment, monitoring, management, and automation whether data lives on-premises or in the cloud.”

Enhanced Storage and Data Management Software
for On-Premise and Hybrid cloud Environments
As organizations virtualize and create private and hybrid clouds, IT organizations must be able to monitor data center trends across environments. NetApp’s updated and patented OnCommand Workflow Automation 2.2 software provides enhanced data protection and integration with VMware vCloud Automation Center to give users more flexibility to create custom storage workflows that are automated for end-to-end service delivery.

To simplify implementation, NetApp will introduce later this year a storage automation store with customized workflows for Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware environments. This will enable customers to more easily create and migrate complex storage services, create catalogs, as well as automate protection of customer applications. Additionally, NetApp’s updated and patented OnCommand Insight 7.0.1 software provides intelligence through brokering, monitoring, and reporting to make more informed economic decisions about on premises and cloud-based storage. The new Storage Manager dashboard specifically designed for managers and business analysts provides one view to optimize capacity planning and identify cost saving opportunities.

“VMware and NetApp share the vision that the software-defined data center is the IT architecture of the cloud era. Our partnership continues to evolve to build SDDC technology to improve IT efficiency and performance,” said John Gilmartin, VP and GM, SDDC suite business unit, VMware, Inc. “NetApp’s new solutions for VMware environments will help provide our mutual customers with the technology needed to help them meet the challenges of this new era.”

New FlexPod for End-User Computing – All Flash
With the introduction of the patented FlexPod Datacenter with VMware Horizon View and all-flash FAS8000 platform, customers now have a cost-effective, all-flash optimized solution for End-User Computing (EUC) in a scalable validated architecture. This new FlexPod integrated infrastructure solution provides users with flash performance for high IO/s/low latency workloads, eliminates planned downtime through non-disruptive operations with clustered Data ONTAP, and reduces implementation risk and speeds up desktop deployments with a validated architecture.