NetApp: Software, Services and Partnerships for Hybrid Cloud and Data Management

NetApp, Inc. announced new software, services, and partnerships that simplify data management across clouds at NetApp Insight North America 2014.

The announcement included a new version of the NetApp clustered Data Ontap OS, Cloud Ontap, OnCommand Cloud Manager and NetApp Private Storage for Cloud. Combined, these offerings enable customers to embrace the hybrid cloud while maintaining control of their data and ensuring choice across a blend of private and public cloud resources.

“Hybrid clouds will be the backbone of IT today and tomorrow,” said George Kurian, EVP product operations, NetApp. “We help enterprises maintain control of their data as they bridge their on-premises architecture with the cloud of their choice. The NetApp Data Fabric for the Hybrid cloud is the right architecture for building enterprise hybrid clouds. Our software improves the economics, flexibility, and business impact of a customer’s existing infrastructure, while our cloud technology solutions give customers the needed confidence in our ability to help them navigate the future.“

Vision for Seamless Hybrid cloud Data Management
As the hybrid cloud continues to gain traction within the enterprise, NetApp believes that the data management elements in different parts of a hybrid cloud must be connected and work together to form a coherent, integrated, and interoperable system. This ‘data fabric’ enables data to be managed, transported from one part of the cloud to another. It also enables enterprises to apply consistent policies and services to the data in the hybrid cloud regardless of the application, technology or cloud infrastructure provider.

Critical technology components to bring the NetApp Data Fabric vision to life, including:

• Clustered Data Ontap 8.3 – A Proven Foundation for cloud Data Management
  Enhancements to the company’s software-defined storage OS, clustered Data Ontap, help organizations of all sizes improve their levels of availability, performance and efficiency. New support for MetroCluster DR Software provides enterprises with uninterrupted recovery from failures across data centers. Critical business applications can continue to operate in the event of disasters or planned outages. The version of the software includes optimizations for all-flash nodes so that customers can maximize performance without sacrificing rich data management, protection, or flexible data movement. The software includes efficiency that improves the cost per gigabyte and cost per IO/s of clustered Data Ontap delivering a better ROI for organizations.

• Cloud Ontap – Enterprise Data Management for Public Cloud
  Cloud Ontap brings the power of clustered Data Ontap to the public cloud. This release combines the power of clustered Data Ontap with the scale of Amazon Web Services (AWS). The software, which is built on clustered Data Ontap 8.3, uses patented technologies for non-disruptive operations, scalability, and efficiency and combines them with the on-demand computing benefits of cloud services. This approach provides a consistent set of data services throughout a hybrid cloud environment. AWS is an platform provider to run Cloud Ontap services on its cloud environment and NetApp is collaborating with Microsoft Azure and Verizon cloud for future releases. To help customers take advantage of Cloud Ontap, NetApp is offering several cloud-friendly and traditional data center service licensing options.

• OnCommand Cloud Manager – Efficient and Easy Provisioning for cloud
  OnCommand Ccloud Manager enables efficient provisioning of clustered Data Ontap instances between private cloud and public cloud providers. A GUI gives customers and partners visibility into their hybrid cloud environment and eliminates the complexity of storage setup and movement of data from one location to another.

• NetApp Private Storage for Cloud – Expanding Cloud Storage Choices While Helping Customers Maintain Control of Data
  NetApp Private Storage (NPS) for SoftLayer and announced the Private Storage for cloud family. NPS for cloud enables customers to use multiple clouds and maintain control of their data on a single NetApp storage device strategically placed in select colocation facilities. NetApp has tested cloud connectivity with many Equinix locations and with select alternate colocation facilities worldwide. The cloud solution combines cloud elasticity and savings with the performance, availability and control of private, dedicated enterprise storage. SoftLayer, an IBM Corp.’s company, is the latest cloud provider to partner with NetApp with an NPS for cloud approach. Other NPS for cloud solutions currently available are NPS for Amazon Web Services and NPS for Microsoft Azure.

• Strategy, Design, Deployment, and Transition Services
  New services offered include the Enterprise Transformation Workshop for Cloud, which helps customers envision and architect the cloud storage strategy for a successful evolution to the hybrid cloud. For organizations looking to optimize the deployment of NetApp technology in their infrastructure, NetApp offers the Efficiency and Optimization Service. This service performs a storage-level health check and analysis to help preempt transition problems and performance. Additionally, for new and existing customers moving to clustered Data Ontap software, the clustered Data Ontap Migration Service, RapidData Migration QuickStart Service, and self-help migration tools facilitate a smooth and simple transition.

Ashish Nadkarni, research director, IDC, said: “One of the ways in which CIOs can be successful in supporting the goals of their business is by controlling data. The management of data growth while also enabling the business to gain more insight from the data itself, is the key challenge for a hybrid IT organization. NetApp is focusing on helping CIOs maintain Data Control on their terms — by allowing them to choose the public cloud service providers they want to work with and only when they need their services.“

Tom Skidmore, director infrastructure, Dominion Enterprises, said: “As a company that works in the cloud, we understand the importance of adopting the right technologies to meet the unique demands of our customers. With clustered Data Ontap, we can easily move huge volumes of data independent of the underlying hardware. This has allowed our IT team to segregate businesses, create different storage tiers, and promote or demote volumes, all transparent within a single namespace.“

Adam Simpson, GM, cloud services, Harbour IT, said: “As a leading provider of cloud computing, infrastructure and managed services solutions, it is crucial that we provide our clients with seamless service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Choosing NetApp’s proven solutions, like clustered Data Ontap and NetApp MetroCluster, gives us the leading edge technology our customers need to keep them ahead of the pack. For every stage of our customers’ cloud journey we have confidence that NetApp’s hybrid cloud vision encompasses the technology options needed to deliver the premium performance, availability and security our customers deserve.“

Bob Micielli, enterprise technical services manager, King County, said: “In order to better serve our population of 1.9 million residents, we migrated our departments to the cost-effective, secure and reliable NetApp FlexPod platform with clustered Data Ontap pre-integrated. By implementing this platform we were able to consolidate and simplify our IT infrastructure and are better equipped to provide our citizens with enhanced service delivery.“

Jon Smith, head of IT, WDS, Xerox company, said: “In a rapidly changing business climate, a solid IT infrastructure and the ability to offer customers HA and rapid turnaround times is crucial. Clustered Data Ontap has helped us move toward a true zero-downtime environment and the ability to scale out and up, ultimately to offer truly flexible solutions for our customers.“

Jack Rondoni, VP storage networking, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., said: “Enterprises implementing private and hybrid cloud infrastructures rely on technology leaders to provide proven data center technologies, and NetApp and Brocade have been working together for over a decade providing highly available, reliable and high performance storage and storage networks optimized for the cloud. NetApp’s Clustered Data Ontap and cloud Ontap technologies combined with Brocade’s data center-proven ethernet fabric and Gen 5 FC fabric networks provide a robust and highly scalable infrastructure for enterprises implementing cloud architectures.“

Jim McHugh, VP marketing unified computing solutions, Cisco Systems, Inc., said: “Our joint success in developing private cloud solutions in the enterprise with FlexPod is the perfect foundation for hybrid cloud solutions. NetApp’s new hybrid cloud solutions complement Cisco’s cloud strategy, provide businesses with the flexibility to manage changing environments, and give customers a smooth on-ramp to the Intercloud.“

Calvin Hsu, VP, product marketing, desktop and applications, Citrix Systems, Inc., said: “Many of our customers who are deploying mobile workspaces are turning to a hybrid cloud environment to combine the benefits of private cloud security and public cloud flexibility for their IT infrastructure to cut costs and maximize value. NetApp’s new hybrid software and services will offer a key component that can help customers build a simple and efficient strategy enabling IT infrastructures to grow and transform with their business.“