NetApp Teams With VMware for Another Enterprise Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

NetApp, Inc., in an extension of its collaboration with VMware, Inc., announced the NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution, an hyper-converged infrastructure solution powered by VMware EVO: RAIL and the NetApp Data ONTAP OS.

Building on NetApp’s strength in converged infrastructure for the data center, the NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution is designed for enterprises and mid-market organizations, including remote and branch office environments with limited IT personnel. The solution includes flash-accelerated, scale-out NetApp enterprise storage. Customers can deploy and manage virtualized business critical applications, and offers one-stop support for complete server and storage infrastructure.

“Customers asked us to take a fresh look at how we could extend the benefits of converged systems to meet the needs of smaller department and branch offices,” said George Kurian, EVP of product operations, NetApp. “By combining NetApp storage with VMware EVO: RAIL, we now offer an integrated solution that offers simple, cost-effective scaling, enterprise performance and the protection required for business critical applications, a single point of support, and best of all, complete flexibility to integrate with the cloud using the NetApp data fabric.“

With the NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution, branch and departmental sites with business critical applications in virtualized environments have an enterprise infrastructure platform that also integrates with both the enterprise data center and public clouds. By jointly delivering a single, scalable, fixed-sized system with unified management, organizations with limited IT staff have the ability to build an enterprise-wide data fabric that extends to smaller departments and branch offices.

“VMware and NetApp have a long history of providing our joint customers with innovative and powerful IT solutions,” said Raghu Raghuram, EVP and GM, software-defined data center division, VMware. “The NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution will bring together proven flash-accelerated, scale-out NetApp enterprise storage with a pre-integrated and pre-tested 100% VMware EVO: RAIL software stack, empowering organizations to accelerate their modern software-defined data center deployments.“

The NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution simplifies IT transformation with a solution that can be deployed in minutes, and includes unified management. This reduces complexity, speeds time to provision VMs and storage, and provides local and remote data protection. Additionally, the integrated EVO: RAIL software stack helps to simplify appliance deployment, configuration as well as on-going management, patching and upgrading of the software. By integrating clustered Data ONTAP with EVO: RAIL, the solution delivers storage management and provisioning with multiple paths for integrating with the hybrid public cloud. As an enterprise solution, the NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution also reduces risk by offering storage efficiencies and independent storage expansion, integrated data protection and data mobility, none disruptive operations, and increased stability.

The NetApp Integrated EVO: RAIL Solution will be available and shipping in 1H CY2015 via a pre-integrated solution including hardware, software and support.

Mark Bowker, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, said: “The fact that over one third of ESG research respondents have deployed integrated infrastructure demonstrates that it is rapidly becoming the architecture of choice for organizations of many sizes, particularly those with limited IT staff. This solution gives smaller branch and departmental IT organizations access to enterprise infrastructure that also offers a leading data management platform that extends across the enterprise and into the cloud.“