FlexPod XCS brings cloud capabilities to data centers

Copyright TechTarget - All rights reserved . https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html Techtarget Feed Generator en Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:39:29 GMT https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com editor@techtarget.com Cisco Systems and NetApp are taking the capabilities of the FlexPod converged infrastructure appliance line to the cloud. FlexPod XCS, the latest FlexPod release that combines NetApp's storage OS OnTap and Cisco's cloud operations platform Intersight, adds new hybrid cloud capabilities to the two companies' <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/definition/converged-infrastructure">CI reference architecture</a>. These additions expand integration with cloud hyperscalers for storage and cloud-native application development using containers. FlexPod XCS will be sold primarily through channel partners later this year. Pricing is based on Cisco Intersight subscriptions and selected hardware configurations, according to the companies. <h3>Hybrid strategy</h3> Native integrations with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Platform for storage and app development are overseen using Cisco's <a href="https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/cloud-systems-management/intersight/at-a-glance-c45-739419.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Intersight</a> and NetApp's <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252508661/NetApp-OnTap-9101-adds-ransomware-protection-NVMe-TCP">OnTap</a>, the company's flagship storage operating system. The FlexPod XCS supports additional cloud subscription services from Cisco and NetApp to simplify cloud storage backup, container application development for DevOps and automation capabilities. Some of these additional subscription services include Intersight Kubernetes Service and NetApp Astra, which manage Kubernetes container deployments and storage, respectively. They are important additions for enterprises operating in a hybrid cloud, according to David Raffo, senior analyst at Evaluator Group. "NetApp has been tweaking their stuff to make it more cloud-friendly," Raffo said. "It's a little more modern than what you'd get in the data center." <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> NetApp has been tweaking their stuff to make it more cloud-friendly. It's a little more modern than what you'd get in the data center. </figure> <figcaption> David RaffoSenior analyst, Evaluator Group </figcaption> </div> </blockquote> <h3>Growing family</h3> The FlexPod XCS joins about a half-dozen other FlexPod CI appliances sold by NetApp and Cisco for the past decade but is the first version to offer hyperscaler integrations out of the box. These appliances bundle Cisco and NetApp's respective networking and storage hardware and are capable of connecting with other FlexPod nodes across an enterprise to pool compute, storage and networking capabilities. CI appliances provide a hardware standard and baseline for performance for tested workloads alongside the benefit of just one channel seller should issues with hardware and software arise. The connections and workload testing with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform enable OnTap and Intersight to sync on-premises infrastructure with the cloud. Cloud connections between FlexPod XCS and public cloud hyperscalers allow OnTap to support colder but still mission-critical data, such as the data used for disaster recovery and ransomware backups, including snapshots, without consuming data center drives. Intersight, meanwhile, can enable the creation of new cloud workloads as necessary to keep up with bursts in user demands. Features like these are important for enterprises that may not want to fully move into the cloud but still want a "pay-as-you-grow" capability for their data center, according to Mike Arterbury, vice president and general manager of hybrid cloud infrastructure and OEM solutions at NetApp. "Our customers [have] legacy applications they're trying to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchapparchitecture/definition/refactoring">refactor for public cloud</a>," Arterbury said. "[XCS gives] them visibility into all their resources regardless of where those resources sit." The FlexPod CI line has remained popular for the past decade, Raffo said, noting that a converged infrastructure can scale out individual infrastructure components. The separation of components is useful compared to the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/opinion/A-look-at-hyper-convergence-vs-traditional-server-deployments">all-or-nothing approach of hyperconverged infrastructure</a>, which requires all parts of the technology stack to expand should any one component need replacement or expansion, he said. "The idea behind FlexPod is to simplify both networking and storage," he said. "It's been a successful program for [Cisco and NetApp]." Tim McCarthy is a journalist living on the North Shore of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news. FlexPod XCS, the latest NetApp and Cisco converged infrastructure appliance, expands support for hybrid cloud environments with hyperscaler integrations. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/cloud_g454048521.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252514989/FlexPod-XCS-brings-cloud-capabilities-to-data-centers Tue, 22 Mar 2022 21:20:00 GMT FlexPod XCS brings cloud capabilities to data centers HPE GreenLake is introducing 12 new data services for high-performance computing, block storage, backup and recovery and networking that provide a more unified experience and round out the cloud-like storage platform. HPE GreenLake, which provides an as-a-service consumption model for on-premises and hybrid cloud environments as well as remote management, is the vendor's answer to public cloud hyperscalers like AWS. In addition to these new data services, HPE has introduced a unified operational experience similar to a public cloud's single sign-on. New features also include <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/opinion/HPE-GreenLake-updates-reflect-on-premises-cloud-IT-evolution">block storage as a service</a> with 100% availability and backup as a service for hybrid cloud environments, tying on-premises data centers to the public cloud. The vendor's high-performance computing (HPC) service saw expansion and better integration with the platform. The company is also folding Aruba Central, its cloud networking product, into GreenLake, bringing over 120,000 Aruba Central customers to the platform, which will bolster the product's networking capabilities while giving Aruba customers access to its services. HPE largely invented the storage as a service (STaaS) consumption model, according to Steve McDowell, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy. The idea was to take the pay-as-you-go cloud model and bring it to on-premises systems by installing equipment in a customer's data center that customers consumed on demand. But customers felt like they were leasing equipment in their own racks and had to continue to manage parts of the infrastructure to make it work. "HPE is drilling down and saying, 'How can I deliver a push-button experience like public cloud storage and processing, intellectual writing resources -- a truly abstracted delivery?'" he said. With GreenLake, HPE is abstracting the hardware to do just that. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_DSCC_Dashboard.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_DSCC_Dashboard_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_DSCC_Dashboard_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_DSCC_Dashboard.jpg 1280w" alt="The HPE GreenLake data services cloud console is akin to hyperscaler's single sign-on. " data-credit="HPE" height="315" width="560"> <figcaption> The HPE GreenLake data services cloud console is a single sign-on for the platform. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>100% available block storage as a service</h3> One of the new data services for HPE GreenLake is block STaaS, the first STaaS with 100% availability guaranteed, according to Sandeep Singh, vice president of product management for data infrastructure at HPE. He added that the offering enables self-service access to storage. "The line-of-business owners, the database owners are able to self-provision and move faster," Singh said. Using a graphical user interface, users choose their SLA tier workload type, the volume needed, the host agents to access the volumes and the required data protection capabilities, he said. Having customers configure what they need though a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/GUI-graphical-user-interface">GUI</a> is an interesting take, said Rob Strechay, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget. But, he added, there's also an additional step of sending requirements to a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchitchannel/definition/VAR">value-added reseller (VAR)</a> for pricing. "It's not all the way from the customer inputting the information that they want to being provisioned; there's that still a speed bump of having to go to a reseller and come back to you with a pricing," he said. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_Block_Storage_Detail_View.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_Block_Storage_Detail_View_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_Block_Storage_Detail_View_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/HPE_GreenLake_Block_Storage_Detail_View.jpg 1280w" alt="HPE GreenLake STaaS enables users to self-provision block storage." data-credit="HPE" height="315" width="560"> <figcaption> The new block storage-as-a-service for HPE GreenLake allows intent-based provisioning. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>Enhancing data protection in GreenLake</h3> Another data service added to GreenLake's portfolio is a new backup-as-a-service offering, HPE GreenLake Backup and Recovery, that's designed for hybrid cloud environments. Customers can offload backup and recovery management to HPE for both on-premises and cloud data. The new service supports VMware virtualized environments deployed on heterogeneous infrastructure, either on HPE or non-HPE storage. HPE has also added to its ransomware protection with GreenLake Backup and Recovery. The service  <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdisasterrecovery/news/252503475/HPE-fills-in-GreenLake-with-Zerto-acquisition">builds off its acquisition of cloud data protection and disaster recovery vendor Zerto</a>, according to Omer Asad, vice president and general manager of the primary storage team in HPE's storage and big data group. Zerto's ransomware recovery capabilities adds immutable data copies. "The beautiful thing about Zerto backup and recovery services, it's agnostic of the storage infrastructure that you deploy," Asad said. Zerto brings ransomware recovery and immutable data copies capabilities to GreenLake, said Strechay, who worked for the company from 2016 to 2020. But he also said he was surprised HPE didn't announce more backup partnerships, as Zerto is not a fully featured backup product. "[HPE] resells Cohesity and Veeam; it was surprising that they hadn't [expanded partners] with this announcement," he said. <h3>Democratizing HPC</h3> HPE is also updating its HPC product, which was <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/news/252493433/HPE-Greenlake-delivers-high-performance-computing-cloud">announced a year ago</a>. The update is focused on simplifying and democratizing HPC to broaden its customer base, according to Maxim Alt, director of hybrid HPC, AI and HPC as a service at HPE. GreenLake's HPC has upgraded its system to HPE's Apollo 6500 Gen10 to accelerate AI and machine learning. The platform uses <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/news/252483188/Nvidia-unveils-A100-GPU-for-demanding-AI-workloads">Nivida's A100</a>, A40 and A30 GPUs as well as NVLink for GPU-to-GPU communication. <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Enterprise-HPC-Why-HPE-is-buying-Cray">HPE Slingshot</a>, the high-performance, low-latency interconnect, was also added. Along with Slingshot interconnect, the vendor's parallel file system is supplying storage for high-performance compute. In this version, customers can start with smaller clusters of HPC, using the as-a-service model for on-demand consumption and offloading system management. HPE GreenLake had offered elementary integration into its HPC cloud, but this release brings maturity to that capability, according to Chirag Dekate, an analyst at Gartner. "What [HPE has] now enabled is access to its full suite of ecosystems, from the GPU complexes to small- to medium-scale clusters to cloud integration," he said. Regardless of their size, enterprises no longer have to find a way for their cloud strategy to align with their HPC strategy with as-a-service offerings like the one from HPE GreenLake, Dekate said. <h3>Scalable NaaS</h3> HPE is giving eight of the most popular network functions standardized, as-a-service consumption models through HPE GreenLake. Those new Network as a Service offerings are indoor wireless, outdoor wireless, remote wireless, wired access, wired aggregation, wired core, SD-branch and UXI. HPE will add more services later in the year. HPE had previously offered these services as more boutique, custom services offered directly to individual enterprises. Adding as-a-service models through GreenLake is intended to make the most popular NaaS options easier to consume, according to Alan Ni, senior director of edge marketing at Aruba HPE. The new NaaS packages will be available through HPE's existing channel partner network. Aruba Central is also converging with the HPE GreenLake platform, with the goal of helping Aruba networking customers purchase services and manage assets through GreenLake. The company is further simplifying the management of Aruba Central by combining its data lake with that of the storage and compute teams. This is intended to make Central less siloed and help Central users to get a more comprehensive view of their assets, Ni said. The new Aruba Central operational experience will retain the existing user interface while also enabling network managers access to all cloud services, spanning the entire HPE portfolio, with single sign-on access. HPE GreenLake folded Aruba Central under its umbrella and added data services, including block storage as a service and new data protection capabilities. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/code_g1255337870.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252514971/HPE-GreenLake-rolls-in-Aruba-adds-block-STaaS Tue, 22 Mar 2022 12:22:00 GMT HPE GreenLake rolls in Aruba, adds block STaaS For the first time in three years, Nutanix generated positive free cash flow, largely thanks to growing adoption of hybrid, multi-cloud models and digital transformation projects. Nutanix, Inc. reported a 19% increase in revenue for its second fiscal quarter to $413.1 million compared to $346.4 million in the year-ago quarter, thanks to substantial gains of 37% and 55% in its Annual Contract Value (ACV) billings and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) respectively. The company closed the quarter with cash and short-term investments totaling $1.29 billion. At its quarterly meeting with financial analysts on Wednesday, Nutanix attributed the increase in revenue largely to the growing industry adoption of hybrid multi-cloud models, the launch of its own hybrid multi-cloud portfolio and the greater-than-expected subscription renewals among existing users. <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/ramaswami_rajiv .jpg" alt="Rajiv Ramaswami">Rajiv Ramaswami </div> "The performance in the quarter was primarily due to stronger-than-expected renewables," said Rajiv Ramaswami, president and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/feature/Nutanix-CEO-Ramaswami-talks-HCI-invisible-cloud-strategy">CEO of Nutanix</a>, in an interview with TechTarget. "Most of the business results came in as expected, but the variables came in much higher than we had anticipated. That's where we outperformed by quite a bit." Another driver of growth, Ramaswami added, is the increasing investments in digital transformation projects. This, in turn, further encouraged users to renew their existing contracts. "Digital transformation projects are very much alive and doing well," Ramaswami said. "This is largely helping us upsell existing customers and attract new ones. We added 700 new [companies] in this past quarter alone." Another contributor to revenue growth in the quarter is <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252504940/Nutanix-Red-Hat-partner-to-ease-container-app-deployment">Nutanix's partnership with Red Hat</a>, Ramaswami said. Working together, the two companies have attracted a number of new user organizations, including a large European-based energy service provider and a shipping container company, both using OpenShift, and a large North American retailer running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the Nutanix Cloud Platform. "Right now, we have a lot of upward momentum with Red Hat as is evidenced by some of the customer wins across different categories," Ramaswami said. One analyst said the expansion of Nutanix's partner network, including Red Hat, Citrix and OEM vendors such as <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252461341/HPE-Nutanix-deal-expands-roster-of-hyper-converged-options">HPE</a> and Dell Technologies, Inc., has proved to be strategically beneficial to Nutanix. It has better positioned the company to capitalize on new market segments. "The Red Hat partnership allows for migration from CentOS and consolidating workloads on a modernized <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252504940/Nutanix-Red-Hat-partner-to-ease-container-app-deployment">HCI</a> platform while leveraging OpenShift," said Paul Nashawaty, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "These new areas expand orchestration for AHV [hypervisor] and the overall Nutanix portfolio." The newly streamlined version of <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252513421/Nutanix-streamlines-its-HCI-cloud-portfolio-for-ease-of-use">Nutanix Cloud Platform</a>, released in February, offers users a more consistent operating model across public, private and hybrid clouds. The new version has simpler packaging, metering and pricing models to reduce the complexity involved with implementing a range of hybrid cloud services across different environments. Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. As editor at large with TechTarget's news group, Ed Scannell is responsible for writing and reporting breaking news, news analysis and features focused on technology issues and trends affecting corporate IT professionals. Benefiting from the growing user adoption of hybrid clouds and a significant increase in digital transformation projects, Nutanix second-quarter revenue jumped 19%. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineimages/money_g1255091249.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252514145/Nutanix-revenue-increases-driven-by-hybrid-cloud-adoption Thu, 03 Mar 2022 14:51:00 GMT Nutanix revenue increases, driven by hybrid cloud adoption IBM is directing its focus to enterprises working in container environments with a new Spectrum Fusion software-defined storage product that combines its general parallel file system, metadata management and data protection technologies. The first Spectrum Fusion release, due in the second half of the year, will integrate compute, storage and networking into a <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/tip/Top-hyper-converged-infrastructure-use-cases">hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)</a> system that comes equipped with the Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes application platform. IBM has been tailoring products for use with Red Hat software since completing its $34 billion acquisition of the open source software vendor in July 2019. Spectrum Fusion merges elements of three IBM software-defined products: Spectrum Scale's General Parallel File System (GPFS) than can span edge to core to cloud deployments, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252485836/IBM-stretches-its-Elastic-Storage-line-to-speed-AI-big-data">Spectrum Discover</a> to catalog and index metadata, and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252491328/IBM-Spectrum-protects-OpenShift-container-data">Spectrum Protect Plus</a> for backup-and-restore capabilities. Fusion also supports S3-based object storage on premises or in the cloud. Customers manage Spectrum Fusion through a single management portal. IBM plans to release a software-only version of Spectrum Fusion in early 2022 for use on any server hardware on premises or in the public cloud. Clouds supported out of the gate will be AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Screenshot_IBM_Spectrum_Fusion_dashboard.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Screenshot_IBM_Spectrum_Fusion_dashboard_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Screenshot_IBM_Spectrum_Fusion_dashboard_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Screenshot_IBM_Spectrum_Fusion_dashboard.jpg 1280w" alt="IBM Spectrum Fusion" data-credit="IBM" height="332" width="560"> <figcaption> IBM's new Spectrum Fusion product enables management through a single portal. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>Addresses cloud-native workloads</h3> "With Spectrum Fusion, IBM is creating a data platform specifically to address the needs of cloud-native workloads," said Scott Sinclair, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget. "It's more than just a storage platform, or even traditional HCI. Leveraging <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252489495/Red-Hat-OpenShift-Storage-rides-wave-of-container-momentum">Red Hat OpenShift</a>, IBM is looking to dramatically simplify managing cloud-native application environments across the hybrid cloud." Sinclair said Spectrum Fusion would accelerate access to system resources across a hybrid cloud ecosystem, and in turn, speed application development, and ultimately help IT infrastructure and operations teams, as well as developers. He expects the Fusion HCI system to generate significant interest with its simplified deployment model. Spectrum Fusion follows an IBM pattern of giving customers the choice of buying software-only versions of storage products, as well as hardware configurations that bundle it. For instance, IBM's Elastic Storage System (ESS) builds in Spectrum Scale, which is also sold as a separately software-defined storage product. Eric Herzog, vice president of business development and go-to-market in the IBM storage division, said Spectrum Fusion HCI would come out before the software-only option because of the large market opportunity, based on feedback the company received from customers and analysts. IBM also saw a gap with competitors that lead with virtual machines, rather than container-native deployments, Herzog said. "We want to go to where the puck is going, and the world is moving to containers," Herzog said. "We will obviously support virtual machines as well. But we'll lead with container-native." <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Image_IBM_ESS_3200.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Image_IBM_ESS_3200_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Image_IBM_ESS_3200_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/Image_IBM_ESS_3200.jpg 1280w" alt="IBM ESS" data-credit="IBM" height="314" width="560"> <figcaption> IBM's new Elastic Storage System (ESS) 3200 claims to double performance over its ESS 3000 predecessor. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>Enterprise shift to container-based hybrid clouds</h3> Randy Kerns, a senior strategist and analyst at Evaluator Group, estimated that two-thirds of enterprises will either deploy a new container-based hybrid cloud or try to make a cloud-native, container-based environment that their DevOps teams have already built "enterprise-capable" over the next three years. He said lots of developers took a "roll-your-own" approach, but enterprise IT organizations want to put a support infrastructure in place. "They want a vendor that they know is going to be there five to 10 years from now," Kerns said. "And they don't want to have to go out and try and beat the bushes to find somebody with a very demanding skill set, which is what the issue is right now." Kerns said IBM bought Red Hat because of the "land grab going on" for enterprises that are deploying container-based hybrid clouds, and the new Spectrum Fusion product would give IBM a more complete offering than most rivals. He sees <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/news/252493054/SUSE-fuels-Ranchers-mission-to-ease-Kubernetes-deployment">SUSE's Rancher</a> with Longhorn as the closest competitor. Others include Red Hat OpenShift with OpenShift Container Storage, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchitoperations/news/252489925/VMware-Tanzu-Kubernetes-strategy-hits-integration-milestone">VMware vSphere and Tanzu</a> and Hewlett Packard's <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchvmware/feature/Tanzu-vs-OpenShift-vs-Ezmeral-3-rivals-Kubernetes-offerings">Ezmeral</a>. Some vendors focus on storage for container-based applications, including Pure Storage's Portworx. "Storage for container environments is a bit of a wild, wild West kind of a scenario because every vendor is pursuing a different strategy. [But] they're only [addressing] maybe part of the problem," said Ashish Nadkarni, a group vice president within IDC's worldwide infrastructure practice. "What IBM is saying is, 'Hey, we support OpenShift, and OpenShift itself is very comprehensive. We will be able to give you a full stack of data services for OpenShift. Spectrum Fusion will give you everything you need.' That's why it's a big deal." Until Spectrum Fusion, IBM customers had to put together the various elements they need for their hybrid cloud workloads, such as AI or big data analytics, in "piecemeal" fashion, Herzog said. He said all the pieces would have been "container-enabled" or "container-ready," but not "container-native" as they will be now, with Spectrum Scale running in a container. Spectrum Fusion HCI, for instance, packages compute, storage and networking, as well as RedHat OpenShift, <a href="https://kubernetes.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kubernetes</a> and RedHat's virtualization technology, Herzog noted. <h3>IBM updates ESS</h3> Also today, IBM updated its ESS product line with a new ESS 3200 model that claims to double the read performance of the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252472819/New-NVMe-IBM-storage-for-Spectrum-Scale-cuts-install-time">ESS 3000 model</a> that it will replace. The 3200 can deliver 80 GB per second of throughput per node and support up to eight ports of 200 Gbps InfiniBand or 100 Gbps Ethernet to reduce latency. NVMe flash capacity starts at 41 TB and can scale up to 367 TB per 2U node with the ESS 3200. IBM also added a denser ESS 5000 option that offers a maximum capacity of 15.2 petabytes with nine disk enclosures. IBM said existing customers can update their systems with additional drive enclosures. The ESS 3200 and ESS 5000 have containerized system software and support Red Hat OpenShift, the Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI), CSI snapshots and clones, Red Hat Ansible, Windows, Linux and bare-metal deployments. Carol Sliwa is a TechTarget senior writer covering storage arrays and drives, flash and memory technologies, and enterprise architecture. IBM introduces Spectrum Fusion to target enterprises in container environments that span data center, edge and hybrid cloud environments. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchSolidStateStorage/implementation/solidstatestorage_article_002.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252499865/New-IBM-Spectrum-Fusion-storage-takes-aim-at-container-users Tue, 27 Apr 2021 09:09:00 GMT New IBM Spectrum Fusion storage takes aim at container users However you define it, convergence -- be it converged or hyper-converged and, to a lesser extent, composable -- is quickly finding a home in the data centers of more and more enterprises. Earnings on the part of hyper-converged and converged infrastructure vendors reflect this uptake in converged data center adoption. According to its analyst firm IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker (September 2019), the overall converged systems market grew 10.9% year over year to $3.9 billion in the second quarter of 2019. Reference systems and integrated infrastructure (your typical converged infrastructure) accounted for 37.5% of revenue year over year with $1.5 billion in sales; integrated platforms 16%, $636 million; and hyper-converged 46.6%, $1.8 billion. While organizations have more choices than ever for going the converged data center route, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/450401534/Converged-systems-proliferation-consolidation-will-shape-users-choices">market consolidation</a> has strengthened the positions of more established suppliers. Let's explore which hyper-converged and converged infrastructure vendors businesses are considering for their upcoming data center convergence deployments. <h3>Converged infrastructure vendors</h3> The development of converged infrastructure (CI) started the whole modern data center convergence trend. Essentially, converged infrastructure vendors offer prequalified turnkey appliances and reference architectures with server, storage, networking and so on to make it easier to deploy, manage and maintain data center infrastructure. It does this by decreasing the chances of enterprises running into management and compatibility problems. <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Dell-EMC-vs-NetApp-Comparing-converged-infrastructure-systems">Established CI vendors</a> include Cisco Systems, Dell EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, NetApp, Nutanix, Oracle and Rackspace. Examples of <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/infographic/Illustrated-guide-to-converged-infrastructure-and-vendors">converged infrastructure products</a> include Dell EMC VxBlock and Ready Stack, Hitachi Unified Compute Platform, HPE Converged Architecture 750, IBM PureFlex System, IBM and Cisco VersaStack, NetApp FlexPod, Oracle Private Cloud Appliance and Exalogic, and Rackspace OpenStack. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/converged_infrastructure-data_center_it_systems_02.png"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/converged_infrastructure-data_center_it_systems_02_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/converged_infrastructure-data_center_it_systems_02_mobile.png 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/converged_infrastructure-data_center_it_systems_02.png 1280w" alt="Converged infrastructure characteristics" height="211" width="520"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>Hyper-converged infrastructure vendors</h3> <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Hyper-converged-software-Eight-things-you-need-to-know">Hyper-converged infrastructure</a> is a software-defined infrastructure option that consolidates compute, storage and network resources and hypervisors into appliances that scale from a minimum of three nodes to much higher -- how high depends on the HCI vendor and configuration -- in what's called a cluster. If you need more compute or storage, simply plug another node into the cluster. IDC reported the top three HCI vendors accounted for close to 50% of the total market by branded revenue and 72% by software. <a href="https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/converged-infrastructure/index.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dell Technologies</a> led the branded category with 29.2% ($533.2 million) of total earnings. No. 2 Nutanix brought in $258.9 million, 14.2%, and Cisco Systems placed third with $114 million, 6.2%. Gauging the market by HCI software placed VMware on top with $694.1 million in revenue, a 38% share, Nutanix in second with $522 million, 28.6%, and Cisco in third with 6.2%. The previous quarter had HPE coming out ahead of Cisco by a mere 0.1% to place third in both the branded and software categories. Other <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Hyper-converged-product-comparison-What-leading-HCI-vendors-offer">leading HCI vendors</a> include Datrium, Maxta, NetApp, Nutanix, Pivot3 and Scale Computing. Examples of hyper-converged products include Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and HyperFlex system, Dell EMC VxRail and VxFlex, HPE SimpliVity and Nimble Storage dHC, Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, NetApp HCI, Nutanix NX system and Acropolis, Pivot3 Acuity Datacenter Series, Scale Computing HC3, and VMware vSAN. <h3>Composable infrastructure vendors</h3> Composable infrastructure features aspects of both converged and hyper-converged infrastructures. Except, unlike those two kinds of converged data center technologies, <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Words-to-go-Composable-disaggregated-infrastructure">composable disaggregates</a> computer resources across the network and then pools them into discrete categories of compute, storage, memory, etc. This allows administrators to programmatically create server instances quickly or on the fly for specific workloads. Composable infrastructure promises to be more dynamic than either CI or HCI and is, therefore, considered a good option for today's fast-paced business requirements. Evaluator Group released its Composable Infrastructure Evaluation Guide in July 2019. There, it listed notable <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Features-distinguish-leading-composable-infrastructure-systems">composable vendors and products</a> on the market. These include HPE's Synergy platform with an installed base of more than 1,700 customers; <a href="https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/servers-unified-computing/index.html#~stickynav=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cisco's Unified Computing System</a>, an early example of the technology; and the Dell EMC PowerEdge MX. The report also cited Liqid and its PCIe fabric switch, which composes bare-metal servers with various resources; DriveScale with its diskless servers and standard storage enclosures; and Intel's Rack Scale Design reference architecture. Other <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Products-to-go-Composable-infrastructure-vendors-and-products-glossary">notable composable products</a> include HPE's SimpliVity with Composable Fabric, which brings composability to HPE's HCI system; Kaminario Flex for that vendor's all-flash environments; and Western Digital OpenFlex for avoiding storage and compute overprovisioning and underutilization. Additional examples in this varied converged data center infrastructure category include Lenovo TruScale and Datrium DVX. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-infras_compared-f.png"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-infras_compared-f_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-infras_compared-f_mobile.png 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-infras_compared-f.png 1280w" alt="converged vs. hyper-converged vs. composable characteristics and features" height="700" width="560"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>Future growth</h3> Expect converged data center adoption to accelerate even further as enterprises look for <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/opinion/IT-infrastructure-transformation-Backbone-of-the-digital-revolution">ways to transform</a> and remain competitive in today's analytics-hungry, faster paced and increasingly competitive digital business environments. Market researcher Technavio projected in April 2019 the global converged infrastructure and HCI market would grow at a compound annual rate of close to 22% between 2019 and 2023, for example. A key driver of this growth, it predicted, would be the increasing demand for an alternative to the cloud. In its "Converged Data Center Infrastructure Market" report released around the same time, Market Research Future forecasted a similar growth rate of 23% for that same period. Today's fast-paced business landscape has led enterprises to increasingly turn to convergence vendors. See why, which they are choosing and who leads the market. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchEnterpriseLinux/linux_migration/enterpriselinux_article_021.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/answer/Which-converged-infrastructure-vendors-are-businesses-considering Wed, 06 Nov 2019 16:00:00 GMT Which converged infrastructure vendors are businesses considering? There are several management approaches and deployment options for organizations interested in using the Azure Stack HCI product. Azure Stack HCI is a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/answer/What-are-the-Azure-Stack-HCI-features">hyper-converged infrastructure product</a>, similar to other offerings in which each node holds processors, memory, storage and networking components. Third-party vendors sell the nodes that can scale should the organization need more resources. A purchase of Azure Stack HCI includes the hardware, Windows Server 2019 operating system, management tools, and service and support from the hardware vendor. At time of publication, Microsoft's Azure Stack HCI catalog lists more than 150 offerings from 19 vendors. Azure Stack HCI, not to be confused <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/answer/Do-you-know-the-difference-in-the-Microsoft-HCI-programs">with Azure Stack</a>, gives IT pros full administrator rights to manage the system. <h3>Tailor the Azure Stack HCI options for different needs</h3> The basic components of an Azure Stack HCI node might be the same, but an organization can <a href="https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/answer/An-HCI-deployment-can-go-one-of-two-ways">customize them for different needs</a>, such as better performance or lowest price. For example, a company that wants to deploy a node in a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/remote-office-branch-office-ROBO">remote office/branch office</a> might select Lenovo's ThinkAgile MX Certified Node, or its SR650 model. The SR650 scales to two nodes that can be configured with a variety of processors offering up to 28 cores, up to 1.5 TB of memory, hard drive combinations providing up to 12 TB (or SSDs offering more than 3.8 TB), and networking with 10/25 GbE. Each node comes in a 2U physical form factor. If the organization needs the node for more demanding workloads, one option is the Fujitsu Primeflex. Azure Stack HCI node models such as the all-SSD Fujitsu Primergy RX2540 M5 scale to 16 nodes. Each node can range from 16 to 56 processor cores, up to 3 TB of SSD storage and <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/tip/Data-center-performance-requirements-spur-25-GbE-upgrades">25 GbE networking</a>. <h3>Management tools for Azure Stack HCI systems</h3> Microsoft positions the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/feature/Windows-Admin-Center-brings-server-management-under-one-roof">Windows Admin Center</a> (WAC) as the ideal GUI management tool for Azure Stack HCI, but other familiar utilities will work on the platform. <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Microsoft positions the Windows Admin Center (WAC) as the ideal GUI management tool for Azure Stack HCI, but other familiar utilities will work on the platform. </figure> </div> </blockquote> The Windows Admin Center is a relatively new browser-based tool for consolidated management for local and remote servers. The Windows Admin Center provides a wide array of management capabilities, such as managing Hyper-V VMs and virtual switches, along with failover and hyper-converged cluster management. While it is tailored for Windows Server 2019 -- the server OS used for Azure Stack HCI -- it fully supports Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016, and offers some functionality for <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/feature/Server-2008-R2-end-of-life-hitting-home-for-many-in-IT">Windows Server 2008 R2</a>. Azure Stack HCI users can also use more established management tools such as System Center. The System Center suite components handle infrastructure provisioning, monitoring, automation, backup and IT service management. System Center Virtual Machine Manager provisions and manages the resources to create and deploy VMs, and handle private clouds. System Center Operations Manager monitors services, devices and operations throughout the infrastructure. Other tools are also available including PowerShell, both the Windows and the PowerShell Core open source versions, as well as third-party products, such as 5nine Manager for Windows Server 2019 Hyper-V management, monitoring and capacity planning. It's important to check over each <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/operator/azure-stack-hci-overview?view=azs-1908" target="_blank" rel="noopener">management tool</a> to evaluate its compatibility with the Azure Stack HCI platform, as well as other components of the enterprise infrastructure. While the Windows Admin Center is one way to manage the Azure Stack HCI platform, you can also use traditional, battle-tested tools. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/ComputerWeekly/Hero%20Images/server-platform-3-fotolia.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/answer/What-are-the-Azure-Stack-HCI-deployment-management-options Wed, 16 Oct 2019 11:46:00 GMT What are the Azure Stack HCI deployment, management options? By installing a converged storage infrastructure, Harrison Steel Castings Co. expected to eliminate single points of failure. Instead, the Indiana-based steel manufacturer had to chase down different vendors for help with troubleshooting hardware and getting version upgrades. "Because there were several different manufacturers involved in the system, I never knew whom to talk to for support. I still don't," Harrison Steel IT director Shane Rogers said. He declined to specify the vendor, but Rogers said the <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/quiz/Take-the-converged-vs-hyper-converged-infrastructure-quiz">converged infrastructure</a> provided sufficient compute and storage capacity. Problems arose on its Windows clusters, with frequent memory leaks. Earlier this year, the company implemented Scale Computing HyperCore 3 (HC3) hyper-converged infrastructure and started to migrate data off the older converged system. Rogers said he was introduced to <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/definition/Scale-Computing">Scale Computing</a> at a trade show and was skeptical at first. Scale Computing is based in Indianapolis, about an hour from his job, so Rogers paid a visit to meet with Scale engineers and support staff. "Salespeople always tell you everything's going to work perfectly, and then you get into the engineering side of things and realize 'Hey, that's not what the sales guy told me.' But with Scale, I took it and tried to get it to break. I was amazed at how easy it is to set up and manage," Rogers said. <h3>From CI to HCI</h3> Harrison Steel produces highly engineered carbon and steel alloy casting products used in the agriculture, energy, military and mining industries. Two of its largest customers are heavy equipment makers Caterpillar Inc. and Komatsu Ltd. Its three-node hybrid cluster of Scale Computing HC3 provides 9 TB of storage and 120 GB of RAM. The cluster supports web application servers for back-office line-of-business applications. <div class="imagecaption alignRight"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineImages/rogers_shane.jpg" alt="Harrison Steel IT director Shane Rogers">Shane Rogers </div> Converged infrastructure is sold by vendors as a package of qualified servers, storage and networking gear. The converged approach is different from <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-pitfalls-of-hyper-converged-infrastructure-and-how-to-avoid-them">hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)</a>, which integrates compute, networking, storage and virtualization in a single consolidated appliance. Rogers also considered Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise HCI products before settling on Scale. Integrating Scale's HCI "wasn't about capacity as much as it was for speed, redundancy and ease of use," Rogers said. <h3>Scaling the Scale cluster</h3> Scale Computing does not support VMware vSphere. The HC3 operating system uses a variant of the Linux-based <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/KVM-hypervisor">KVM hypervisor</a>. HC3 is engineered mainly for midsize enterprises. Rogers said Scale Computing HC3 handles his Windows environment, including access requests to Microsoft SQL Server and Active Directory servers. The <a href="https://www.scalecomputing.com/products/hypercore-software" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HC3 cluster</a> also underpins a new Microsoft SharePoint environment that includes SQL Server on the back end and front end. Harrison Steel keeps active data on site. The steelmaker has been in business since 1906. Rogers said it runs a separate SAN to store drawings and historical data related to past projects. The company shipped magnetic tape backups off site until a few years ago, when it started to protect data in Barracuda Networks cloud storage. Rogers said about 26 TB are backed up to the Barracuda cloud. Rogers said Harrison Steel will enlarge its HCI cluster, adding single clusters to grow. "We will be growing our Scale cluster. We have old servers that we plan to decommission. We will be bringing in new nodes to the cluster and adding bare metal to our [Microsoft] Hyper-V environment," he said. Harrison Steel Castings outgrew its converged system and swapped it out for Scale Computing HC3 hyper-converged infrastructure, which uses open source KVM virtualization. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchSolidStateStorage/implementation/solidstatestorage_article_003.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252472347/Steel-company-mines-value-with-Scale-Computing-HC3-cluster Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:40:00 GMT Steel company mines value with Scale Computing HC3 cluster SAN FRANCISCO -- Now that they've converged IT tiers and staffs, vSAN customers are figuring out how much of the public cloud they want to connect to their hyper-converged infrastructure. <a href="https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/conference/VMworld-2019-conference-coverage">VMworld 2019</a> included no significant updates to vSAN, although it did add <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchvmware/news/252469155/VMware-hybrid-clouds-refreshed-with-containers">container support</a> through Cloud Native Storage. But vSAN is a key piece of VMware's hybrid cloud push as a building block of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJktrxFhOxk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VMware Cloud Foundation</a> (VCF), which connects on-premises <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252487543/Nutanix-launches-clusters-for-AWS">HCI to AWS</a>, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud. Having converged traditional IT tiers and, in some cases, teams, VMware vSAN HCI users at the conference said they are looking at their cloud strategies. Dan Scotti said his title of engineering software developer at MathWorks changed three weeks ago to senior cloud engineer. It's now his job to implement his vSAN-heavy shop's cloud strategy. "My role now is to build an internal cloud for MathWorks and then figure out how to connect it to AWS and Azure and Google Cloud," Scotti said during a VMworld panel on vSAN. "VSAN is part of our cloud strategy, and it's a work in progress." The engineering software developer based in Natick, Mass., has moved off traditional storage to vSAN over the past three years and now runs it on Lenovo ThinkAgile VX HCI appliances in its data centers and 18 remote offices. Scotti said MathWorks is looking at using VCF and its <a href="https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/news/252460838/VMware-vRealize-suite-updates-focus-on-cloud-management">vRealize Suite</a> for cloud management. "As my group evolves into a true service-based organization, I'm going to want vRealize Automation," he said. "We already had licenses, and it didn't make sense not to use it. I'm using vSAN resource pools and non-vSAN resource pools, and I can connect the two. We're in our infancy there." Scotti said one big challenge is figuring out what his company already has in the public cloud, due to "rogue" users who have already moved data there. "Because anyone who has a credit card can go out and move corporate data," he said, "I don't even know how much is on the cloud now." <h3>VMware vSAN HCI users ponder public, private or hybrid cloud</h3> Thomas Fukuyama, senior director of IT operations for Travelers Insurance, said his company will likely keep its applications where they are but wants to use the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdisasterrecovery/feature/Using-the-cloud-for-disaster-recovery-Youll-need-these-key-terms">cloud for disaster recovery</a>. He said Travelers runs <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchvmware/definition/VMware-Virtual-SAN-Ready-Node-vSAN-Ready-Node">vSAN Ready Nodes</a> on a variety of server hardware in its data centers and field offices. "We have applications in the cloud, and they stay in the cloud," Fukuyama said. "We have applications in the data center, and they stay in the data center. When the cloud was first pitched, the plan was: When we have an app that needs to burst, we can burst to the cloud. We can burst now. The thing for us is making sure we're prepared for disaster recovery. We have multiple data centers. That's where VCF makes sense. We can use it whether it's AWS or Azure. So, those are the next steps for us." Lester Shisler, senior IT systems engineer for Harmony Healthcare IT, said his company is exploring several cloud options. Shisler said Harmony, which is based in South Bend, Ind., has about 1.3 petabytes of data running on 20 vSAN hosts. He said that capacity total has quadrupled over four months. "It's still in the air if we're going to continue only on premises, if we're going to migrate completely to the cloud or merge the two," he said. "There is a future for our company in the cloud and being able to scale to a certain level. We don't know what that is yet, but it will be fun figuring it out." Haridas Vhadade, expert systems engineer for Allscripts, said public cloud is not an option for much of the IT healthcare provider's data because of regulation issues. He said he uses vSAN as a private cloud with a little bit of data on AWS. "We don't have plans to connect vSAN to the public cloud because our private cloud is huge, about a petabyte of size," Vhadade said. "Whenever we need storage dedicated for our offices, we use vSAN." <h3>Shifting IT dynamics</h3> Along with cloud strategies, administrators running vSAN said HCI has also changed their companies' staffing dynamics. Cutting across traditional silos, HCI has forced members from different IT teams to work together. "We still have a bunch of teams in silos, but for projects, we come together," Travelers' Fukuyama said. "With hyper-convergence, our lead virtual infrastructure resource has worked with other folks to make sure we have a successful implementation. We've had some <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/news/252469833/Planned-VMware-analytics-will-improve-NSX-security-performance">network folks</a> who have worked with them, and even some folks who were working on <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252459941/Dell-EMC-VxBlock-1000-mixes-in-Unity-hybrid-Data-Domain">VBlocks</a> [converged infrastructure] came over to make sure it was a combined effort." Shisler said, in Harmony's seven-person IT shop, there are no silos for deploying infrastructure. "It's me," he said. But he said using VMware vSAN HCI has helped IT work closer with Harmony's developers than was possible when using a traditional three-tier architecture. "We've become much closer with the development team," he said. "Having vSAN on-site gives them the chance to test and spin applications. Development has moved more towards a DevOps structure. And we've become more involved in that. So, where development used to be this far-off thing and they used to be a pain in our butts because they would want things that were unrealistic, now it's evolving into a working relationship with them. And they say, 'We need this,' and it's 'Oh yeah, we can get you that.'" Staffing changes sometimes result in pains before gains become evident. Matthew Douglas, chief enterprise architect at Sentara Healthcare, said he has the "wounds and scars" of an early HCI adopter. He deployed hyper-convergence and cloud in a previous job, but when he joined Sentara in 2018, the move to HCI got off to a rocky start. Eventually, most of the staff united into one strong team. "The first month was horrible; they hated me," he said. "They were like, 'This guy, all this stuff's going to change.' I was surprised it was so quick, though. Six months in and things were changing. People are starting to break down the silos, storage is starting to work with guys in compute and system administrators are starting to work with developers." "All those guys are sitting in a room talking about how we're now one digital transformation team. We're not the storage team; we're not the compute team. Now, we're all one team. Some people like it. Some people are quitting. Some of the older guys want to retire; they want their old jobs back. But our teams have energy. They're embracing a digital transformation." Scotti knows how that change can feel. He was a virtual <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/The-Most-Important-Skills-a-Server-Engineer-Needs">server engineer</a> three weeks ago, and now, he's MathWorks' senior cloud engineer. "Change is hard," he said. "We've taken your cheese and moved it." He said members of his company who had a homegrown storage system weren't keen to move to vSAN until they couldn't get into their home directory because "the storage had a hiccup, and it's not there. By moving that into vSAN, we improved the user experience." Hyper-converged infrastructure has meant change to IT organizations, and VMware vSAN customers consider evolving their cloud plans in an age of hybrid and multi-cloud options. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchCloudApplications/architecture/cloudapplications_article_004.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252469570/VMware-vSAN-HCI-users-share-cloud-strategies-battle-scars Wed, 28 Aug 2019 10:21:00 GMT VMware vSAN HCI users share cloud strategies, battle scars New Belgium Brewing Co.'s business is making innovative craft beers, not worrying about cloud storage or compute. To that end, the 30-year-old beer maker recently scrapped its cloud provider and implemented a local cluster of Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged appliances. The craft brewer's major brands include Fat Tire and Voodoo Ranger . The company is based in Fort Collins, Colo. and has about 700 employees. With breweries in Fort Collins and Asheville, N.C., New Belgium initially hosted commonly shared applications in a multitenant private cloud, including its <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searcherp/definition/cloud-ERP">ERP</a>, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/Hosted-CRM">CRM</a> and data warehouse systems. Other applications that manage manufacturing and production run site-specific storage at each facility. The cloud enabled the necessary collaboration, but cost and management issues wiped out the benefits, IT operations manager Jake Jakel said. "We had lots of challenges with the private cloud, where it didn't keep up with the VMware version that we were rolling in our two facilities. That was holding us hostage [when] upgrading our environment. Virtual machines couldn't be migrated without some conversion and other goofy stuff. We just really needed control back in our environment," Jakel said. Migrating from cloud to … cloud Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) provides an all-in-one alternative to traditional networked storage. <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/definition/hyper-converged-appliance">HCI appliances</a> consolidate compute, networking and storage along with hypervisor on a single piece of hardware. Customers often install HCI as part of an on-premises hybrid cloud. Dell EMC is the <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252464418/HCI-market-Dell-and-VMware-gain-as-Nutanix-stumbles">HCI market leader</a> largely due to its ownership of VMware, which was originally owned by EMC. In addition to Dell EMC VxRail systems, the vendor also sells VxRack systems that scale to petabytes of storage. A longtime Dell customer, New Belgium Brewing has used older Dell SC storage arrays and Dell PowerEdge servers. The public cloud was considered as an alternative to private clouds, but Jakel said the costs were "equally astronomical." When it came time to upgrade, Jakel said he <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252485064/Dell-EMC-pushes-VxRail-hyper-convergence-to-the-edge">opted for all-flash VxRail capacity</a> after briefly considering a SAN. Despite the upfront purchase, buying Dell EMC VxRail gear turned out to be more cost-efficient than leasing cloud capacity. He estimates New Belgium will save about $1 million during the next three years. <figure class="main-article-image half-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infrastructure-craft_beer.png"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infrastructure-craft_beer_half_column_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infrastructure-craft_beer_half_column_mobile.png 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infrastructure-craft_beer.png 1280w" alt="New Belgium Brewing Co. information" height="262" width="279"> <figcaption> New Belgium Brewing Co. is a craft brewer that was founded in 1988 </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> "That's a huge amount of money in our IP budget," Jakel said. New Belgium didn't completely drop the cloud: It simply <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/opinion/Cloud-repatriation-and-the-trend-away-from-all-things-cloud">transitioned to a cloud</a> setup that offered more control and flexibility. Its four-node VxRail cluster is housed at a colocation facility in Denver. The cluster provides 220 TB of raw storage. Effective capacity is about 30 TB after deduplication. Placing HCI gear in a remote facility provides redundancy and guarantees continuous uptime, Jakel said. Data moves between VxRail nodes as needed and eliminates much of the manual intervention. Jakel said his team is now able to update VMware by clicking one button. Although this was New Belgium's first foray into HCI, Jakel said he plans to deploy Dell EMC VxRail nodes as part of a hardware refresh at the Asheville brewery in 2020. With breweries in Colorado and North Carolina, New Belgium Brewing Co. moved shared production apps from cloud to local cluster of Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchConsumerization/enterprise_mobilty/consumerization_article_007.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252467303/Beer-maker-brews-up-cloud-alternative-with-Dell-EMC-VxRail Wed, 24 Jul 2019 13:01:00 GMT Beer maker brews up cloud alternative with Dell EMC VxRail Exchange security remains a priority for IT administrators, and now they can build up the mail platform's defense by installing it on Server Core. The Server Core deployment in Windows Server 2019 supports on-premises Exchange Server 2019. The 2019 lightweight deployment is the first version capable of supporting Exchange. Could greater security from shrinking the attack surface be enough to win over administrators to Server Core? Jaap Wesselius, an independent consultant based in the Netherlands, has helped his clients install Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core 2019 in production. He discussed his experience with the installation process. What was your experience installing Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core 2019? Jaap Wesselius: I've installed and configured it a couple of times now because I'm also in the Microsoft Insider program. It's a bit difficult because <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/feature/Server-Core-vs-GUI-Is-Server-Core-ready-for-prime-time">you don't have a GUI</a> -- the typical Windows admin is GUI-minded -- so you have to do everything from the command line. There's a small text-based utility called Sconfig, which you can use to set the server name, join it to a domain and configure an IP address, but that's basically it. All the configuration for an Exchange Server needs to be done manually, so you have to know your disk configuration and the disk utilities. For example, in PowerShell get-disk, format-disk, assign-disk, assign disk numbers, assign drive letters, mount points and all that makes it quite difficult. All the blog posts you see about installing Exchange Server on Server Core are like: "See, we have a server, we assign an IP address and we run setup and ta-da, it's working." That's true, but then you have a pretty simple lab environment. Every customer has a more complex server and therefore more complex configuration. You can also use a GUI-based management server and manage your server remotely. That makes life a bit easier. What are the pros of having Exchange on Server Core? Wesselius: Server Core has a smaller attack surface; it's less likely to be compromised. Also, there are a lot less hot fixes for Server Core because there's a lot less software and utilities to be installed. It's just security. Security is one of the targets for Microsoft for Exchange. What difficulties should administrators be aware of when they install Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core 2019? Wesselius: You have to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/tip/Server-Core-management-remains-a-challenge-for-some">get used to it</a>. The past 20 years, we have been working with the GUI and we solved all configuration issues with the GUI. That's no longer possible, so you have to get used to working with PowerShell for everything -- and I mean everything. That makes it complex. The network card for example: If you have a server with one network card, life is pretty easy. But if you have one with four network cards and you have to configure them <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/tip/Creating-PowerShell-scripts-for-task-automation">using PowerShell</a>, that's painful. You have to get used to it. In the beginning, I configured the server and reconfigured it and started from scratch again and reconfigured it a couple of times. How often do you see Server Core used in your work? <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> Pretty much the only way to manage Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core is PowerShell. </figure> <figcaption> Jaap Wesselius </figcaption> </div> </blockquote> Wesselius: I see it as additional domain controllers in an environment where the first domain controller is just a GUI-based windows full server version. Other than Exchange and one or two domain controllers, I don't see it a lot yet. It's supported for other applications though. I have to admit that the U.S.-based customers tend to adopt new technology sooner than in the Netherlands. Here in the Netherlands, or maybe in Europe, customers wait for one or two years before they start adopting new software. This is not only true for Windows. For Exchange 2010, we have many customers in the Netherlands and maybe in Europe still running on Exchange 2010 that haven't even started to move to 2016. The pressure is increasing because end of support is approaching in eight months, so now they're starting to get nervous because they know they have to move. We have customers running on Exchange Server 2019. There are also customers that want to move, but when you are on Exchange 2010 you cannot move to 2019 because of the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/feature/Server-2008-R2-end-of-life-hitting-home-for-many-in-IT">N-2 program</a>. They have to move to 2016 first. For some customers it's impossible. What should administrators know before they install Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core 2019? Wesselius: If you want to use Server Core for Exchange, you can only use it in Exchange 2019. Exchange 2016 on Server Core <a href="https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2018/07/26/deploy-exchange-server-2019-on-windows-server-core/">is not supported</a>, and it does not work. It's just not possible. Exchange 2019 does offer some new technology for bare-metal deployments, but for virtual environments it's just a new version of exchange 2016. The differences are pretty small. Pretty much the only way to manage Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core is PowerShell. There's not really another way that works super well. Exchange control panel can be used for the basic configuration of an Exchange Server. For nitty-gritty details, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/tip/Five-system-administrator-skills-Windows-admins-should-hone">you need PowerShell</a>. But that's also the case for Exchange 2016. For the Windows part, you have to use PowerShell or manage it remotely or using server manager for example. If you don't know how to manage servers without GUI, there may be a bit of a learning curve to get the benefits of running Exchange on Server Core. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchEnterpriseDesktop/windows_desktop_systems/enterprisedesktop_article_005.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchwindowsserver/feature/Install-Exchange-Server-2019-on-Server-Core-2019-to-boost-security Tue, 18 Jun 2019 10:18:00 GMT Install Exchange Server 2019 on Server Core 2019 to boost security Startup Datrium has set out to enable cloud disaster recovery through its DVX storage platform with a new ControlShift orchestration application. Datrium has teased the workflow automation application formerly known as "<a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/blog/Storage-Soup/Startup-raises-60-million-to-grow-Datrium-DVX-business">Project CloudShift</a>" since August 2018. ControlShift became generally available today, although <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdisasterrecovery/news/252473998/Datrium-opens-cloud-DR-service-to-all-VMware-users">integration with the public clouds</a> is still in progress. ControlShift is the first application of Datrium's new Automatrix autonomous <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/essentialguide/Effective-multi-cloud-storage-strategies-and-management-techniques">multi-cloud data management</a> platform. Datrium launched in 2016 and bills itself as <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/tip/Datrium-open-converged-infrastructure-makes-HCI-flexible">hyper-converged infrastructure</a> with separate Compute Nodes and Data Nodes. Its value comes from Datrium DVX software that manages and protects data across nodes, which are x86 servers. Datrium DVX adds deduplication, compression, snapshots, replication and encryption. From the start, Datrium executives said cloud integration and automation would be key parts of its value to customers. ControlShift brings runbook automation to the Datrium DVX platform. It allows users to identify the virtual machines and containers they want to restart when recovering from downtime, and sets the restart order. It also lists any adjustments required for a restart -- for example, if the IP address is different on the failover site as the original site. During the failback process, ControlShift brings resources back online in the proper order. ControlShift also includes compliance tests that automatically check if failover and failback resources are working correctly. The first version of ControlShift works between two on-premises sites, or between a DVX on premises and Datrium's <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/450431071/Datrium-DVX-adds-cloud-option-for-Amazon-Web-Services">Cloud DVX</a> running on AWS Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2). Datrium founder and chief product officer Brian Biles said he expects ControlShift will support failover to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/news/252459726/Expansions-to-VMware-Cloud-on-AWS-continue-hybrid-cloud-push">VMware Cloud on AWS</a> by the end of 2019, with Microsoft Azure support to follow in 2020. ControlShift runs in the cloud as a <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/definition/Software-as-a-Service">SaaS application</a>. That enables testing from outside the network. "If your network fails and your runbook automation is in the data center, you might not know what's going on," Biles said. "With us, you can see everything. And we upgrade it automatically." Biles said ControlShift enables snapshots of data every five minutes and instant recovery. And it tests system compliance every 30 minutes. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/editorial/051519_SDR_Datrium-ControlShift.png"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/editorial/051519_SDR_Datrium-ControlShift_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/editorial/051519_SDR_Datrium-ControlShift_mobile.png 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/editorial/051519_SDR_Datrium-ControlShift.png 1280w" alt="Datrium ControlShift adds runbook automation to ensure applications on Datrium DVX storage are protected." data-credit="Datrium" height="315" width="560"> <figcaption> Datrium ControlShift adds runbook automation to ensure applications on Datrium DVX storage are protected and will restart in proper order in case of a disaster. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> The original version requires DVX nodes running at primary and secondary sites. The roadmap also includes support for non-DVX hosts, Biles said. ControlShift list pricing is as low as $320 per VM per year, depending on the length of the subscription and number of licenses. <a href="https://www.datrium.com/blog/tim-page-datrium-ceo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Datrium CEO Tim Page</a> said the vendor has gone after <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252444603/Datrium-DVX-switches-focus-to-converged-markets-enterprise">enterprise customers</a> since he joined in June 2018, and it now has close to 400 customers. He said Automatrix is a key part of Datrium's enterprise strategy, because he expects enterprises to demand multi-cloud functionality. "We want our customers to have the same experience whether they're on prem or off prem," he said. "Because we have all of these functions under one code base, we're able to do that." Toll system manufacturer TransCore has been using Datrium DVX for primary storage for a year, and was an early adopter of ControlShift, according to information systems manager Kevin Smith. Smith said TransCore used tape backups for its DR before switching to CloudShift eight in late 2018. "It's our full-blown DR plan for production now," he said. "What Datrium offered with the SaaS framework and running across multiple clouds, that's something we needed." He said TransCore already runs applications in AWS and "we are starting to stand up some Azure servers because I don't like to put all my eggs in one basket up on the cloud." TransCore has 48 TB of storage on a DVX Data Node, and a Cloud DVX instance in AWS for DR. Smith said ControlShift reduced the time to recover data from a full day to around an hour. "Before we had to spin up the VMs and restore the data," he said. "One system we use is a terabyte, so it took us a day to restore. Now this takes us an hour to get all the systems spun up, confirm that the data's there, and then we shut them down." TransCore, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, hasn't had any disasters since implementing ControlShift, but Smith said it conducts quarterly tests for compliance purposes. Those have gone without a hitch, he said. "We spin up an instance, make sure the data's there and make sure it's replicated correctly," he said. "We just did a test at the end of April, and it spun right up. Every time we do it, it costs us a little money on AWS, but it works." The Datrium cloud DR SaaS app, formerly known as Project CloudShift, is now called ControlShift and GA, but the first version only supports Datrium on premises and Cloud DVX hosts. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchCloudApplications/paas/cloudapplications_article_011.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdisasterrecovery/news/252463420/Datrium-DVX-storage-adds-ControlShift-cloud-DR-option Wed, 15 May 2019 12:49:00 GMT Datrium DVX storage adds ControlShift cloud DR option NEC Corp.'s first hyper-converged infrastructure appliance, which is preintegrated with Scale Computing's HC3 software, gives small and midsize companies a lighter-weight and lower-priced HCI option. <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/photostory/252451711/The-right-hyper-converged-system-yields-software-defined-gains/10/The-Scale-Computing-HC3-HCI-platform-targets-SMB-and-ROBO-market">Scale Computing's focus</a> on SMBs and ease of use was a good fit, because NEC plans to target customers that could use hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) or even virtualization for the first time, according to Yehuda Hyman, a product manager at NEC. HCI packages compute, virtualization, storage and networking resources in the same box. But Tokyo-headquartered NEC could face an uphill climb in a growing <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Hyper-converged-product-comparison-What-leading-HCI-vendors-offer">hyper-converged infrastructure market</a> that already has well-established leaders in Dell EMC, with its VMware HCI software; Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with SimpliVity; and Nutanix. "NEC has not really shown how serious they are about the IT infrastructure market in a long time," said Ashish Nadkarni, a group vice president in IDC's worldwide infrastructure practice. "NEC servers are unknown. NEC storage is unknown. NEC purpose-built backup appliances, at some point, had some level of recognition, but that slowly withered away."  The NEC HCI appliance could be successful with SMBs if it comes in at a price point lower than products from the larger HCI players, said Paul Delory, a research director at Gartner. He noted NEC's network of 1,000 channel partners and VARs in the U.S. and Europe will sell the NEC HCI product. "NEC has a pretty big presence in retail in particular. So, I can see this being attractive for people that want to put a lightweight infrastructure footprint in a retail store, for example," Delory said. <h3>HCI with open source KVM</h3> The new NEC HCI appliance, due in mid-June, includes an <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Examples-of-hypervisors-and-how-theyre-supported-in-HCI-products">open source kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor</a> as part of Scale Computing's HC3 software package. The product will ship with two SSDs and four spinning HDDs per node for storage and 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ modules for network connectivity. The default configuration is three nodes in NEC's 2U Express5800/D120h server enclosure. Customers will also have the option to add a fourth node and a second D120h enclosure for a maximum of eight nodes in the cluster. Scale Computing offers an option for a single-node deployment, but the minimum configuration for NEC's D120h server is two nodes. So, NEC settled on three nodes as the default to ensure customers would have sufficient redundancy for maintenance and high availability, Hyman said. The three-node NEC HCI Base model lists at $54,000 and includes 64 GB of RAM, two 480 GB SSDs and four 600 GB SAS-based 10,000 rpm HDDs in each node. The Mid-Range option ships with 128 GB of RAM, two 960 GB SSDs and four 1.2 TB SAS HDDs per node. The Power configuration has 256 GB of RAM, two 1.92 TB SSDs and four 1.8 TB SAS HDDs in each node. "For some of our customers, all-flash is overkill. But we also didn't want to just go all spinning disk, because occasionally you need that little bump in performance," Hyman said. "During our evaluation process of what to include, we felt hybrid was the best way to go." Hyman said the NEC HCI product supports up to 12 levels of storage tiering, and customers could set the storage to be hybrid, all-flash or all-HDD. He said NEC would consider adding a single-node option and certifying additional servers to run the Scale Computing software in the future. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/news/storage_nec-HCIappliance.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/news/storage_nec-HCIappliance_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/news/storage_nec-HCIappliance_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/news/storage_nec-HCIappliance.jpg 1280w" alt="NEC HCI user interface" height="275" width="559"> <figcaption> The new NEC HCI appliance's user interface is based on software from Scale Computing. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>NEC's hyper-converged infrastructure pros and cons</h3> Uses for the NEC HCI appliance include primary storage, <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/ehandbook/How-hyper-converged-secondary-storage-fits-in-the-HCI-world">backup, archiving</a> or disaster recovery, with a multisite deployment. Hyman said target customers include SMBs that use server-based storage, older NAS arrays or unified communications products. He said he envisions larger customers considering HCI for development and quality assurance or for remote and branch offices. NEC could face challenges pitching HCI for primary storage, IDC's Nadkarni said, because customers tend to get nervous about entrusting their data to lesser-known providers. "One of the big challenges for vendors has been proving that they are stable and they are able to be that solid foundation on which companies can run their businesses," Nadkarni said. "Even though Scale Computing has an established brand and an established reputation, NEC doesn't." Scale Computing sells branded hyper-converged infrastructure appliances on white box hardware and also makes its HC3 software available through <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/blog/Storage-Soup/Lenovo-investment-pushes-Scale-Computing-closer-to-edge">partnerships with server vendor Lenovo</a> and video surveillance specialist BCDVideo. HC3's features include built-in browser-based management, thin storage provisioning, virtual machine-level snapshots, instant thin VM clones, continuous replication and support for nondisruptive software updates. Scale's HC3 software is mature, and the HCI appliance is simple to operate, but one noteworthy weakness is the lack of support for VMware's popular virtualization software, according to Eric Slack, a senior analyst at Evaluator Group in Boulder, Colo. NEC counters that Scale's use of <a href="https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page" target="_blank" rel="noopener">open source KVM</a> means there are no additional third-party costs or licensing fees for the hypervisor. "When customers that are unfamiliar with KVM see how easy [Scale Computing has] made the console, it will be an eye-opener for them," Hyman said. Delory cautioned potential customers to be aware of NEC HCI product limitations in the areas of software-defined networking and hybrid cloud management. He said the NEC HCI would not be well-suited to core hyper-converged infrastructure use cases, such as virtual desktop infrastructure or internet of things. NEC partners with Scale Computing to launch its first hyper-converged infrastructure appliance tailored to SMBs and remote offices in the U.S. and Europe. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchOracle/sunoracle_systems/oracle_article_026.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252462590/New-NEC-hyper-converged-infrastructure-appliance-targets-SMBs Tue, 30 Apr 2019 16:57:00 GMT New NEC hyper-converged infrastructure appliance targets SMBs Hyper-converged rivals Nutanix and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have forged a dual-pronged partnership to merge their technologies in pay-as-you-go and bundled appliance options. The HPE-Nutanix strategy marks a thaw in their relationship and adds an HCI route to market for both vendors. HPE will sell Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software and its built-in <a href="https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Nutanix-Acropolis-hypervisor-components-and-capabilities">AHV hypervisor</a> as part of the <a href="https://www.computerweekly.com/microscope/news/252443348/HPE-rolls-out-packaged-approach-with-Greenlake-Flex-Capacity">HPE GreenLake</a> consumption-based IT model. Also, HCI pioneer Nutanix will sell its software packaged on HPE ProLiant and Apollo servers. Customers <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/VMware-vs-Nutanix-on-HPE-GreenLake-Comparing-approaches">who choose the GreenLake model</a> can run <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/photostory/252451709/The-right-hyper-converged-system-yields-software-defined-gains/8/Nutanix-hyper-converged-product-line-has-history-on-its-side">Nutanix HCI</a> software in their data center or in a colocation facility. HPE manages the servers and software, meters usage and bills customers monthly based on compute resources consumed when running applications. For customers who want packaged appliances, Nutanix will sell systems built on HPE servers as another option alongside current Nutanix NX appliances based on Supermicro servers. Greg Smith, Nutanix vice president of product marketing, said Nutanix will provide more details about the new product name and specs closer to the third quarter of 2019. HPE already sells HCI appliances, using technology gained through a $650 million acquisition of early Nutanix HCI rival <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/photostory/252451706/The-right-hyper-converged-system-yields-software-defined-gains/5/SimpliVity-is-Hewlett-Packard-Enterprises-HCI-architecture">SimpliVity</a> in 2017. HPE's main HCI products are HPE SimpliVity 380 based on ProLiant servers and HPE SimpliVity 2600 based on Apollo servers. Nutanix bills itself as a software company, and looks to partner with as many server vendors as possible. It has partnerships with Dell, Lenovo, IBM and others, but HPE has only treated Nutanix as a competitor until now. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-top_three_hci_companies.png"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-top_three_hci_companies_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-top_three_hci_companies_mobile.png 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/converged_infras-top_three_hci_companies.png 1280w" alt="Top three HCI companies" height="152" width="557"> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>'Feud is over'</h3> When Nutanix said it would <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/blog/Storage-Soup/Nutanix-enterprise-cloud-strategy-envelopes-HPE-Cisco-blades">court HPE channel partners</a> in May 2017, HPE issued a statement saying, "There is no relationship between HPE and Nutanix. Customers looking for a supported hyper-converged solution on our DL380 are better served using our HPE SimpliVity product." The new HPE-Nutanix deal signals a change of heart for HPE, which had only 5.4% of the HCI market for the fourth quarter of 2018, according to IDC numbers released in early April. "I think the feud is finally over," said Ashish Nadkarni, vice president of IDC research's infrastructure systems, platforms and technologies group. "If you can't beat them, join them." IDC put HPE HCI revenue at $105 million for the fourth quarter of 2018. Its 70% revenue growth from the previous year outpaced the total market growth of 57%, but HPE remains a distant third behind Dell/VMware and Nutanix. IDC said nearly 70% of HCI revenue is driven by software from VMware (38%) and Nutanix (30%). HPE remains committed to its SimpliVity HCI family but wants to offer HCI choice, said Pradeep Kumar, senior vice president of HPE's Pointnext services group. HPE also sells VMware Ready Nodes that include HPE hardware with VMware vSAN HCI software. "We will continue to sell SimpliVity," Kumar said. "Nutanix gives customers another choice." SimpliVity customers have to buy VMware licenses, while Nutanix users can use its built-in AHV hypervisor in place of VMware. "Customers like a choice versus VMware," Kumar said. "It was getting extremely expensive and they want an alternative for virtualization. We want to be in both camps." <h3>More HCI coopetition</h3> The HPE-Nutanix partnership gives Nutanix a similar <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/co-opetition">coopetition</a> relationship with HPE that it has with HPE's server rivals Dell and Lenovo. Both of those vendors rebrand Nutanix software on their servers, while also selling competing products. However, those product sales go through Dell and Lenovo, while the Nutanix sales team will push the HPE-based HCI appliances. Nutanix started off selling only its own branded systems, based on Supermicro servers. It still sells that platform under the Nutanix NX brand. Nutanix signed an OEM deal with Dell in 2014, resulting in Dell XC models bundling Nutanix software on Dell PowerEdge servers. That OEM deal survived Dell's acquisition of EMC, although EMC owned most of VMware and its vSAN software that competes with Nutanix. Dell EMC's main HCI product now is the VxRail based on vSAN and PowerEdge, but it continues to sell Dell EMC XC systems with Nutanix software. <a href="https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/data-center/software-defined-infrastructure/ThinkAgile-HX-Series/p/WMD00000326" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lenovo ThinkAgile HX</a> HCI systems integrate Nutanix software, but Lenovo also sells ThinkAgile HCI systems with software from VMware, Microsoft, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/blog/Storage-Soup/Lenovo-picks-Cloudistics-as-ThinkAgile-CP-partner">Cloudistics</a> and other partners. IBM, which doesn't sell x86 servers, does bundle Nutanix software on Power server-based HCI models. One difference in the HPE-Nutanix deal is that Nutanix will sell the hardware appliances under its brand. HPE's Kumar said that was done at least in part to avoid confusion with the HPE SimpliVity appliances sold by HPE. <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> The HPE partnership leaves Cisco as the last major server vendor that does not have a formal partnership with Nutanix. </figure> </div> </blockquote> "We want to let the two sales forces have clear swim lanes," he said. "We wanted to keep the as-a-service consumption model under GreenLake and our sales people would sell that, and if someone wants to buy a Capex model, that would be sold by Nutanix." The HPE partnership leaves Cisco as the last major server vendor that does not have a formal partnership with Nutanix, although common channel partners do offer Cisco UCS servers with Nutanix software. "If customers have a preference for a particular server or hardware manufacturer, we work hard to make sure our software is supported on these models," Nutanix's Smith said. The HPE deal follows Nutanix's <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/252458803/Nutanix-HCI-position-under-fire-due-to-sales-slump">low sales forecast</a> for this quarter, issued during its March earnings call. "This gives Nutanix another channel to sell their product," IDC's Nadkarni said. "This is Nutanix's way of saying, 'We are getting back into the game.'" After giving weak guidance in March, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey said the vendor is focused on expanding its sales pipeline. He also said he expected more server vendors to partner with Nutanix. "I think there's only two players [for hyper-converged software]," Pandey said. "A lot of server vendors are thinking about how to align with Nutanix or VMware." The Hewlett Packard Enterprise-Nutanix partnership sprang up on two fronts, bringing more layers of coopetition to the world of HCI. But where does this leave HPE SimpliVity? https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchDataManagement/vertical_data_strategy/datamanagement_article_032.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252461341/HPE-Nutanix-deal-expands-roster-of-hyper-converged-options Tue, 09 Apr 2019 09:36:00 GMT HPE-Nutanix deal expands roster of hyper-converged options The Cohesity-Cisco relationship is getting more serious, with Cisco adding Cohesity software to its global price list. Cohesity joined Cisco's SolutionsPlus program this week, which means Cohesity software is sold with Cisco HyperFlex and Unified Computing System (UCS). Cisco added Cohesity DataPlatform to its global price list, and customers will get service and support for Cohesity products through Cisco. The Cohesity-Cisco reseller deal is an extension of their previous <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchitchannel/news/252450125/Cohesity-storage-program-extends-to-managed-services-providers">channel partnership</a> where service providers would package their technologies. HyperFlex is Cisco's hyper-converged platform based on UCS servers, and Cohesity bills itself as hyper-converged secondary storage. "We are seeing increasing customer demand for doing hyper-converged primary and secondary," said Vijay Venugopal, Cisco's senior director of product management. The Cohesity-Cisco partnership also allows the Cohesity DataProtect backup application to take snapshots directly from HyperFlex. The partnership is not exclusive for either vendor. Cisco has partnerships with Cohesity rivals, including Veritas, <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/blog/Storage-Soup/Cisco-HyperFlex-bundles-Veaam-data-protection">Veeam Software</a>, Commvault and Rubrik. And Cohesity has an OEM deal with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which sells Cohesity software on ProLiant and Apollo servers. Cohesity also sells DataPlatform on its own branded appliances. Sanjeev Desai, senior director of solutions marketing at Cohesity, said the pricing model for Cohesity software is the same if customers buy from Cohesity or Cisco. Cohesity typically <a href="https://www.cohesity.com/blog/paying-much-data-protection-probably-cohesity-can-help-cut-tco-70/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">charges by the number of TBs</a> that land in the Cohesity cluster, after DataPlatform's dedupe and compression kick in. Steven Hill, senior analyst at 451 Research, said the deepening Cohesity-Cisco partnership was a logical progression. <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> A lot of companies are more interested in buying complete appliances than they are in building it themselves. </figure> <figcaption> Steven Hillsenior analyst, 451 Research </figcaption> </div> </blockquote> "A lot of companies are more interested in buying complete appliances than they are in building it themselves," Hill said. "So the idea of buying a preinstalled, preconfigured software-defined storage from Cisco, on <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatabackup/news/252488214/Cohesity-gives-DataPlatform-an-I-O-Boost-for-flash-storage">hardware</a> you already know and love, and software that's being certified and supported by both companies -- it's a pretty big step." The <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchitchannel/definition/reseller">reseller</a> deal gives Cohesity access to Cisco's customers, which span the globe and include large enterprises. Cisco contributed to Cohesity's Series C and Series D funding rounds as a strategic investor. The two vendors said they will "align roadmaps," making Cisco's influence in Cohesity's development more than just financial. When a large vendor forges a strong relationship with a smaller newcomer, the arrangement sometimes leads to an acquisition. But Cisco prefers to partner with storage vendors rather than acquire them. It got burned after acquiring all-flash array vendor Whiptail and discontinued sales of Whiptail systems after poor results. "Cisco has been cautious about wanting to become a storage vendor," Hill said. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/storage-cisco_topology.png"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/storage-cisco_topology_mobile.png" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/storage-cisco_topology_mobile.png 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineimages/storage-cisco_topology.png 1280w" alt="slide showing Cohesity DataPlatform and Cisco HyperFlex topology" data-credit="Cohesity " height="367" width="559"> <figcaption> Buying Cisco UCS-configured Cohesity DataPlatform converges primary and secondary data onto a single architecture. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> Cohesity DataPlatform went through an extensive series of testing exercises and gained the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) seal of approval. Venugopal explained that this is the process by which third parties are qualified to run with Cisco products, and typically takes two or three months to complete. The CVD mark shows a third-party product is certified to work with Cisco. The partnership between vendors Cohesity and Cisco has blossomed into a reseller deal. Customers can now buy Cohesity software with Cisco HyperFlex hardware and architecture. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchCRM/marketing/CRM_article_011.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatabackup/news/252459408/Cohesity-Cisco-partnership-deepens-into-reseller-deal Wed, 13 Mar 2019 11:58:00 GMT Cohesity-Cisco partnership deepens into reseller deal Everyone loves a good sidekick. Batman has Robin, Han Solo has Chewbacca and VDI has hyper-converged infrastructure.  HCI brings the main resources of the data center, compute, networking and storage, into one piece of hardware. The benefits of HCI -- simpler management, less downtime, greater flexibility -- can translate into big improvements in virtual desktop and application management. By adopting HCI, desktop virtualization shops can expect benefits in several areas, including availability and performance. "It really comes down to the confidence and the way it's available," said Bill Connor, IT infrastructure lead at Forest County Potawatomi Tribe in Wisconsin. "I can have [apps] on there and not have to worry about them as much as stuff that's running on my older architecture." <h3>Enable pooled resources</h3> One of the biggest <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchvirtualdesktop/tip/Avoid-disastrous-bottlenecks-scale-storage-for-VDI-with-HCI">benefits of HCI</a> is that it allows IT to pool resources and dole them out based on who needs what, rather than confining users to what their devices can handle. This results in better virtual app performance because IT can allot more resources to users who run resource-intensive apps such as computer-aided design and fewer resources to users who work with basic ones such as Microsoft Word. EMeter Corp., a software company in Foster City, Calif., delivers apps and database systems to virtual desktop users through VMware Horizon View on hyper-converged infrastructure. "Users give us the parameters, and we can deliver those parameters across the board," said Bryan Bond, director of IT infrastructure at eMeter, a subsidiary of Siemens. "On traditional hardware, we couldn't do that." The ability to pool and easily scale resources with HCI has been critical for David Aldarondo, manager of network services at Post University, a primarily online university based in Waterbury, Conn. "If a registrar needs more resources or an admissions counselor needs fewer resources, we can distribute that appropriately," Aldarondo said. Post University is in the process of moving from VMware Horizon to Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. With the ability to deliver even more apps with this deployment, Aldarondo expects to reclaim more resources to then distribute to end users as needed to ensure quality <a href="https://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/feature/Build-a-virtualized-development-environment-with-these-guidelines">virtual application performance</a>. "We're able to do more with what we have over time as opposed to traditional desktops, which once you've made the purchase, you're stuck with those resources," he said. <div class="imagecaption alignLeft"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineImages/connor_bill.jpg" alt="Bill Connor">Bill Connor </div> Forest County Potawatomi Tribe uses Nutanix for HCI and delivers virtual desktops and applications with the VMware Horizon Suite, Workspace One and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS). <a href="https://www.nutanix.com/2017/05/17/hci-nutanix-truly-great-fit-healthcare-applications/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nutanix</a> includes management software that helps Connor's team ensure that apps don't run out of storage, he said. Pooled resources can also help virtual app deployments by allowing IT to <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchvirtualdesktop/tip/Six-VDI-testing-steps-to-take-with-any-deployment">perform more-consistent performance testing</a>. Many organizations have a single server dedicated to testing that only runs a few times a year. With HCI, IT can disperse resources across the infrastructure to do virtual application performance testing on a more regular basis, Bond said. <h3>Reduce app response and logon times</h3> One of the other benefits of HCI is that it can help organizations reduce virtual application response times. American Showa Corp., a network of automobile part suppliers based in Sunbury, Ohio, uses NetApp HCI to power its virtual application deployment. IT delivers a virtualized version of its manufacturing execution system that runs on assembly lines to maintain response times under one second, said Sean Henry, the company's senior manager of IT. <div class="imagecaption alignRight"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineImages/aldarondo_david.jpg" alt="David Aldarondo">David Aldarondo </div> Bond also sees those types of improvements in his deployment, where something that used to take users 10 minutes now only takes three, for example.  "That may not sound like a lot, but when you're performing a task 30 to 40 times in a day, that can add up to being able to do it 60 to 70 times in a day," Bond said. "People ... are saying things are a lot better than what [they've] been doing." Rent-A-Center in Plano, Texas uses HCI to deliver VMware Horizon app pools, a concept that allows IT to entitle users to access applications that run on RDS hosts. The deployment has helped reduce virtual application <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterprisedesktop/blog/Windows-Enterprise-Desktop/Logon-times-play-key-role-in-virtual-desktop-UX-monitoring">logon times</a> from nearly three minutes to 45 seconds, said Michael Conroy, senior director of technical operations and architecture at the retailer. <h3>Simplify virtual desktop and app management</h3> On a basic level, one of the major benefits of HCI is that it simplifies data center management. Instead of working with storage hardware from one vendor and networking hardware from another, HCI puts it all in one place from a single vendor. IT pros can rest assured that everything runs in concert, and a firmware update to one aspect won't cause something else to fail like it can with a traditional data center. "There's just so much less work that needs to be done in a hyper-converged environment," said Paul Delory, research director at Gartner. Those benefits of HCI lead to major time savings for IT teams, freeing admins up to focus on maintaining virtual desktop and app performance rather than simply keeping the lights on. <div class="imagecaption alignRight"> <img src="https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/rms/onlineImages/conroy_michael.jpg" alt="Michael Conroy">Michael Conroy </div> "IT has been able to largely operate more efficiently," American Showa's Henry said. "I don't have an enormous staff, so any technology that I bring in has to let my team punch above their weight class." The simplicity and scalability of HCI can also make it easier for IT to communicate resource needs to financial decision-makers. "[I can say], 'We scaled this infrastructure for 3,000 users, and if I add another node, I can add another 150 users to it, and a node costs X,'" Rent-A-Center's Conroy said. "It's a single conversation instead of having to go, 'I need more compute. I need more storage and more memory cores.'" Hyper-converged infrastructure can deliver benefits to IT on the back end, but many of those benefits can also directly affect virtual application delivery and performance. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchDataCenter/management_operations/datacenter_article_015.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchvirtualdesktop/feature/IT-reaps-the-benefits-of-HCI-for-virtual-desktops-and-apps Tue, 27 Nov 2018 15:52:00 GMT IT reaps the benefits of HCI for virtual desktops and apps NetApp wants to redefine HCI, at least as it applies to the NetApp HCI product. "When people talk about HCI, they refer to <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/feature/Hyper-converged-product-comparison-What-leading-HCI-vendors-offer">hyper-converged infrastructure</a>," said Brad Anderson, NetApp's general manager of cloud infrastructure. "It's commodity hardware, software-defined, scale up, virtualized data center, simplified deployment and management. We do that. But when we talk about HCI, I want you to hear hybrid cloud infrastructure. You consume it like a cloud with the same services as a cloud and seamless integration to the largest public clouds. We deliver a hybrid, multi-cloud experience." Other executives at <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252451252/NetApp-flash-offerings-push-into-cloud-edge-and-IoT">NetApp Insight</a> last week also referred to HCI as hybrid cloud infrastructure. They painted NetApp HCI <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252451754/NetApp-Cloud-Volumes-gives-new-wrinke-to-OnTap-file-storage">as the private cloud pillar</a> in NetApp's cloud-connected flash strategy. It is a private cloud building block with public cloud integration. NetApp HCI uses the SolidFire all-flash platform and Element operating system along with an unidentified partner's compute nodes. Integrated networking is on the roadmap. <h3>NetApp HCI leading from behind?</h3> NetApp's positioning of HCI isn't really much different than other competitors, such as Nutanix and VMware. They all see HCI as a way to deploy volumes, clusters and applications from a single pane of glass in an on-premises data center. The goal is to make it a similar experience as using public cloud storage. But VMware -- through partners' infrastructure such as Dell EMC VxRail -- and Nutanix have been in the market for years. Nutanix is a billion-dollar-a-year business based entirely on HCI, while NetApp is barely in the market for a year and has low single-digit market share. NetApp hopes to gain an edge through its <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/450431618/Hitz-NetApp-market-growth-hinges-on-cloud-data-management">Data Fabric</a> architecture that ties together cloud storage features the vendor has built up for several years. <blockquote class="main-article-pullquote"> <div class="main-article-pullquote-inner"> <figure> We've had the advantage of listening, observing and learning like we did in flash, where our patient approach led us to No. 1 in all-flash arrays. </figure> <figcaption> Brad Andersongeneral manager of cloud infrastructure, NetApp </figcaption> </div> </blockquote> "We're late," NetApp principal technologist Andy Grimes said of HCI. "But we're good at being late." Grimes was referring mainly to NetApp's flash come-from-behind story. NetApp was the last of the major storage vendors to embrace all-flash arrays, but IDC listed NetApp as the No. 1 in all-flash system market share for the second quarter of 2018. "We've had the advantage of listening, observing and learning," Anderson added about NetApp's HCI strategy, "like we did in flash, where our patient approach led us to No. 1 in all-flash arrays." Flash also plays a big role in NetApp HCI because it is built on the technology NetApp acquired from all-flash pioneer SolidFire. SolidFire's Element OS enables running multiple workloads with guaranteed quality of service across nodes. NetApp HCI does not integrate servers and storage as tightly as other HCI products. NetApp includes separate storage and compute nodes. Customers start with a minimum of four compute and two storage nodes, and can scale by adding single nodes of either storage or compute. "We call it getting rid of the HCI tax," said Brett Roscoe, NetApp VP of product management, pointing to a common complaint about early HCI products requiring users to scale compute and storage together. NetApp CEO George Kurian claimed the vendor has "hundreds of customers with thousands of nodes in enterprise and service provider environments" for NetApp HCI. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI_01.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI_01_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI_01_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI_01.jpg 1280w" alt="NetApp HCI appliances" data-credit="NetApp" height="257" width="559"> <figcaption> NetApp HCI is pillar of vendor's hybrid cloud story </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>Containers, networking HCI roadmap</h3> NetApp HCI was brand new and a major focus a year ago at <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/450427592/NetApp-HCI-launches-at-subdued-user-show">NetApp Insight 2017</a> but didn't feature prominently in product launches at Insight 2018. NetApp added a verified architecture for Red Hat OpenShift on NetApp HCI, allowing management of containers for DevOps. While that hardly stood out in a bevy of cloud launches, it is a sign of one area where NetApp HCI is headed. Roscoe said he sees NetApp HCI becoming a major platform for containers. "Initial HCI deployments are using virtualization, but interest in containers is extremely high," he said. "We live in a world where they want to run VMs and containers, and orchestrate them together." Roscoe said the NetApp HCI roadmap includes integration of an Ethernet switch by the end of 2018, and support for more hypervisors than VMware's. NetApp is also launching <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/tip/Nvidia-GPU-Cloud-marries-data-science-and-containers">Nvidia GPU</a> options to support VDI and will be adding additional Nvidia options in the future to support additional workloads like <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/tip/Artificial-intelligence-data-storage-planning-best-practices">artificial intelligence</a><a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/tip/Artificial-intelligence-data-storage-planning-best-practices">artificial intelligence</a>. <h3>HCI customers in cloud, on edge</h3> Benjamin Molloy, division lead at Consultel Cloud, said the Australian-based service provider decided to deploy NetApp HCI for its entire IT infrastructure based largely on the NetApp roadmap. Consultel Cloud uses NetApp HCI in Equinix data centers in Sydney, Melbourne, London and New York. It also offers HCI as a service based on NetApp's technology. Molloy said when speaking to NetApp about its HCI plans, "that roadmap stood out for us. We had two things on our wish list -- multi-hypervisor and GPU support, and both of those are on the [roadmap]. We already have customers that require GPU and we are starting to get a few requests for [Microsoft] Hyper-V." Molloy said he evaluated NetApp and Nutanix for hyper-convergence. He said he felt NetApp HCI could be deployed faster, both initially and when upgrading. Consultel Cloud was also familiar with the underlying technology because it used SolidFire arrays even before NetApp acquired SolidFire in 2015. "There are features we don't have yet but are coming in six to 12 months," Molloy said. "And we like the deployment times. We can have NetApp HCI implemented in less than a month, from contract signing to deployment." Part of NetApp's HCI strategy is to use it to integrate data from edge devices. That's how Italian motorcycle company Ducati uses NetApp HCI. Ducati, which makes racing bikes and road bikes, is running a pilot with HCI at race tracks to gather and process telemetry data. NetApp HCI travels with Ducati across the MotoGP championship series that includes 19 races in 15 countries on five continents. Ducati CTO <a href="http://www.intelligenttechchannels.com/ducati-boosts-performance-with-modernised-infrastructure-from-netapp/" target="_blank">Konstantin Kostenarov</a> said each Ducati racing bike has more than 60 sensors and generates 20 GB of data per race. Kostenarov said Ducati downloads racing data from NetApp HCI systems at the tracks to its Bologna, Italy, data center. The data taken from sensors on the racing bikes during test runs helps Ducati make adjustments before race day. Kostenarov said Ducati picked NetApp HCI because of its quality of service features, the ability to scale compute and storage independently and because it is easy to deploy and manage. "With HCI we can collect data during the race and connect our racing motorcycles on the network from the track," he said. "This increases our competitiveness and helps speed up the performance of our motorcycles." Ducati also uses NetApp all-flash FAS arrays at its main data center and secondary sites, but Kostenarov said HCI gives it "flexibility, the ability to optimize space, and high performance around the world." Late to HCI, NetApp tries to play catch up against Dell EMC, VMware and Nutanix by pushing its SolidFire flash-based product into hybrid cloud deployments. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchCloudStorage/hybrid_storage/cloudstorage_article_008.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/news/252451534/NetApp-HCI-aimed-at-hybrid-clouds Mon, 29 Oct 2018 13:36:00 GMT NetApp HCI aimed at hybrid clouds LAS VEGAS -- New NetApp flash storage is moving into Docker environments and object storage, technologies that typically have relied on spinning disk. Flash products introduced Tuesday at the NetApp Insight conference include a Red Hat OpenShift on <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/450427592/NetApp-HCI-launches-at-subdued-user-show">NetApp HCI </a>system. <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252468747/NetApp-Flash-customers-have-started-to-tap-the-brakes">NetApp HCI is based on SolidFire</a> all-flash arrays running the ElementOS operating system. The validated reference hardware enables Red Hat development shops to provision persistent storage containers as a private cloud. NetApp also added a flash-enabled SG6060 to its StorageGrid object storage appliances. Projected use cases for the new appliance include AI training data created by IoT devices, as well as the backup of cold data sets that may need to be quickly reactivated. <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252451523/NetApp-all-flash-storage-fuels-hybrid-cloud-stance-CEO-says">NetApp's flash hardware moves</a> accompanied a raft of cloud software releases. They included NetApp Cloud Volumes OnTap file storage with data protection and tiering to the public cloud. The vendor also formally introduced <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/blog/Storage-Soup/NetApp-Kubernetes-Service-launched-to-orchestrate-containers">NetApp Kubernetes</a> as a service (NKS), based on technology NetApp picked up from StackPointCloud last month. NKS automates the provisioning of federated container clusters and syncs the persistent storage in the public cloud. <figure class="main-article-image full-col" data-img-fullsize="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI.jpg"> <img data-src="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI_mobile.jpg" class="lazy" data-srcset="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI_mobile.jpg 960w,https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/rms/onlineImages/netapp_HCI.jpg 1280w" alt="NetApp SolidFire flash storage" data-credit="NetApp" height="298" width="559"> <figcaption> NetApp HCI is built on SolidFire flash storage. </figcaption> <div class="main-article-image-enlarge"> </div> </figure> <h3>NetApp: SolidFire is gaining on hyper-converged leaders</h3> The NetApp flash rollouts come as the vendor looks to move its flagship OnTap storage systems closer to the ElementOS-based SolidFire. OnTap storage includes all Flash fabric-attached storage, or FAS, and FAS hybrid systems. NetApp also sells the E-Series SAN arrays that run on the SANtricity operating software. NetApp HCI is based on SolidFire all-flash storage. Customers can buy NetApp SolidFire arrays as stand-alone storage or coupled with server nodes running VMware virtualization in the <a href="https://www.vmware.com/products/hyper-converged-infrastructure.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HCI model</a>. The minimum HCI configuration is four compute nodes and two storage nodes. Customers increase capacity by adding single SolidFire storage or compute nodes. NetApp acquired SolidFire in 2015, releasing the HCI version after its first full Element release last year. <a href="https://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/450420184/NetApp-HCI-brings-vendor-belatedly-into-hyper-convergence">Acquiring SolidFire</a> helped jumpstart what had been sluggish HCI product development. The ElementOS quality of service targets performance issues that often plague traditional hyper-converged installations. Although it started late, NetApp HCI is making inroads against market leaders Nutanix and Dell EMC, said Brad Anderson, a NetApp senior vice president and GM of cloud infrastructure. "We've had some pretty good success, interestingly and encouragingly, with customers that tried to use [competing] HCI products more holistically. They then found that those products encountered headwinds with scale [and] performance of guaranteed quality of service. The guaranteed performance is where ElementOS really shines," Anderson said. NetApp said it will certify testing and market validated blueprints to enterprises building large OpenShift container farms. NetApp CEO George Kurian told SearchStorage that a reference design for <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252434712/NetApp-CEO-Kurian-narrows-focus-to-flash-cloud">flash-based HCI</a> resonates with customers. He said most of new SolidFire customers are choosing it as NetApp HCI deployments. "We're starting to see the volume of new customers take on the hyper-converged infrastructure platforms approach, which we're excited about. There are, of course, large service providers that will continue to buy SolidFire as stand-alone storage arrays, and we're entirely comfortable with that," Kurian said. <h3>NetApp StorageGrid SG6060</h3> The SG6060 object storage combines two StorageGrid devices: the 60-drive 4U StorageGrid E5700 disk array, fronted by an attached E2800 controller running a dedicated tier of NetApp flash. Customers can move inactive data to object storage using <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/450427677/Microsoft-Azure-taps-NetApp-Ontap-for-native-NFS-storage">NetApp FabricPool</a> tiering, said Randy Kerns, an analyst at Evaluator Group, an IT analyst firm based in Boulder, Colo. "NetApp is trying to diversify its usage model for StorageGrid. Most object storage traditionally is a slow repository for your data. NetApp wants it to be able to accept data at a much quicker pace for AI and analytics applications," Kerns said. NetApp Data Availability Services (NDAS) is a new service rolled out in OnTap 9.5, with an initial focus on backup and data protection for object-based copies. NDAS uses SnapMirror replication to create an index whenever NetApp storage moves data to the cloud. Customers using NDAS can keep a primary copy on local storage and work on the cloud-based backup copy in its native object format. At the NetApp Insight user show, the vendor advocates for flash to replace disk for backup, cloud and object storage. NetApp HCI expands, and StorageGrid gets flash. https://cdn.ttgtmedia.com/visuals/searchManufacturingERP/lean_software/manufacturingerp_article_013.jpg https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/news/252451252/NetApp-flash-offerings-push-into-cloud-edge-and-IoT Wed, 24 Oct 2018 14:30:00 GMT NetApp flash offerings push into cloud, edge and IoT SearchConvergedInfrastructure Resources and Information from TechTarget 60 webmaster@techtarget.com