The first company we saw at Tech Field Day was NetApp. Big Storage, huge company, thats the drill. An organization making inroads to the enterprise/mid-level space to help companies store their data as best suites them.
A little missing in the technical department
Being an IT Administrator who is particularly interested in Storage, Netapp should have been very cool, and in some regard it was great, but some of the presentation did miss the boat for the purpose of the event. There were a whole lot of slides and some sales fluff which really is not what the delegate crowd gets in to.
That is my rant about the NetApp presentation… now on to the good stuff.
Objects, not LUNs coming quickly to storage
When the company began, NetApp played in the Internet space, providing big filers for ISPs and other Internet companies collecting and moving huge amounts of data. Now they play there and in the Enterprise space with smaller (or less high end) organizations. This is a good idea because NetApps filers get the job done. The thing I am unsure about is the overall expense associated with NetApp.
One of the things that caught me during this presentation was the fact that NetApp acquired ByCast and is now working on object storage. Storing data as objects and keeping meta data about the objects stored for easy lookup of the stored information.
In addition to object storage, NetApp, Cisco, and VMware are putting together a solution called flexpod consisting of a framework to allow storage, networking, and virtualization to come in one package. They aren’t pitching a SKU directly, relying on resellers to pitch the solution, but the fact that this type of thing is being considered is a great move.
One thing I am not sure of is how support is handled. Support for each piece is required, so SmartNet from Cisco, a contract with NetApp, and a contract with VMware is needed for the product to be supported. This isnt quite the best idea in my opinion, and here is why:
1. Not sold as a package – support is provided for the collective solution, opening a ticket with Cisco because the symptoms take an admin there may prompt Cisco support to pass the ticket to NetApp if they determine it is needed. This is great, but if I do not have any other items with support from a vendor in the package it will possibly confuse the end date of the contract making it hard to manage.
2. If support is provided cross company for the solution, sell a joint contract for support and split the revenue three ways. If the cost of a support contract for flex pod is 400$/year then cut it up three ways and sell it as one unit.
I understand the solution is sold by resellers so the items can be built and sold together even without a SKU, but making easier on us to purchase and work with the product.
Tierless-Caching
NetApp favors caching over teiering in storage. After seeing some of the other presentations at Tech Field Day, I am not sure I agree with this approach. Caching will speed up reads against the storage and require no maintenance to determine which tier a piece of data belongs, but it still requires spindles to handle writes efficiently.
Here is what I wonder: If I use a tiered solution or optimization appliance with the caching of a filer like those provided by NetApp, will there be any significant performance improvements? Not sure. Would be curious to see this tested in a lab to see if it is noticeable.
Co-Founder hangin’ with the delegates
Another thing, that was not necessarily technical about the NetApp presentation was that Dave Hitz, one of the companies founders, not only gave remarks at the session, but stayed for the whole thing and was very very active in the discussion with the delegates.
For more information on what NetApp is working on check out their You Tube Page – NetApp Tube.
Thanks NetApp
I had a great time and enjoyed the opportunity to hear from NetApp. There are areas they could improve the presentation for future Tech Field Day events, but it was great that they were willing to have us. Thanks to Dave Hitz and the whole team at NetApp who participated in our time there. I hope the feedback they got (and will get through our blog posts) leads them to participate in future events. I for one will be keeping a closer eye on what they are working on.
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