This afternoon, I stumbled upon NetApp's Agile Data Infrastructure and the three 'I's associated with the same: Intelligent, Immortal and Infinite.
I checked out a YouTube video by NetApp TV where their sales representative talks about the Agile Data Infrastructure which really wasn't too clear to me until that point. The video (linked below) answered a few questions but made me ask many more. It is really one of those days where you start unraveling more new problems as you unravel each mystery piecemeal, and then when the day draws to a close, you heave a huge sigh of relief after having looked back at the long day and patting yourself at the back for having learnt a whole new deal about contemporary IT trends.
So apparently, this team at NetApp provides storage solutions similar to Amazon S3 that guarantees efficient management of the monstrous amounts of business critical data which they refer to as intelligent, durability of the stored data in the sense that it will never be lost (immortal) and support business growth by providing storage solutions for the concomitant business data growth.
Now let's delve into some technicalities. NetApp storage solutions comprise of a NetApp filer or FAS (Fabric attached storage) device that in my opinion is nothing less than a full-fledged computer system. Storage solution it is called and fairly misleading the name is, for it is practically nothing short of a cabinet that houses a processor, NVRAM (Non-volatile Random Access Memory, I'll mostly have a post coming soon about this one too) backed by a battery and the actually physical device that stores the data which could be SATA, Fiber channel or SAS disk drives. The filer can communicate with other filers using file-based protocols that could be as simple as FTP and HTTP which most of us already know about to the little known NFS (not Need for Speed! Mega facepalm, if even for a moment you thought it was the EA game), CIFS and TFTP. The NetApp filer is supported by an overlying NetApp ONTAP operating system and I hear that the current version of the same is NetApp ONTAP 8 which many businesses remark as simply stunning!
This dedicated storage solutions service provider happened to tie the knot with Amazon that can be evidenced by a blog post in their website, https://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/tim/blog/2012/11/28/netapp-private-storage-for-amazon-web-services which again made little sense to me right from the start when the state of my mind could be best expressed as random ideas scattered hither and thither like an unsolved jigsaw puzzle. I thereby set off to join the dots and solve the puzzle and I must say I am nearly there, at least 90% done which is precisely why I am writing this post.
Businesses that use the AWS for managing their colossal amounts of data can now use a two-fold strategy. They can continue to use the AWS for managing a great proportion of their data in the public domain, but can also now achieve a limited level of private access by caching the frequently accessed data in a privately managed NetApp filer. At this point, I would want to draw a distinction between the business goals of NetApp and Amazon, both of which seem to be suggesting that they are in essence satisfying the same goal but believe me they are not! NetApp aims at providing storage solutions for Big Data but their mission statement clearly indicates that their solution is suitable for privately managed, enterprise-level storage. This means that you as their client, still need to hire experts to manage the data storage infrastructure, but you do not need to keep hiring experts for maintenance as your business grows. The NetApp filer provides that inherent scalability to support your ever-growing business. Now, on the contrary, Amazon storage solutions like S3 are typically storage and maintenance services that you pay for. You as the client, need to only pay for the service and you are not really in charge of any other associated support activity. Phew! That seemed so pretty close, but on deeper dissection, it does appear more distinct and disparate.
Now as suggested by that link above, NetApp filers owned and managed by you can now securely connect with the Amazon cloud infrastructure using the Amazon Direct Connect feature which is nothing very different from a VLAN technique modeled along the lines of IEEE standard, 802.1Q. This again has a two fold use. One, you can now swap data, in and out from the larger cloud, S3 to your private NetApp filer. The second benefit stems as a natural corollary of the first one. As data can now be moved in and out, you can unleash the high performance of Amazon EC2 processing infrastructure even on to your privately held NetApp filer data.
For those of you still continuing to read, let me tell you that the post is now over. If you didn't really understand, I would suggest that you read the previous paragraph yet again. Of course, any help you need beyond that, I have a fairly ubiquitous presence today :D. Just ping me on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter and I will get back to you.
The NetApp-Amazon alliance is definitely a healthy sign for more innovation in the cloud and I have today an extended and fairly entrenched belief in the idea that most of the solutions for businesses, both today and tomorrow, can only be found in the cloud!
I checked out a YouTube video by NetApp TV where their sales representative talks about the Agile Data Infrastructure which really wasn't too clear to me until that point. The video (linked below) answered a few questions but made me ask many more. It is really one of those days where you start unraveling more new problems as you unravel each mystery piecemeal, and then when the day draws to a close, you heave a huge sigh of relief after having looked back at the long day and patting yourself at the back for having learnt a whole new deal about contemporary IT trends.
So apparently, this team at NetApp provides storage solutions similar to Amazon S3 that guarantees efficient management of the monstrous amounts of business critical data which they refer to as intelligent, durability of the stored data in the sense that it will never be lost (immortal) and support business growth by providing storage solutions for the concomitant business data growth.
Now let's delve into some technicalities. NetApp storage solutions comprise of a NetApp filer or FAS (Fabric attached storage) device that in my opinion is nothing less than a full-fledged computer system. Storage solution it is called and fairly misleading the name is, for it is practically nothing short of a cabinet that houses a processor, NVRAM (Non-volatile Random Access Memory, I'll mostly have a post coming soon about this one too) backed by a battery and the actually physical device that stores the data which could be SATA, Fiber channel or SAS disk drives. The filer can communicate with other filers using file-based protocols that could be as simple as FTP and HTTP which most of us already know about to the little known NFS (not Need for Speed! Mega facepalm, if even for a moment you thought it was the EA game), CIFS and TFTP. The NetApp filer is supported by an overlying NetApp ONTAP operating system and I hear that the current version of the same is NetApp ONTAP 8 which many businesses remark as simply stunning!
This dedicated storage solutions service provider happened to tie the knot with Amazon that can be evidenced by a blog post in their website, https://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/tim/blog/2012/11/28/netapp-private-storage-for-amazon-web-services which again made little sense to me right from the start when the state of my mind could be best expressed as random ideas scattered hither and thither like an unsolved jigsaw puzzle. I thereby set off to join the dots and solve the puzzle and I must say I am nearly there, at least 90% done which is precisely why I am writing this post.
Businesses that use the AWS for managing their colossal amounts of data can now use a two-fold strategy. They can continue to use the AWS for managing a great proportion of their data in the public domain, but can also now achieve a limited level of private access by caching the frequently accessed data in a privately managed NetApp filer. At this point, I would want to draw a distinction between the business goals of NetApp and Amazon, both of which seem to be suggesting that they are in essence satisfying the same goal but believe me they are not! NetApp aims at providing storage solutions for Big Data but their mission statement clearly indicates that their solution is suitable for privately managed, enterprise-level storage. This means that you as their client, still need to hire experts to manage the data storage infrastructure, but you do not need to keep hiring experts for maintenance as your business grows. The NetApp filer provides that inherent scalability to support your ever-growing business. Now, on the contrary, Amazon storage solutions like S3 are typically storage and maintenance services that you pay for. You as the client, need to only pay for the service and you are not really in charge of any other associated support activity. Phew! That seemed so pretty close, but on deeper dissection, it does appear more distinct and disparate.
Now as suggested by that link above, NetApp filers owned and managed by you can now securely connect with the Amazon cloud infrastructure using the Amazon Direct Connect feature which is nothing very different from a VLAN technique modeled along the lines of IEEE standard, 802.1Q. This again has a two fold use. One, you can now swap data, in and out from the larger cloud, S3 to your private NetApp filer. The second benefit stems as a natural corollary of the first one. As data can now be moved in and out, you can unleash the high performance of Amazon EC2 processing infrastructure even on to your privately held NetApp filer data.
For those of you still continuing to read, let me tell you that the post is now over. If you didn't really understand, I would suggest that you read the previous paragraph yet again. Of course, any help you need beyond that, I have a fairly ubiquitous presence today :D. Just ping me on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter and I will get back to you.
The NetApp-Amazon alliance is definitely a healthy sign for more innovation in the cloud and I have today an extended and fairly entrenched belief in the idea that most of the solutions for businesses, both today and tomorrow, can only be found in the cloud!
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