NetApp HCI: Hyper Converged or Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure?

by | Oct 8, 2019 | NetApp, Tech Field Day

NetApp Hyper Converged or Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure – What Might The Future Hold? from Gestalt IT on Vimeo.

It is incredible that it already more than a year since my last post here at VDIcloud, and it’s even worse that I promised more content but never delivered. So let’s give it another try, and where better to start than with the Tech Field Days I’ve been to in the past. Let’s start with the last I’ve been to (also almost a year ago) at the NetApp Insight event in Las Vegas in 2018. As the next event will be this month, I thought it would be a good idea to see what they showcased last year, and then after the event this year compare and see what NetApp brings to the table.

How to give HCI power to the customer

We live in a world where data is worth more than oil, and companies are constantly looking for better and faster ways to utilize their data to the fullest. A lot of times we here about cloud, and instantly we think about Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform, but a lot of companies are still working on their own on-premises infrastructures albeit that more and more companies are trying to replicate the public cloud providers by utilizing Converged and Hyper Converged solutions. Bridging the gap between On-premises solutions and Public Cloud Providers is something that a lot companies are struggling with and for this they are looking at the HCI providers for help. NetApp is relatively late with their HCI solution, but that doesn’t mean that they’re providing the right solution for their customers.

NetApp’s view on HCI

During this presentation Gabriel goes deeper into what the focus is for NetApp HCI and provides answers on some of the important questions NetApp’s view on HCI. The presentation was focussed on what defines HCI, what types of HCI exist, and what are the benefits for customer. As always with the Field Day events there are some awesome delegates that have great questions an remarks on what the presenter is telling, and this presentation has some great remarks on HCI, CI and what the difference really is. I really loved the conversation on what the difference is between CI and HCI and what that means for the customer, but I do agree with Gabe that the biggest difference between CI and HCI is that CI comes by the rack and the stack is controlled by the vendor, where as with HCI you can start small and grow big. Both have their advantages, but if convergence started with the hyperscalers, HCI is much more in line than CI. NetApp offers a solutions that exists of Compute nodes and Storage Nodes that can be scaled independently of each other. This provides customers the ability to really disaggregate compute and storage, while still having the power of a single scalable and easy to maintain platform.

Arjan’s view

I’ve always looked at the HCI solution as a great step towards building on-premises cloud solutions (private cloud if that is a better name for you to use). The problem I’ve always seen with these solution is that the focus often seemed to be on the bringing the vendors solution to the customer and in doing so it is not always bringing the best solution to them. Hyper Converged Infrastructure for me is much more about bridging the private and public Cloud and for me the solutions that NetApp provide to its customers seems to meet these standards. So calling in Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure instead of Hyper Converged is a great one. Sure there is work that needs to be done by NetApp, but who knows what they will announce in a couple of weeks. Just watch the video and read the blogs below to have the best insights on the NetApp HCI solution. And don’t forget to visit the Tech Field Day Xtra site for this event here: https://techfieldday.com/event/netappinsight18/

I just wanted to shout out to my fellow TFDx delegates at this event that wrote some great insights to this preasentation:

Matt Leib: https://virtuallytiedtomydesktop.com/2018/11/02/what-is-hci-and-really-does-it-matter/

Stephen Foskett: https://gestaltit.com/exclusive/stephen/netapp-hci-stands-for-hybrid-cloud-infrastructure/

Chan Ekanayake : http://chansblog.com/netapp-data-fabric-a-la-hybrid-cloud-style-an-update-from-netapp-insight-2018/

Chris M Evans: https://www.architecting.it/blog/hci-definition-obsession/

Building a house

Building a house

by | Aug 28, 2018 | personal

I’ve been way to quite for the last year or so. Not that I didn’t want to write stuff down and share with the community, but I just didn’t have any time left to do so. Let me explain why.

When I started my working life I started in construction, and when my IT hobby my career I always dreamed of building our own house sometime. Two years ago this dream was realized when a peace of land came up for sell in our hometown.

Just some pictures of the process:

We (our family) put all the time and effort into this, but the outcome is amazing. I’ll put the final pictures online as soon as everything is finished, but we moved in to the house 2 weeks ago, and are just finishing with the final projects.

In the mean while we are working (Thanks Max!!) hard on the TECHunplugged website, and expect a lot of new stuff on there very soon!

Thank you all for understanding!

Arjan

Starwind software: SFD15 preview

by | Mar 4, 2018 | Enter, Storage Field Day 15

It is time to start blogging again, and there couldn’t possibly be better way then by starting on my invite to Storage Field Day 15 in Silicon Valley. Truth be told, not blogging was mainly due to building our own house, and we’re still very busy with building our dream house here in the Netherlands, but no more excuses for me and let’s start doing the previews for next week.

Second timer: Starwind

Last year at Storage Field Day 12 we had the first presentation from Starwind at a Tech Field Day, and I was really impressed by the technology they offer and more importantly the level detail they put in to their presentation as well as the knowledge they showed during the presentation. Most of the VMware techies will know Starwind for their ISCSI target technology they offered, which was used in many homelab environments. I know I’ve used it on multiple occassions in my lab at least. But they are moving on an during the SFD15 presentation we got more information on their HCI solution, AcloudA, Veeam VTL and Cloud replication and Starwind Scale Out and Log Structured File Systems.

There are a couple of great resources on the products they’ve talked about last time that I’ll provide a link to here:

Dan Frith – There’s A Whole Lot More To StarWind Than Free Stuff
Stephen Foskett – The Year of Cloud Extension
Rich Stroffonlino – Starwind gives you a gateway to the Cloud
Adam Bergh – Storage Field Day 12 Day 1 Recap and Day 2 Preview

The videos from SFD12

When companies already presented at a Tech Field Day, I try to watch all the videos before we go in to a new one, although with some companies this really seems impossible because of the number of times they were at a Tech Field Day. With Starwind this is (now) still easy, and that is why I’ll also include the SFD12 Vimeo videos here as well.

Starwind Simple, Flexible, Scalable Storage

 

 

Starwind Fault-Tolerant Storage Demo

 

 

StarWind Scale Out and Log Structured File System

 

 

StarWind and AcloudA: Stairway to Cloud

 

 

StarWind and Veeam VTL and Cloud Replication

 

 

I’m really looking forward to meeting the Kolomyeytsev brothers again, and i hope you will follow us during the livestream at the Tech Field Day site:

http://www.techfieldday.com/event/sfd15

See you soon for the next presenter.

Disclaimer: I was invited to this meeting by TechFieldDay to attend SFD15 and they paid for travel and accommodation, I have not been compensated for my time and am not obliged to blog. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or edited by any other person than the me.