Do you recall the post I published in September of 2009 titled "VMworld 2009 – Thoughts from the show"? If you read this post you may recall that many VI Admins shared a recurring theme that thru the virtualization of the data center they were becoming quasi-storage administrators. Oh, there's no doubt about it. The task of bringing storage online is a multi-step process that … [Read more...] about VMware Admins are Storage Admins – vStorage Integration Part 1
Unified Storage
NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices Book Update
At VMworld 2009 attendees were able to purchase the first book ever published by NetApp in the VMworld bookstore. This book was NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices. Since then the book has been a huge success. I was very surprised today to learn that since the book's release on August 31st, it has sold nearly 5,000 copies. To put the sales figures in perspective, … [Read more...] about NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices Book Update
Creating a Restricted vCenter Role for SnapDrive
Historically NetApp has had a very different vision regarding the value storage array. One of the core values follows along the lines of: In order to be truly valuable, advanced storage features must be made available to the system and in many occasions the application administrative teams. In the absence of this goal, we believe storage is simply storage. One of the challenges … [Read more...] about Creating a Restricted vCenter Role for SnapDrive
2009 : A Blog in Review
I'm feverishly working to wrap up my edits on version 2.0 on TR-3749 - NetApp and VMware vSphere: Storage Best Practices, and unable to get to my blog queue (to those who I owe a post, I thank you for your patience). Blog posts often take a considerable amount of time with many finishing in the middle of the night. It is pretty easy to discern when my schedule is busy as my … [Read more...] about 2009 : A Blog in Review
SPEC SFS2008 Verifies You Can Run Faster on Fewer Disks with PAM
NetApp is the only storage vendor focused on reducing storage hardware footprints. Evidently discussions surrounding the use of storage saving technologies in a production environment must be upsetting to the traditional storage array manufactures as anytime I discuss the technologies that enable such environments the comments sections of my posts inevitably end up reading (and … [Read more...] about SPEC SFS2008 Verifies You Can Run Faster on Fewer Disks with PAM