Candidly, whenever I spend a good bit of time looking closely at the breadth of NetApp data protection capabilities, I usually leave with the same two impressions:
- Wow, I forgot that they do all of those ‘Data Protection’ things, based on what is built-in
- Why don’t they talk about it more?!?
The latter was addressed by new CEO, George Kurian, who assured folks that NetApp would be more vocal in driving the awareness of what they do well, what they have done well for so long (albeit not always noticed) and their visions for the future.
As for the former, their snapshot and replication plumbing continues to enable a continually growing set of data protection and data management capabilities, including multi-site clustering and hybrid storage architectures across a variety of private and public clouds that are consistently underpinned by NetApp storage – all of which is grounded in their Data Fabric vision.
NetApp and the Cloud
Of special mention, one of the most common topics of discussion at the event was where ‘the cloud’ fits within modern IT infrastructures, and how NetApp can help you get there. Certainly, they continue to talk about hosted private NetApp filers, but I am even more delighted about the very consistent mentions of Altavault, previously known as Riverbed Steelstore before the acquisition by NetApp. Altavault runs as a physical or virtual appliance, offers optimized storage via NFS/CIFS shares, and then stores the data in the cloud of your choice.
There were some other interesting discussion areas from the event that are wrapped up (along with the DP insights) in this short video from the ESG analysts that attended this year’s event.
Kudos to NetApp on delivering an event with the refinement of style and depth of content that should remind a lot of folks why NetApp continues to be a leader in technology and mindshare.
[Originally blogged via ESG’s Technical Optimist.com]