Tag: AWS

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60: GreyBeards talk cloud data services with Eiki Hrafnsson, Technical Director, NetApp

Sponsored by:In this episode, we talk with Eiki Hraffnsson (@Eirikurh), Technical Director, NetApp Cloud Data Services.  Eiki gave a great talk at Cloud Field Day 3 (CFD3), although neither Howard nor I were in attendance. I just met Eiki at a NetApp Spring Analyst event earlier this month and after that Howard and I had a chance to talk with him about what’s new in NetApp Cloud Data Services

This is the fourth time NetApp has been on our show (see our podcast with Lee Caswell and Dave Wright,  podcast with Andy Banta, & last month’s sponsored podcast with Adam Carter) and this is their second sponsored podcast.

Eiki came from a company NetApp acquired last year called GreenQloud whose product was QStack. Since then, QStack has become an integral part of their Cloud Data Services.

NetApp has a number of solutions under their Cloud Data Services umbrella and his area of specialty is NetApp Cloud Data Volumes, soon to be available in the MarketPlace on AWS, already in public preview an Microsoft Azure Enterprise NFS and as of 7 May 2018, in private preview as NetApp Cloud Volumes for Google Cloud Platform.

NetApp Cloud Data Volumes

NetApp’s Cloud Data Volume is a public cloud based, storage-as-a-service that supplies enterprise class NFS and SMB (CIFS) storage on a pay as you go model for major public cloud providers. That way your compute instances can have access to predictable performance, highly available file storage in the  cloud.

One advantage that Cloud Data Volumes adds to the public cloud is performance SLAs. That is customers can purchase Low, Medium and High performance file storage. Eiki said they measured Cloud Data Volume IO performance and it achieved almost 10X the public cloud normal (file) storage performance. I assume this was HIGH performing Cloud Data Volume storage, and no information on which storage type was used as the cloud alternative.

Cloud Data Volume customers also get access to NetApp Snapshot services which can create, space efficient, quick read-only copies of their cloud file storage. Cloud Data Volume storage can be purchased on a $/GB/month basis. Other  purchase options are also available for customers who prefer a pre billed amount rather than a consumptive model.

Behind the scenes, Cloud Data Volumes is actually NetApp ONTAP storage. They won’t say what kind or how much, but they do say that NetApp storage is located in public cloud data centers and is fully managed by NetApp.

Customers can use the public cloud native services portal to purchase Cloud Data Volume storage (for Microsoft Azure and GCP) or the NetApp Cloud web portal (for AWS). Once purchased, customers can use an extensive set of native cloud APIs to provision, access and tear-down Cloud Volume storage.

Other NetApp Cloud Data Services

Eiki mentioned that Cloud Data Volumes is just one of many offerings from NetApp’s Cloud Data Services business unit, including:

  • NetApp Private Storage– colocated NetApp storage owned by customers that is adjacent to public clouds.
  • ONTAP Cloud – software defined ONTAP storage system that run in the cloud on compute services using cloud storage to provide block storage.
  • Cloud Sync – data synchronization as a service offering used to replicate data from onprem NAS and object storage to the public cloud.

Probably a few others I am missing here and my bet is more offerings are on the way.

Another item Eiki mentioned with the open source,  NetApp Trident Plugin (GitHub repo). Containers are starting to need persistent state information and this means they need access to storage.

Trident provides dynamic, API driven provisioning of storage volumes for containers under Kubernetes.  Container developers define environmental characteristics which dictate operational environment and now with Trident, can also specify needed storage volumes. That way, when Kubernetes fires up a container for execution, NetApp storage is provisioned just-in-time to support container stateful execution.

The podcast runs ~25 minutes. Eiki was very knowledgeable and was easy to talk with especially on cloud technologies and how NetApp fits in.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Erikur (Eiki) Hrafnsson, Technical Director, NetApp Cloud Data Services

Erikur (Eiki) Hrafnsson is an entrepreneur, dad, singer. founder of GreenQloud and maker of QStack, the hybrid cloud platform, now part of NetApp Cloud Data Services. Eiki brings deep public cloud integration knowledge and broad experience in cloud automation and APIs.

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51: GreyBeards talk hyper convergence with Lee Caswell, VP Product, Storage & Availability BU, VMware

Sponsored by:

VMware

In this episode we talk with Lee Caswell (@LeeCaswell), Vice President of Product, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware.  This is the second time Lee’s been on our show, the previous one back in April of last year when he was with his prior employer. Lee’s been at VMware for a little over a year now and has helped lead some significant changes in their HCI offering, vSAN.

VMware vSAN/HCI business

Many customers struggle to modernize their data centers with funding being the primary issue. This is very similar to what happened in the early 2000s as customers started virtualizing servers and consolidating storage. But today, there’s a new option, server based/software defined storage like VMware’s vSAN, which can be deployed for little expense and grown incrementally as needed. VMware’s vSAN customer base is currently growing by 150% CAGR, and VMware is adding over 100 new vSAN customers a week.

Many companies say they offer HCI, but few have adopted the software-only business model this entails. The transition from a hardware-software, appliance-based business model to a software-only business model is difficult and means a move from a high revenue-lower margin business to a lower revenue-higher margin business. VMware, from its very beginnings, has built a sustainable software-only business model that extends to vSAN today.

The software business model means that VMware can partner easily with a wide variety of server OEM partners to supply vSAN ReadyNodes that are pre-certified and jointly supported in the field. There are currently 14 server partners for vSAN ReadyNodes. In addition, VMware has co-designed the VxRail HCI Appliance with Dell EMC, which adds integrated life-cycle management as well as Dell EMC data protection software licenses.

As a result, customers can adopt vSAN as a build or a buy option for on-prem use and can also leverage vSAN in the cloud from a variety of cloud providers, including AWS very soon. It’s the software-only business model that sets the stage for this common data management across the hybrid cloud.

VMware vSAN software defined storage (SDS)

The advent of Intel Xeon processors and plentiful, relatively cheap SSD storage has made vSAN an easy storage solution for most virtualized data centers today. SSDs removed any performance concerns that customers had with hybrid HCI configurations. And with Intel’s latest Xeon Scalable processors, there’s more than enough power to handle both application compute and storage compute workloads.

From Lee’s perspective, there’s still a place for traditional SAN storage, but he sees it more for cold storage that is scaled independently from servers or for bare metal/non-virtualized storage environments. But for everyone else using virtualized data centers, they really need to give vSAN a look.

Storage vendors shifting sales

It used to be that major storage vendor sales teams would lead with hardware appliance storage solutions and then move to HCI when pushed. The problem was that a typical SAN storage sale takes 9 months to complete and then 3 years of limited additional sales.

To address this, some vendors have taken the approach where they lead with HCI and only move to legacy storage when it’s a better fit. With VMware vSAN, it’s a quicker sales cycle than legacy storage because HCI costs less up front and there’s no need to buy the final storage configuration with the first purchase. VMware vSAN HCI can grow as the customer applications needs dictate, generating additional incremental sales over time.

VMware vSAN in AWS

Recently, VMware has announced VMware Cloud in AWS.What this means is that you can have vSAN storage operating in an AWS cloud just like you would on-prem. In this case, workloads could migrate from cloud to on-prem and back again with almost no changes. How the data gets from on-prem to cloud is another question.

Also the pricing model for VMware Cloud in AWS moves to a consumption based model, where you pay for just what you use on a monthly basis. This way VMware Cloud in AWS and vSAN is billed monthly, consistent with other AWS offerings.

VMware vs. Microsoft on cloud

There’s a subtle difference in how Microsoft and VMware are adopting cloud. VMware came from an infrastructure platform and is now implementing their infrastructure on cloud. Microsoft started as a development platform and is taking their cloud development platform/stack and bringing it to on-prem.

It’s really two different philosophies in action. We now see VMware doing more for the development community with vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC), Docker Containers, Kubernetes, and Pivotal Cloud foundry. Meanwhile Microsoft is looking to implement the Azure stack for on-prem environments, and they are focusing more on infrastructure. In the end, enterprises will have terrific choices as the software defined data center frees up customers dollars and management time.

The podcast runs ~25 minutes. Lee is a very knowledgeable individual and although he doesn’t qualify as a Greybeard (just yet), he has been in and around the data center and flash storage environments throughout most of his career. From his diverse history, Lee has developed a very business like perspective on data center and storage technologies and it’s always a pleasure talking with him.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Lee Caswell, V.P. of Product, Storage & Availability Business Unit, VMware

Lee Caswell leads the VMware storage marketing team driving vSAN products, partnerships, and integrations. Lee joined VMware in 2016 and has extensive experience in executive leadership within the storage, flash and virtualization markets.

Prior to VMware, Lee was vice president of Marketing at NetApp and vice president of Solution Marketing at Fusion-IO (now SanDisk). Lee was a founding member of Pivot3, a company widely considered to be the founder of hyper-converged systems, where he served as the CEO and CMO. Earlier in his career, Lee held marketing leadership positions at Adaptec, and SEEQ Technology, a pioneer in non-volatile memory. He started his career at General Electric in Corporate Consulting.

Lee holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Carleton College and a master of business administration degree from Dartmouth College. Lee is a New York native and has lived in northern California for many years. He and his wife live in Palo Alto and have two children. In his spare time Lee enjoys cycling, playing guitar, and hiking the local hills.