Forward: This presentation is intended for use by NetApp Direct Sales and Channel Partners, to provide an overview of NetApp’s compelling capabilities in a virtualized server environment. This presentation is intended for delivery to an IT Director-level individual, and is most appropriate for a first meeting on the topic. Note that VMware is the market leader in this area and is referenced in several examples, but this pitch is intended to be applicable for customers who are using/considering either VMware or other virtualization solutions (e.g. Microsoft, Xen, etc.)
Speaker notes for this slide: Server virtualization is being widely adopted throughout the industry. Server virtualization places new demands on the storage infrastructure that should be considered early in the design process. NetApp provides storage and data management solutions that uniquely enable effective server virtualization environments, and which further extend the benefits of server virtualization. In this presentation, we’ll review why NetApp is the best storage solution for virtualized server environments.
Goal of this slide: Introduce the most efficient chapter.
Points:
Goal of this slide: Back to the storage pool, what does it look like?
Points:
Data ONTAP is the foundation of all the virtualization functions and integration, and runs on all the FAS products as well as extending to legacy arrays through the V-Series platform.
All of the FAS family leverage the same architecture and can run the same software and management tools, with by far the broadest range of products that can make this claim, again a true differentiator that is very powerful in the virtualized environment.
The storage pool can accommodate mission-critical applications along with infrastructure applications, a secondary tier, and also include archiving, all in the same collective pool.
Nobody else has such an architecture or can make such a claim.
Co-developed with Citrix, the XenServer integrated adaptor enables server administrators to manage NetApp storage directly from the XenCenter console.
Our integrated storage adaptor for Citrix XenServer enables your customer’s server administrators to increase productivity by managing common storage functions within the XenCenter console
With our solutions, storage is provisioned the instant customers create a new VM.
Accelerate Test & Dev or Production from weeks to minutes with instant storage provisioning and cloning of XenServer VMs
Protect the XenServer Virtual Infrastructure with automated data protection and recovery of Virtual Machines without impacting application servers
Goal of this slide: More detail on the middle layer of the previous slide for the new product SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure.
Points:
The storage admin sets the policies for others, and is now freed from having to perform many of the functions usually requested by the server/virtual server admin organization.
Better yet, the virtual server admins can now perform their own backups, recovery, replication, and DR at will, as long as it is within the context of the set policy.
Citrix sees a lot of value in our partnership and has included this winning solution in three other key Citrix product bundles: Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix Deliver Center and Citrix Cloud Center.
In turn Netapp has created two new NetApp Virtualization Solutions that leverage this special integration: NetApp Storage for Citrix XenServer and NetApp Storage for Citrix XenDesktop.
For a 5 minute overview of this Citrix Ready Solution of the Year please take a look at this XenServer on NetApp Flash Demo.
For more specifics on our Citrix Solutions, please click here.
Key Point: PAM enables performance benefits for VDI
The Performance Acceleration Module provides a new way to optimize the performance of a storage system and for your VDI.
There are demonstrated benefits for workloads that are random read intensive.
With this product you can help customers grow cost-effectively without straining their infrastructure.
Goal of this slide: Solve the backup and recovery problem identified in the storage challenges.
Points:
The problem was identified before, where consolidation with virtualization compounds the backup problem so that all the data volumes to be backed up are now resident on a single server (for whatever ratio is implemented, such as 10:1). The server utilization is being unnecessarily taxed to run backups, and may or may not be able to complete within the backup window (most likely not). This also leaves less CPU for the applications, which is really one of the main points for virtualization. So getting background tasks off servers provides more resources for more consolidation focused on application efficiency.
Tape is a tedious manual process, where the associated tapes are continually growing (adding to cost and complexity).
Recovery is error prone and extremely slow. Tape-based DR is even more complex.
Enter NetApp Snapshot with SnapRestore. NetApp has unique value in this area, with industry-leading capabilities that fit exactly in the VMware environment. The backups are run on NetApp storage, and many copies can be made at any time increment in a matter of seconds. These copies are not full copies of data, they are only tracking changes and are very efficient in terms of overall storage capacity.
Restores can be done instantaneously from any of the copies. Furthermore, the backups are application aware in that they have been coordinated with the application in a known state and cover the application binaries, the logs, and the application data, which in turn enable the restores to be that much faster as well as return to a known state.
Goal of this slide: Show how SnapMirror can be used easily and affordably for all applications, as shown in the storage opportunities.
Points:
SnapMirror leverages Snapshot and SnapRestore, discussed on the previous slide, and replicates data between sites.
Unlike other solutions, SnapMirror is flexible enough and simple enough to use in various ways across all applications in the environment, as opposed to deploying only on the most critical applications. Additionally, the notion of application consistency is afforded through the use of the application-aware Snapshot copies, discussed on the previous slide.
In the VMware environment, SnapMirror is integrated with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which manages the VMs and ESX servers across the sites.
Note that VMware does not provide the capability to directly copy virtual servers to a remote location, so VMware recommends using storage-based replication for both virtual servers and data.
The NetApp replication solution (SnapMirror) is uniquely simple to deploy and administer.
Notes:
Neither servers nor storage systems have to be identical.
ReplicatorX can extend DR capabilities to non-NetApp storage.
Regarding customer quote: Pennsylvania Attorney General used VMware to consolidate 120 servers; used FAS3000 for storage. Case study with details is available on netapp.com at http://www.netapp.com/library/cs/penn-office-attorney.pdf?xCountry=US&xLanguage=EN
Goal of this slide: Show how NetApp Dedupe can vastly reduce virtualization storage requirements
VM’s store redundant data such as the Operations System, Patches, and software applications common to every virtual server.
Build
NetApp is able to reduce this down to a single instance with NetApp dedupe. This can provide space savings as much as 90% significantly reducing storage costs.
This capability is unique to NetApp and a strong selling point against the competition. Only NetApp can deduplicate primary data.
Savings across all tiers
Primary, backup, and archival data
50% space savings, or more
95% or greater for backup
The Citrix+NetApp integration is the foundation to all new Citrix solutions including their Cloud Center solution which is sold on a pay as you grow basis.
Citrix Essentials applies to both XenServer and Hyper-V.