ONTAP innovations, baseball, and Abbott and Costello
Jon Jacob
Major League Baseball is playing the final games of the 2020 postseason, which reminds me of my favorite baseball comedy sketch by Abbott and Costello: Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know – third base! Great nicknames. This year I introduced one of our NetApp new college hires to the sketch.
How does this relate to the latest release of NetApp® ONTAP® data management software, ONTAP 9.8? Well, with the enhancements the ONTAP team has added with players named NAS, SAN, and Object, you’ll see even stronger playmaking capabilities. When our customers are facing their daily match-up – or even a double-header – against their IT challenges and are in a jam with the bases loaded and no outs, then NAS, SAN, and Object can make a great triple play to end the threat. Here’s the play by play.
NAS shows its range—makes a great catch to get the first out
Does your business need more efficient collaboration between groups, no matter where they’re physically located? Many NAS workloads require data to be distributed globally, such as media rendering, electronic design automation (EDA), and software distribution. ONTAP FlexCache® is designed for these use cases. NetApp is the leader in NAS, and we’re the only vendor that provides integrated caching across a hybrid cloud environment. With new support for SMB, you can cache even more of your hot data across your hybrid cloud. Your worldwide teams will have easy access to the data, which they can use to help grow your business.SAN gets the ball from NAS and tags the runner for the second out
What about business continuity? With all the challenges of 2020, are you finding that you need to deliver continuous availability for even more of your SAN workloads? New NetApp SnapMirror® Business Continuity (SMBC) can solve that problem. SMBC enables flexible, cost-effective, instant failover for your most important business applications such as SAP, Oracle, and more. You have the flexibility to improve TCO by consolidating many different types of workloads onto your ONTAP based systems and then granularly deciding which critical SAN workloads you want supported with the continuous availability of SMBC. It expands your choices across the spectrum of NetApp solutions and partnerships that deliver business continuity, disaster recovery, backup and recovery, and snapshots.SAN throws the ball to Object, who records the third out
In addition to SAN and NAS, do you have new requirements for supporting object workloads? Small-scale archive, edge to core data ingest, application back-end caching or storage scratch space, and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) model training are a few of the projects that might be calling for your attention. ONTAP is the leading data management software—the only one that spans file and block storage, entry-level to high-end systems, on-premises and cloud environments. And NetApp is continuing to innovate by adding support for object storage by delivering S3 protocol access in ONTAP. With this, you have a new option available to support small-scale object workloads on ONTAP based solutions in a unified environment with your block and file applications. And for your scale-out enterprise object storage requirements, NetApp StorageGRID® remains NetApp’s primary solution because it has a full suite of leading object capabilities.It’s a unique triple play, expertly executed by Team ONTAP.
In the spirit of Abbott and Costello, here are some more teammates with unique nicknames that are taking the field with ONTAP 9.8 and can deliver additional run support and gold glove defense:
- Security. NetApp extends its lead over competitors in the data security and governance game. Expand your in-flight data security with IPsec. Only ONTAP is able to monitor data access and end-to-end encryption for blocks, files, and objects, both on premises and in the cloud, to achieve a Zero Trust security solution.
- Cloud tiering. Reduce TCO by automatically tiering more of your cold data from AFF and FAS primary systems to an object tier, on your premises or in the cloud. ONTAP FabricPool cloud tiering capability has been expanded to include FAS HDD systems as a hot tier source.
- S3 backup. Add even more flexibility to your data protection strategy. Now you can replicate NetApp Snapshot™ copies to object storage – either on premises or in the public cloud – with SnapMirror Cloud.
- Efficiency. NetApp already has the industry’s most effective data efficiency guarantee. Now ONTAP software increases storage efficiency again by up to 33%. Temperature-sensitive storage efficiency further optimizes cold data to reduce your storage footprint.
- Simplicity. Give your staff additional management insights with file system analytics. Plus, speed up your infrastructure updates with one-click firmware upgrades as well as easier system tech refreshes and ONTAP updates.
ONTAP is the heart of NetApp’s approach to hybrid cloud. You can seamlessly move, manage, and protect your data while also adapting to future requirements such as evolving cloud strategies and growing amounts of data. And with ONTAP, you don’t have to compromise to get the capabilities you need to be successful.
Batter up!
Check out NetApp INSIGHT® sessions to learn from the experts and get the most out of your hybrid cloud environment. For example, session BRK-1440-1 dives into the details – batting average, ERA, home runs, and more – of all the new capabilities in ONTAP 9.8 that will be available in November. If you haven’t yet registered for NetApp INSIGHT, it’s a digital event this year that begins on October 26, and the sessions are free.Want to have the ONTAP team play a free exhibition game for you? Try ONTAP in the cloud and check out all its capabilities.
Learn more about how ONTAP can help you solve your business challenges and win the World Series against your competition.
Jon Jacob
Jon is the Senior Product Marketing Manager for NetApp ONTAP data management software. He joined NetApp in 2010 and enjoys leading the cross-team collaboration that’s needed to successfully launch new solutions. Prior to NetApp, Jon had 10+ years of marketing experience at HP in the Business Critical Systems division, including three years based in Germany. Outside of NetApp, when Jon’s not out on a run or bike ride, he enjoys going to San Jose Sharks hockey games.
