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GO Storage

widest range of interfaces, hardware vendors, protocols, and virtualization offerings. NetApp storage systems can communicate CIFS and NFS Now that virtualization has gone mainstream in the simultaneously, over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and now IT industry, it's time to go back and look to see why FCoE. NetApp storage transparently supports BIOS has consistently recommended NetApp for the VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen, and majority of its virtualization engagements. It's NetApp provides best practices documentation for important to realize that BIOS is not a top-down creating virtual environments with all of these. company--there are no directives from upper management to favor one vendor over another, and These features allow IT administrators to treat if there were, the technical consultants would NetApp storage as "generic" storage, in that they ignore them anyway. Each project is considered don't have to make allowances for peculiarities of separately from a purely technical perspective, and the storage system. More than anything else, in most cases, NetApp is the best storage NetApp storage systems excel at getting out of the technology for virtualization projects. This article way of administrators. discusses the features of NetApp that make NetApp storage the best virtualization storage available in 2. Key Features the industry. When BIOS originally partnered with NetApp in 1999, NetApp storage was the most full featured storage option on the market. The same holds true today. In addition to the protocols and connectivity options supported above, NetApp storage solutions have the most features to support data center operations, especially virtualization. For the latter, NetApp has: Superior snapshot technology Practically all enterprise storage solutions have some sort of snapshot capability today, but the importance of NetApp's patented snapshot technology cannot be overstated. Unlike simple snapshots, which create a complete copy of a volume, or copy-on-write snapshots, which copy volume blocks as they are changed, NetApp snapshots incur negligible overhead. When a NetApp snapshot is taken, the volume blocks are frozen where they are; new writes to the volume then occur on different blocks, with pointers telling 1. Ease of Use the NetApp where to get the new data. Restoring There is nothing simple about storage technology in the data, or referring to the original snapshot, is a simple matter of referring to the appropriate set of 2010, but NetApp is better at hiding that from the pointers. user than any other provider. NetApp's FilerView web interface is intuitive enough for relatively This feature alone is one of the biggest reasons why unskilled operators to use effectively, and can be NetApp storage is so well suited for virtualization. reached from any browser without needing BIOS clients routinely take dozens of snapshots of separate management client software. BIOS has yet their NetApp volumes every day, since they are so to encounter a client that had any difficulty simple and incur so little overhead. They make an managing a NetApp from the web interface. outstanding tool for managing and backing up virtual machines. In addition, NetApp storage boasts excellent compatibility in the data center. Out of all enterprise storage solutions, NetApp supports the FlexClone and thin provisioning

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A logical extension of NetApp snapshot technology, FlexClone lets administrators instantly replicate volumes without requiring storage space at the time of creation. In essence, the FlexCloned volume is a snapshot of the original volume, mounted as a separate volume. This technology saves a great deal of physical storage, since code common to both volumes is stored only once. In an environment of virtual machines all running similar operating sytems and applications, the space savings can be enormous.

networks, NetApp storage features the most virtualization specific support tools of any storage hardware available today. NetApp supports any virtualization solution available, and has partnered with the producers of the most popular virtualization solutions to develop software and best practices to support them. NetApp software such as SnapManager for Hyper-V and SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure integrate tightly with virtualization offerings from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix, providing additional management

Block level deduplication Another space saving technology, NetApp deduplication reduces the physical storage needed for virtual machines by storing single copies of duplicate data at the block level. Again, virtual machines with similar operating systems and applications will have many similar blocks; NetApp claims typical storage savings for virtual environments of over 50%. Block level deduplication also yields further storage savings for email, documents, and other types of repetitive data, enhancing the overall efficiency of NetApp storage.

capabilities that other storage solutions cannot. NetApp has also developed best practices and configuration documentation for employing its storage solutions for virtualization, simplifying installation and management for administrators and proving the compatibility of the solutions.

4. Cost

Few people would claim that NetApp solutions are inexpensive. However, the ease of use, storage efficiency, and virtualization support features of NetApp storage combine to create a cycle of cost savings that offests price differences between NetApp and other solutions. NetApp snapshots, Put together, these features create an extremely deduplication, and storage let clients purchase less powerful set of tools for managing virtual machines. physical storage to support a given usable storage This not only makes virtual machine manipulation amount. Less physical storage means lower power easier and faster, but moving this capability to the and cooling costs. NetApp compatibility features storage frees up cycles in the virtual environment allow it to work with practically any protocols, for production work. networks, and virtualization solutions, eliminating the need for separate 3. Virtualization Support storage solutions to fill specific needs. In addition to broad support for protocols and

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NetApp storage ease of use and virtualization support features reduce administration effort and costs. These cost savings add up to a significant reduction in TCO relative to other virtualization storage solutions.

future proofing its storage with recent additions such as FCoE support and cloud computing features like MultiStore. These are the compelling reasons why BIOS finds NetApp storage solutions to be the best suited virtualization storage available today. BIOS does on occasion encounter situations where other storage options are a better fit for particular virtualization projects. But the total cost savings from NetApp's virtualization administration and storage efficiency features, as well as the overall completeness of the feature set, mean that NetApp storage must at least be considered when planning any virtualization project.

5. Overall Feature Set

Though NetApp storage provides strong support for virtualization, it also has many features to support all manner of data center operations. High Availability, SyncMirror remote replication for disaster recovery, Data Motion for migration of live data, and application specific support features like SnapManager for Exchange and SnapValidator for Oracle are among the reasons BIOS considers NetApp storage to be the most complete storage option available in the industry. This makes NetApp an excellent choice for consolidating all storage in the data center, not just for virtualization. NetApp continues to ensure that its storage solutions will remain on the cutting edge of storage technology,

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