Top 3 announcements with NetApp Insight 2017

Hi, Habr! This week I was in Berlin at the NetApp Insight conference and prepared a report for you about what I had time to see and touch.

NetApp Insight traditionally takes place in Europe in mid-November. This is a big conference where NetApp presents its vision of data technology and announces product line updates. Every day there are hundreds (!) Of technology sessions with detailed information first-hand. You can compare this conference with VMWorld, and of those taking place in Russia - with Highload ++.
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The conference is attended by thousands of people - customers, partners, NetApp employees from different countries. This year 80 countries are represented here.



The conference takes place four days. We'll have to contrive and create our own program so that we can attend all the sessions of interest - the eyes of choice will run. First of all we go to NetApp Central - stands of NetApp and partners.


AFF700s, or what are the touch of a few hundred thousand dollars.

Seeing and disassembling the AFF700s controller pair, disassembling the AFF300 standing nearby and finally understanding the difference between the platforms is priceless. You can ask questions not just to the workers at the stands, but also to the engineers who develop these products. Well, if you have no questions, just play football or run a duck in the bath with working servers.


This German longkiker.

During the conference, you can take NetApp certification exams for free, so we leave time for them. And in the breaks - we go to the zone Hands-On Labs and try our strength in laboratory work.


5D cinema to the accompaniment of four hands.

Posted in Instagram news, learned, lost - now we go to the conference rooms. Approximately 20 sessions run parallel to each hour, divided into product and technology groups:

• big data analysis
• convergent systems
• data protection
• databases and business applications
• DevOps and open source,
• flash systems
• NetApp certification
• hybrid clouds
• infrastructure maintenance
• ONTAP: NetApp OS for FAS \ AFF storage,
• NetApp storage platforms:
  
  • E / EF Series,
  • FAS / AFF,
  • SolidFire,
  • StorageGrid Webscale,
  • business cases and solutions;
• security,
• design services,
• software defined,
• virtualization
• data migration.

As you can see, a grand set of different technologies! And all this - first-hand, in detail, with the possibility of personal communication!

Everyone can make a program for the development of skills. I chose everything related to clouds, integration with VMware and the service provider, plus, of course, ONTAP.

My day began with the main session. On it, NetApp directors talked about product development strategies and how it all adds up to a global data management strategy, DataFabric.



Data now is an important element of business. Data management, their use, analysis, storage provide certain business benefits. Before our eyes, life is transforming, business is changing. Did you have channels in Telegram a year ago? Remember ICQ, and what happened with Skype? Do you watch TV, where are the paper newspapers? How many letters do you have to work per day? This is all - digital transformation: changing approaches to data processing, to business, to your work and life.

Surely you do not want to implement a new storage system. Why do you need storage? You want to introduce a new service for customers. And this service, its applications must receive enough resources, and with the possibility of growth - this is also a digital transformation. And it would be strange if one of the leaders of the storage market did not notice all these changes and would not lead this transformation itself.

What was new presented by NetApp at the conference and what, in my opinion, was the most interesting.

So, my personal Top 3 NetApp Insight

1. ONTAP 9.3 - NetApp FAS storage system

First of all, with the update deduplication will be 30% more efficient. AFF systems will receive up to 40% increase in performance.

Adaptive QoS has appeared: now, at the storage level, you can set not only restrictions on the maximum consumption of I / O resources, but also the minimum IOPS level required for a data set. In addition, one data set is prioritized over the other. So now you can guarantee the performance of IOPS / TB with the help of technical tools. Improved data processing security, their encryption, including with the help of foreign keys.

The AFF line is the maximum IOPS with minimal delays. It’s still the same ONTAP storage system we know: reliable, manageable, working equally well with block and file protocols, supporting all possible data availability technologies.


Fastest NetApp storage systems

2. Leader in Flexibility and Scalability in the NetApp Solution Line - SolidFire DSS

This is a scale-out solution. You start building storage from four nodes and add one node each when you need additional capacity or additional IOPS. When a new node is added, a transparent rebalancing of the cluster occurs, without I / O delays. And after its completion, requests are processed by a large number of storage nodes.


SolidFire storage

3. Ontap Select

This software, with which you can create software-defined storage on any hardware. And this storage will have all the capabilities of working with data that ONTAP has: instant snapshots, copying snapshots to external storage systems, building disaster-proof solutions, etc. The possibility of using Ontap Select in the Microsoft Azure cloud as a service looks quite interesting.


Data is changing the world. The world is changing the data.

In addition to announcements on NetApp Insight, very interesting sessions are held. For example, CDW invited sommeliers to talk about the peculiarities of craft beer production in Germany and the merits of Berliner Weisse. Such is the continuation of Oktoberfest for their own.





But the most important thing that you get from participating in such a conference is the transformation of the head. Four days thinking about the data. About your real data at work. You understand what can be done better, in which direction to develop, and where the world is heading. This is really important.