Xpanse July 2019 Newsletter

Welcome

Welcome to our Xpanse Newsletter for July 2019.

As your trusted data management partner, we want to keep you informed about the world of enterprise data technology, and the great opportunities available to your in-house team.

For more information about us, our solutions, news and more, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

Regards,
The Xpanse Team

News

NetApp Announces Entry Level Storage Solutions

NetApp has recently announced the arrival of it's AFF C190, an entry level all flash solution that allows organisations of any size to modernise their IT infrastructure.

NetApp's AFF C190 system is simple, smart, secure and can meet a company’s storage requirements with operational efficiency, data security, and effortless cloud integration at an affordable price.

  • Simple - Customers can increase productivity and easily manage multiple workloads from a single system. They can provision storage in just minutes for applications such as VMware, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server
  • Smart - With built-in efficiency technologies, customers get more storage at a lower cost and get increased speed for accelerated applications. NetApp Active IQ® data-driven analytics also make it easy to optimize client storage availability and performance.
  • Secure - Your customers can prevent data loss with fast, space-saving backups, and they can safeguard data from internal and external threats with software encryption.

If you would like any further information, please feel free to email our sales team or speak to your dedicated Xpanse Account Manager.

Enabling Cloud Data Agility - Event Recap

On April 30th, Xpanse, in partnership with NetApp, held a Cloud Data Agility breakfast session.

Matt Swinbourne (NetApp's Cloud CTO) was the events key speaker. The core messages delivered by Matt focused on the need for businesses to be agile in the way they operate and treat their data, particularly in Cloud adoption. He specifically looked at;

  • How cloud migration strategies consists of three major design objectives:

    Plan – start with the end in mind.

    Adapt – plan failures and re-scoping – be adaptable.

    Thrive – new technologies spawn new business models, be ready to embrace them.

  • How data has gravity and the trend is for 80% of cloud users reporting cloud repatriation.
  • In an agile world, expect that things can go wrong, but pick a partner who can help you adapt.

Further discussion was held around NetApp's Data Fabric and how it can help businesses enable data agility through freedom of choice, future proofing, efficiency and security that NetApp Data Fabric offers.

NetApp has a range of further information available to you, including;

As always, Xpanse are able to assist you in this journey. Let us discuss with you how we can customise a specific approach to enable a truly agile data environment.

If you'd like any further information, please feel free to email our sales team or speak to your dedicated Xpanse Account Manager.

NetApp Data ONTAP 9.6 Now Available

NetApp has taken its data management software, ONTAP, from version 9.5 to 9.6 with themes surrounding simplicity, productivity, security, data protection, and addressing more customers use cases. This update comes with several features and benefits that now include long term service support: all releases come with three years full support and two year limited support. From a management standpoint, ONTAP has new product names (ONTAP System Manager and Active IQ Unified Manager) as well as a redesigned dashboard for simpler workflows based on RESTful APIs.

ONTAP 9.6 includes the following enhancements:

  • Expanded NVMe over Fibre Channel (NVMe/FC) ecosystem now includes VMware ESXi, Microsoft Windows, and Oracle Linux hosts, in addition to Red Hat and SUSE Linux, with storage path resiliency. Organizations can experience NVMe/FC performance for most workloads.
  • FabricPool now supports Google Cloud Platform and Alibaba Cloud, in addition to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and IBM Cloud Storage. Organizations can lower the cost of primary storage by automatically tiering cold data to any major public cloud or to a NetApp StorageGRID private cloud.
  • NetApp FlexCache software now supports NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, allowing organizations to experience the benefits of FlexCache in hybrid cloud deployments.
  • Over-the-wire encryption for NetApp SnapMirror technology and FlexCache increases security for data replication and remote caching.
  • NetApp MetroCluster IP support for entry-level NetApp AFF and FAS systems now makes business continuity a cost-effective option for organizations, taking advantage of existing customer IP networks between sites.

For further information, please reach out to our Sales Team, or your nominated Xpanse account manager who will be pleased to assist you in discussing the new features & benefits of upgrading.

Also, a reminder for Xpanse IT Infrastructure Management (XITIM) customers - ONTAP upgrades are covered by your XITIM agreement, so please let us know if you would like us to arrange an upgrade for you. If you are not an XITIM customer, and would like to learn more about our XITIM Managed Service Agreements and how they can benefit you, please visit our XITIM Solutions web page here.

NetApp AFF A320

Last year NetApp rolled out their first end-to-end NVMe platform with the AFF A800 aimed at large enterprises. Today they are talking all those performance benefits and bringing them to the midrange in the 2U, AFF A320 - the complete NVMe solution for the mass market.

AFF A320 is the latest example of NetApp’s focus towards a modern SAN, solving customers’ business needs and providing investment protection with future-proof products and services.

The AFF A320 system enables customers to:

  • Accelerate traditional and emerging enterprise applications such as artificial intelligence and deep learning, analytics, and databases with extremely low latency.
  • Reduce data centre costs by consolidating applications with a powerful system.
  • Future-proof their environment with NVMe technology, 100GbE Ethernet, and cloud integration.

If you'd like to find out more about the AFF A320 and it's benefits to your storage environment, please feel free to email our sales team or speak to your dedicated Xpanse Account Manager.