Why NetApp HCI is Essential to Your Digital Transformation - NetApp Certifications

How do you stay competitive in the new era of IT? You have to transform. Nearly every enterprise in every industry is exploring digital transformation to drive new pathways to their customers, create new business opportunities, and improve operational efficiency. Modern applications require faster, more flexible infrastructure to meet the needs of today’s customers.

Traditional infrastructure is designed for a world where each application is built like a vast monolith, rolling out a new version once or twice a year in a large change window. Six months of changes would have to be done before you could roll out a new version. This made it possible to plan infrastructure with plenty of time before each upgrade.

Today’s enterprises want to be able to roll out new versions several times a day. A new means of development is needed, where each application is broken down into microservices, small parts of an application that fulfill their roles individually. At the same time, enterprises are introducing container platforms where small microservices are ideally suited to run as containers independently of each other.

In a traditional infrastructure, a company would have a development department for a large application, and once or twice a year, a complete version would be submitted to the operations department. Operations would then make sure that the application ran properly and securely. In order to manage multiple applications, a small number of platforms and databases were standardized. The operations department had significant influence on standards and infrastructure.

With microservices, things work differently. Instead of 2 departments, development and operations, a small team is built up around 1 or 2 microservices. The team is responsible for developing the microservice and for ensuring the code is up to the expected quality. Each team features a combination of development and operations, which is now commonly referred to as DevOps. It’s up to each team to roll out new versions of its microservice in a secure manner, and the team makes its own decisions on rolling back changes, should something go wrong.

So how does this effect the teams and the way they work?

• Each team is isolated from the other teams. This means that if a team does encounter problems or if developer resources become unavailable, the other teams are able to continue developing their microservices.
• There is no longer a strong operating organization to impose standards and force teams to choose a specific technology. Instead, there is usually a security team that helps the teams adhere to security policies, but without dictating technology choices.
• The teams are autonomous and can choose tools and technologies themselves, as long as their microservice does what it should, is accessible, and works with other microservices. A team can choose to build its microservice using Python in AWS with the finished services available there, while another team uses .NET and Microsoft SQL Server as the database in Azure, and a third team develops on-premises in a private cloud because they require integration with traditional systems.
• To manage the entire chain from code, through testing, to production, these teams use “infrastructure as code,” which means they write a piece of code that describes how the environment should look and the code can then be used to create lots of identical environments. You can also use version management with this code so that you always have up-to-date documentation of how the environment should look.

To successfully implement digital transformation and create new applications, a private cloud is needed, one that is multitenant and that can run all types of applications and workloads with ease at the same time without affecting each other. Enterprises can no longer plan several years in advance and instead must be able to scale in small steps on demand. An enterprise must be able to control the private cloud with API calls and code. Strong integration with container platforms is also vital. Finally, enterprises must be able to connect their private cloud to public clouds, provision a microservice in any of these clouds, and make it work together with other microservices.

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What’s New with OnCommand System Manager 9.5 - NetApp Certifications

OnCommand System Manager 9.5 bundled with ONTAP 9.5 has come with lot of simplicity improvements. In this blog, you can quickly learn What’s New with System Manager 9.5, that can be an add-on benefit to simplify your day to day operations.

SnapMirror Synchronous (SM-S):

SnapMirror Synchronous allows user to replicate volume level – data, cross a Wide Area Network connection with zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and very low Recovery Time Objective (RTO). This helps to address regulatory and industry mandated needs for synchronous replication. SnapMirror Synchronous will have two different modes available in the initial release.

StrictSync

•     Read and write to primary denied, if any failure in replication at secondary

Sync

•      Read and write to primary will continue without any disruption

In the initial release of SnapMirror Synchronous, NFSv3, iSCSI and FCP will be supported. Licensing will be capacity-based, in addition to the base SnapMirror® license.

With System Manager 9.5, users can configure SnapMirror Synchronous relationships at Volume level so simply in few clicks. Intuitive “Help me choose” helps users to select relationship based on the requirements on Recovery Point Objective (RPO), Disaster Recovery (DR) and backup.

SVM-Disaster Recovery:

NetApp introduced SVM level disaster recovery starting from ONTAP 8.3. User can setup SVM level Disaster Recovery only via Command Line interface until 9.4.

OnCommand System Manager 9.5 bundled with ONTAP 9.5 provides a simplified and smart workflow to setup SVM Disaster Recovery. To Setup SVM DR via System Manager, ensure both the source and destinations clusters have SnapMirror® license, peered and has ONTAP version 9.5 or above.

Launch System Manager 9.5, Initiate SVM DR workflow from the destination site. System Manager automatically populates most of the values in the workflow based on best practices.

NVMe:

NVMe is a standard communication protocol primarily developed for SSD drives in order to provide low latency and high throughput for flash-based network storage.

System Manager 9.5, enhanced management capability for NVMe protocol in a simpler way. User can configure protocol in a single screen and allows creation and management of NVMe Subsystems and Namespaces. It requires license to enable NVMe in cluster.

FabricPool

FabricPool provides the most substantial integration between on-prem and cloud, to produce the technically elegant solution with deep business impact. It allows NetApp ONTAP system to keep hot data on All-Flash but tier inactive cold data off onto low-cost object storage, either on-premise or in the cloud. Automatic tiering of inactive data to the public and private cloud maximizes performance and reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO).

OnCommand System Manager 9.5 allows tiering of FlexGroup data as well and enhanced support for configuration of new Cloud Tiers such as Amazon Commercial Cloud Services and IBM Cloud.

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NetApp Tops in Best Internship Rankings - NetApp Certifications

Recently, Vault.com, an employer rankings platform that provides intelligence on what it’s like to work within particular industries, companies or professions, shared its annual internship rankings and showed the world something that anyone involved with NetApp’s internship program already knows—that it’s one of the best internship programs in the U.S.

According to Vault, NetApp’s internship program ranks 27th in the country, among companies from a variety of industries. The rankings are based on input the companies provide on their internship programs, as well as survey rankings by current and former interns who rank the programs based on criteria such as quality of life, compensation and benefits, the interview process, career development, full-time employment prospects and diversity.

This makes the second recognition for NetApp’s internship program in the past year, with the Vault results joining a ranking by WayUp that also placed NetApp in their Top 100 internship programs, which is based on a combination of public vote and input from a judging panel of HR and industry experts.

Says Intern and University Grad Hire (UGH) Program Manager Justin Tomlin, “We know NetApp has a great workplace culture and we know we have an amazing internship program that allows interns to grow and develop—personally and professionally. I think these survey results just bring to light what so many employees and former interns already know—NetApp’s internship program is phenomenal. These rankings just give us a chance to really latch on and say, ‘Here’s the stats.’”

What is it that makes NetApp’s internship program so special? We talked with some of our current interns and former interns who now work at NetApp full-time, as well as with Justin and Senior Manager, University Relations Trent Peterson to find out.

Education, Exposure and Experience

NetApp’s internship program runs for 10-12 weeks primarily during the summer and it provides plenty of opportunities for fun and camaraderie. In the U.S. alone, NetApp offers internships for college and graduate students at nine of our Americas locations, and that doesn’t include internship opportunities in Bangalore, APAC and EMEA. According to Justin, we employ approximately 120 interns per year in the Americas alone.

Trent says to qualify for the program, interns must be currently enrolled in a bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral or professional (such as law school) degree program.  The goal of the program is to deliver what NetApp’s University Relations team calls “The 3 E’s—Education, Exposure and Experience.”

“That’s the goal of this program—with Experience, it creates a sense of community for the interns. With Education, it enables them to learn and do better for themselves, as well as for NetApp. With Exposure, it gives them insight into NetApp and our executives, sites, what we do and our culture. All of those things are meant to make sure they like NetApp and make them better for our company,” Trent says.

Access and real work

There are a few things that NetApp does that make the internship program stand out from others in the industry, particularly with the interns. One of those is the amount of access the interns have to executives and managers. The summer program, for instance, features a Leaders Speaker Series where executives across the company discuss their roles and careers with the students.

“NetApp interns have a chance to access that top-tier of leadership, including CEO George Kurian. Every summer, George takes part in the speaker series and interns get the chance to spend some time with George, hearing his story, advice for interns, insights on why university talent is important to NetApp’s overall success, and, ultimately, have a chance to ask questions of their own,” says Justin.

Bridget King, who interned at NetApp during the summer of 2017 while she was attending The Catholic University of America, says the Senior Leader Speaker Series was one of the highlights of her internship. Now an NGS project manager in the U.S. Public Sector office in Vienna, Va., Bridget says she and her fellow interns had the opportunity to meet with Senior VP of Americas Sales, Thomas Stanley, as well as hear other company leaders speak via video conferencing during the series.

“It was a great opportunity to hear from the senior leaders of the organization and to see executives taking the time to engage and interact with interns. The opportunity to connect with those leaders really stood out to me,” Bridget says.

Darrian Parker, a solution architect intern in RTP and MBA student at North Carolina State University, agrees. “That was my favorite part of the program, just learning from the executives. NetApp is a big, Fortune 500 company, so being able to come in as a person starting their career as an intern and really learn from those people, that’s a huge opportunity that not a lot of people are aware of,” he says.

Darrian also appreciated the transparency and level of engagement in the company that NetApp provides for interns. Being able to attend All Hands meetings and hear about the state of the company, as well as hear from executives about their career paths, really impressed him.

Another aspect of the program that stands out is that NetApp allows interns to do real-world work, not just low-level projects. NetApp internships are tailored to what the team working with the intern needs in terms of work that needs to get done.

“These interns are not brought in to do busy work or have a generic experience; they are hired to address challenges their teams are actively facing. Interns bring with them fresh perspectives and oftentimes innovative mindsets. This winning combination allows interns to contribute greatly to their team’s success and grow an immense amount in a relatively limited timeframe,” Justin says.

What this also means is not only do interns get the opportunity to work with the teams within the department or function they’re assigned to, but they also get cross-functional exposure across the company.

“Every summer, interns are hired across a variety of different departments. Their projects often require cross-functional approaches, but they are also given opportunities to come together as a group to network across their different roles and have exposure to the overall company,” Justin says. “They get to see what all goes into running a successful company, not just regarding their individual department, but also the company at large.

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The Data Center is Not Dead, It’s Just Maturing - NetApp Certifications

A Gartner Research report recently caught my attention called “The Data Center is Dead, and Digital Infrastructures Emerge.” In the report, Gartner analyst David Cappuccio highlights strategies like prioritizing workload placement, building an ecosystem of visionary partners, investing in talent and training, and leveraging distributed digital infrastructure.  All of these are valid for any IT organization.

Yet I couldn’t get past the title. Is the data center dead?

Not in my opinion. I look at data centers differently and how they have matured like the stages of human development.  Data centers have grown from simplistic infants to complicated adolescents to matured adults.

As infants we built data centers of brick and mortar, typically using a cookie cutter approach. We calculated the wattage per square foot (SQFT) and, based on the results, plopped in racks and deployed pizza boxes of storage dedicated to specific workloads. We built data centers all over the world and made sure they had N+1 power backup.

As high schoolers, our data centers needed to be cool and co-exist.  We embraced co-lo data centers which were overly designed and built. Like adolescents, we adopted an “all-me-all-the-time” attitude with dedicated infrastructure and deployed two of everything. We overprovisioned, became obsessed with uptime, and staffed them with dedicated resources who physically managed everything end-to-end.  It was complicated and costly.

As our data centers matured into adulthood, we did some self-reflection and realized it’s best to rent commodity software via SaaS providers for things like email, collaboration, ERP, and CRM. We embraced virtualization, microservices and containers to help build more flexible cloud aware apps and architecture.  Scripting and self-healing capabilities removed manual processes and people costs. And just like aging adults, data centers have shrunk in their physical build thanks to more efficient hardware.

For some organizations, data centers continue to serve as a favorite childhood security blanket with its innate ability to protect, control, and maintain ownership of corporate data.  It provides reassurance from malicious actors, activities, and threats. For other IT organizations like ours, we have ventured outside the data center to the cloud. To maintain secure control of our data, we rely on NetApp Cloud Volumes and NetApp Private Storage for Cloud residing at the cloud edge.

For NetApp IT, our next generation data center will support approximately 27% of our enterprise apps that have been categorized as tolerate, i.e. applications that support an existing, valid business process that cannot be eliminated. These apps do not require an incremental investment, so they will continue to run from our traditional data center for the foreseeable future. For these reasons, I don’t think the data center is dead. It has just matured into its next generation form.

Source: https://blog.netapp.com/the-data-center-is-not-dead%E2%80%95its-just-mature/ 

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