NetApp HCI celebrates one-year anniversary at VMworld Europe

NetApp celebrated the first-year anniversary of its “NetApp HCI” hyperconverged infrastructure solution at VMworld Barcelona 2018. 

NetApp HCI launched in September 2017 as the first hyper-converged solution to deliver independent scalability of computer, storage, and networking, and guarantee granular quality of service at the application or virtual machine level. 

Only 13 months later, NetApp was recognised as a Strong Performer by Forrester Research in their Forrester Wave for Hyperconverged Infrastructure.” This is testament to a strong showing in the hyperconverged market which experienced a 78.1% revenue growth year-over-year according to IDC.

Now, NetApp has significantly extended the capabilities of this hyperconverged solution with an eye on three top-of-mind IT imperatives:

1. HCI expectations are fulfilled – or not – based on consumption experience
   The service expectation of customers at all levels is defined by the private and public cloud. From C-level down to department level, to application owners and developers, the requirement is for services and resources to be delivered in a seamlessly and highly automatic way, preferably as self-service.
2. All IT, including HCI, has to live within a multi-cloud world
   Services and applications live everywhere, and they are in motion. This challenges traditional deployment models and data management strategies. A future-ready approach to IT considers microservices and containerised approaches. This integrates with the world’s most popular public clouds, and breaks down organisational barriers, such as between development and operations.
3. IT services replace the cost center as a key criterion of successful IT transformation 
   Building a stronger, more successful business model increasingly requires bringing new, improved services to market faster. Cloud-connected HCI with powerful quality of service and deep virtualisation integration delivers just that, not only consolidating applications, but allowing customers to start, deploy and move them anywhere, and manage them holistically.

In response to this, NetApp added these solution updates: 

• NetApp HCI now supports SnapMirror to Cloud Volumes ONTAP to deliver seamless integration between public and private cloud.
• New options in the NetApp HCI portfolio include H410C and H610C compute nodes. With the GPU-based H610C compute node, customers can accelerate VDI environments and confidently consolidate multiple workloads without bottlenecks, thanks to the unique workload protection capabilities of NetApp HCI.
• The ability to mix and match compute nodes with independent scaling of compute and storage gives users the flexibility and scale to consolidate private cloud, container services, VDI, and enterprise applications without silos.
• Updates to Trident, NetApp’s automated provisioner solve the persistent storage challenge for containers.
• A new verified architecture for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on NetApp HCI is introduced.
• NetApp HCI now offers enhanced flexibility for DevOps on both NetApp Cloud Volumes for Google Cloud Platform and NetApp Cloud Volumes for AWS.