NetApp pushes storage virtualisation

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Storage vendor NetApp has this week launched a new virtualisation programme for its channel partners.

But, in using the occasion of VMware's first European user conference to make its announcement, it said only partners certified on the virtualisation vendor's platform and technologies first will be able to participate.

John Rollason, NetApp solutions marketing manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) told IT PRO that the partner announcement was designed to pull together its own dynamic virtual storage products with those of VMware.

"VMware is a top-tier global partner, so this announcement is short-term tactical one to realise long-term gain," he said. "But we're also SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec partners too. So we'll look to do the same for those that are developing their own virtualisation solutions, like Microsoft with its Hyper-V."

The new 'virtualisation grid infrastructure' partner programme has been designed to build on NetApp announcements made earlier this month that address the management of proliferating storage requirements associated with provisioning virtual environments.

SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure was introduced for IT organisations to protect their VMware environments with automated data protection and recovery of their virtual machines. And SnapManager compatibility with VMware offers the ability to manage data within virtual machines and take advantage of Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Oracle application-specific data management capabilities provided by its software management suite.

The products were also designed to also help accelerate deployment of existing Windows applications into new virtual server environments, according to Rollason. He said that the addition of a provisioning manager module would provide policy-based automation to speed up existing storage provisioning processes, improve capacity use and reduce the potential for human error that could result in data loss.

"Storage administrators can eliminate the complex series of manual steps normally associated with provisioning storage in both virtual and physical server environments," he said.

He also said VMworld offered the opportunity to also demonstrate NetApp's new Kilo Client, a testing environment for utility computing environments that can help IT organisations evaluate storage requirements of increasingly virtualised data centres.

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