NetApp has announced that its HCI solution has hit GA. Announced back in June, NetApp HCI is trying to build on the success of the hyperconvergence movement, while addressing many of the core concerns. Chief amongst those is flexibility in scaling. While many HCI solutions scale with nodes that include compute and storage, NetApp HCI allows customers to add either storage nodes or compute nodes as needed. This provides more flexibility as application requirements change over time.
NetApp has announced that its HCI solution has hit GA. Announced back in June, NetApp HCI is trying to build on the success of the hyperconvergence movement, while addressing many of the core concerns. Chief amongst those is flexibility in scaling. While many HCI solutions scale with nodes that include compute and storage, NetApp HCI allows customers to add either storage nodes or compute nodes as needed. This provides more flexibility as application requirements change over time.
NetApp HCI also address performance and management issues thanks to the underlying SolidFire Element OS that is integrated with VMware vSphere and managed by vCenter. Drawing from its service provider centric lineage, Element OS allows for several QoS controls based on minimum, maximum and burst options. While some HCI solutions have QoS controls, SolidFire has long been regarded as a leader in this particular feature set. Deployment is designed to be simple as well, a 30 minute initial commitment via the NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE). After initial setup, day-to-day management is handled through vCenter.
Because it’s NetApp, the HCI solution plays into their Data Fabric vision. Integration with the Data Fabric means NetApp HCI gets the ability to provide data services like ONTAP file services, StorageGRID object storage services, SnapMirror replication and AltaVault backup and recovery, amongst others.
NetApp HCI starts with a 2U 4-node box. As mentioned, customers can then scale with small, medium or large data nodes or compute nodes as needed, providing long-term flexibility in deployment:
- Storage Nodes
- Type: Small | Medium | Large
- SSDs: (6) 480GB | (6) 960GB | (6) 1.9TB
- Effective Block Capacity @ 5x-10x Efficiency: 5.5TB-11TB | 11TB-22TB | 22TB-44TB
- NVRAM: 8GB
- Networking: (2) 25/10GbE SFP28 / SFP+, (2) 1GbE RJ45
- Compute Nodes
- Type: Small | Medium| Large
- Cores for VMs: 16 | 24 | 36
- Memory of VMs: 256GB | 512GB | 768GB
- Networking: (4) 25/10GbE SFP28 / SFP+, (2) 1GbE RJ45
NetApp HCI is shipping now.
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