http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWy1Sc9dtGs

New YouTube video showing some of the new features and functionality of NetApp SMVI 2.0. Not sure on a release date just yet, but looks promising!

Well it was sort of inevitable, EMC have finally won the bidding war for DataDomain. So what happens next? This gives EMC industry leading de-dupe technology at last, and a real foot in the market. What will EMC do with DataDomain? Will they adopt the code into the primary tier storage and finally give NetApp a run for their money in primary tier dedupe? I’m hoping that EMC don’t consume DataDomain as they did with Avamar. DataDomain is a great technology in it’s place and it would be a shame to see it restricted to EMC only estates.

What’s NetApp’s next play? NetApp were very excited a month ago about this potential aqcuisition, so it must fall as quite a disappointment. I heard someone (not from NetApp) voicing the possibility of a Quantum purchase. That would be interesting and very comical as EMC have a lot of that technology in their products! But other than annoying EMC, what benefits would it bring them? Quantum are in a lot of trouble at the moment, so it’d probably be a cheap purchase all the same.

I guess this can only be good news for the consumer though. NetApp will be driven to improve and excel with their de-dupe technology, and maybe give VTL a much-needed make-over.

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mbralign has now been added to the NetApp download ToolChest. This is an absolutely vital tool for anyone doing any VMware projects! I’m not actually sure if it checks to see if it’s running on NetApp storage, but obviously will align all partitions to a 4k block boundar, so a useful tool to have in any tool box all the same! Has full support for Windows and Linux as well as Primary and Extended partitions.

http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-2563

Finally a proper plugin to vCentre. This looks very cool, and obviously will avoid the limitations of the COS in ESXi and vSphere. I hope we can expect this soon!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjEe0boc7bc