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ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere 10.6: More Control, Less Overhead, and Stronger Operations
For years, protecting VMware datastores with ONTAP tools meant an all-or-nothing choice: protect an entire host cluster, or protect nothing at all. With ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere 10.6, that trade-off goes away. This release introduces Granular Datastore Protection, a new right-sized deployment option for smaller…
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Comparing KV cache offloading frameworks for vLLM
If you have been following this blog for a while, you have probably noticed that the majority of my recent posts have dealt with KV cache offloading. This is not by accident. As AI initiatives reach operational maturity, ROI is coming under increasing scrutiny while compute infrastructure remains structurally scarce and…
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The Strategic Cost Advantage of Azure NetApp Files
At first glance, Azure NetApp Files (ANF) can look pricey. If you line it up next to other Azure storage options and just compare list prices, it’s easy to think, “Why would I pay a premium for cloud storage?” But here’s the thing; list price isn’t what you pay. And once you look at the effective price, the number that…
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Locking to Enable Trident Controller Scalability
Several blogs (From hours to minutes: Trident 26.06 controller concurrency at 1000 volume scale and Trident Controller Parallelism) have described the improvements made, starting in Trident 25.06, to add concurrency to the Trident controller to increase throughput and scalability. Here we will do a deep dive into how this…
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NetApp Extends Symmetric Active-Active SAN Pathing to Unified AFF
Figure 1: Symmetric Active-Active SAN pathing on NetApp AFF Modern enterprise SAN environments cannot tolerate downtime. Mission‑critical databases and large‑scale VMware deployments demand continuous availability and predictable I/O behavior, with little tolerance for controller failovers or path transition delays. At the…
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Unlock precision at scale with NetApp Harvest: Real-time GCNV insights directly on Cloud Monitoring
In our previous blog post, we explored how NetApp Harvest provides a single collection layer across your entire storage estate, whether you are using ONTAP on-prem or in the cloud across Google Cloud, Azure, AWS etc. We also walked through the set up for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes (GCNV) Flex Unified pools with ONTAP-mode…
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Measuring Oracle Data Guard Fast-Start Failover RTO and RPO on Google Cloud NetApp Volumes
Measuring Oracle Data Guard Fast-Start Failover RTO and RPO on Google Cloud NetApp Volumes“Zero data loss” and “automatic failover” are common claims for Oracle Data Guard deployments. Those claims only hold weight when validated under real failure conditions, with evidence that would satisfy an Oracle DBA reviewing the…
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SnapMirror Active Sync + ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere 10.6 Granular Datastore Protection
Co-Author: @ChanceBingen Active-Active VM Storage at Datastore Granularity: SnapMirror Active Sync meets ONTAP tools Granular Datastore Protection The two things to remember Active-active with synchronous SnapMirror (SnapMirror active sync / SM-as) — ONTAP TOOLSONTAP tools Granular Datastore Protection (GDP) lets you…
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From hours to minutes: Trident 26.06 controller concurrency at 1000 volume scale
We first introduced the Trident concurrent core as a tech preview feature in Trident release 25.06. With traditional Trident, all operations in the k8s cluster were effectively serialized with a global lock. With concurrent core enabled, Trident can safely perform many provisioning operations concurrently, drastically…
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Independent Storage Scaling with Google Cloud NetApp Volumes NFS Datastores for Google Cloud VMware Engine
Overview Google Cloud VMware Engine gives you a familiar vSphere environment in Google Cloud. As VM estates grow, storage often becomes the bottleneck — and the cost driver. Adding ESXi nodes just to get more datastore capacity is rarely the most efficient answer. With Google Cloud NetApp Volumes Flex Unified, you can…
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Supercharge team collaboration with FlexPod Datacenter for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Supercharge team collaboration with FlexPod Datacenter for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops A validated VDI architecture for scalable, high-performance Citrix workloads Modern datacenters face many challenges including how to deliver a consistent end-user experience across applications, devices, and locations. Many…
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Becoming a Frontier Enterprise: Why AI Success Starts with Your File Data
Enterprises today are striving to become Frontier organizations. They want to move beyond AI experimentation and begin embedding AI into the way they operate, make decisions, and serve customers. But there is a common misconception that AI success is primarily about models or compute infrastructure. In reality, the biggest…
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Zero RPO, Zero RTO for NAS: SnapMirror active sync Comes to File Workloads
Zero-RPO and Zero-RTO for NAS For years, zero recovery point objective (RPO) for NAS workloads has been achieved through synchronous replication, but achieving zero recovery time objective (RTO) has been a major bottleneck to achieving business continuity. Although synchronous copies of data were available, accessing those…
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Move iSCSI Volumes Live with Trident 26.06: A Hands-on Guide
Move iSCSI Volumes Live with Trident 26.06: A Hands-on Guide to Volume MoveOverview Kubernetes environments change constantly: aggregates fill, nodes need maintenance, and performance hot spots appear. With Trident 26.06, you can now move an iSCSI-backed volume non-disruptively to a different ONTAP node and aggregate…
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Connecting file data with AWS AI and analytics services: A governance-first approach
Enterprise organizations have been storing enterprise file‑based data for decades. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced a range of AI and analytics services that unlock new ways to extract insights, automate decisions, and build differentiated applications. There is value in making on-premises file data available to…
