n face off
EMC vs. NetApp
Venkatesh Iyer
Head – India & SAARC (VCE Initiative), EMC Corporation
Surajit Sen
Director, Channels, Marketing and Alliances- NetApp India
Battle for Virtual Storage Both EMC’s Vblock and NetApp’s FlexPod have Cisco and Vmware support. Which offering scores over the other?
V
block Infrastructure Packages offered by VCE,
are integrated infrastructure packages, have a reference architecture that is significantly different from what our competitors have to offer. Integration with vCenter, Unisphere, vStorage API, VPLEX, security (through RSA, EMC’s security division), Avamar, site recovery manager for data recovery (unique with VCE through EMC’s Replication Adapters) are some key benefits that the VCE’s deep integration with VMware technologies (more than 60 points of integration) offers. They are validated, secure, de-risked and warranted. Customers of all sizes who want an integrated data center infrastructure package to be able to implement pervasive virtualization on the road to private cloud computing will find Vblocks ideal. We are already seeing significant adoption for the Vblock proposition in the Indian market from service providers and organizations alike and are far ahead of competition in the practical world. A clear message to our customers and partners is that they can benefit from the single contact point that directly connects them to a team of VCE solution technical support experts. We deliver seamless support through a single company where all resources are cross trained on EMC, Cisco and VMware technologies (more than 10,000 hrs of cross training), resulting in faster resolution for the customer. Think of it as ‘the hotline’ to depend on irrespective of which of the three coalition companies initiated the customer engagement. Now, compare this to ‘collaborative support’ offered by competitors, where an issue is referred to the relevant technology company.
W
ith FlexPod, NetApp introduced new capabilities
to its portfolio, including Secure Multi-Tenancy (SMT), Long Distance VMotion (LDVM) and support for vShield Zones. FlexPod provides a variety of NetApp technologies that improve storage efficiency including deduplication, Snapshot, thin cloning, thin replication, RAID DP and more. Customers will use at least 50 percent less storage with NetApp systems and at least 35 percent less storage on existing systems. It integrates into the customers’ existing environment. NetApp solutions enable customers to virtualize all of their existing storage, including any third party storage, with our V-Series controllers. FlexPod packaging is new, but the architecture has already been adopted by countless virtualization and cloud customers (end-users and service providers). We have many joint references for comparable configurations. Our 3-way integrated support model provides customers with a direct 24x7 contact path to experts from NetApp, Cisco and VMware. Our open architecture provides APIs that enable a wide range of orchestration players to manage all layers of the stack, including BMC, CA, IBM and Microsoft. NetApp does not compete with other management platforms. FlexPod leverages a single unified storage architecture across the entire product family – same OS, management tools and software for backup, HA, DR, etc. – that reduces complexity and improves scalability and upgradability. Like other NetApp solutions, it provides a flexible, highly scalable architecture designed to scale up or scale out depending on their needs. — As told to Radhika Nallayam
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Indian Channelworld february 2011
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2/15/2011 11:04:58 AM