So NetApp have entered an agreement to resell Quantum’s Stornext product; this is the next step in their big-data strategy and after the LSI acquisition it makes a lot of sense. There are people who put Stornext in front of NetApp filers and the like but honestly it makes much more sense putting it front of relatively dumb disk like the LSI arrays. The LSI disks in my experience really shine in a clustered file-system and are capable of delivering great throughput but they are not the most feature laden disks that you have ever come across.
It might make an interesting proposition if you could somehow integrate the Stornext filesystem into the filer-heads; this could allow NetApp to overcome some of my current objections to the cluster-mode in OnTap 8.
Perhaps NetApp could go and buy/merge with Quantum and have another go at integrating OnTap with something else? Perhaps go the whole hog and look at pluggable file-system technology in OnTap? Okay, it’s a bit of a science experiment but might be interesting.
The LSI acquistion and now the partnering with Quantum for Stornext is interesting though and it shows that NetApp are finally at the stage where they are confident enough to quietly acknowledge that one size does not fit all; this does not mean that their current products are flawed but it shows a maturity that one should not be trying to bang square pegs into round holes.
It also continues us down the path that storage is software; hardware is just a commodity and should be able to be swapped out and changed with ease. Another pretty solid move from NetApp.
