Xpanse Q1 2017 newsletter

Welcome

Welcome to our first newsletter for 2017. As your trusted data management partner, we want to keep you informed about the world of enterprise data technology, and the great opportunities available to your in-house team.

For more information about us, our solutions, news and more, visit our website or follow us on LinkedIn.

News

Xpanse partners with Telstra

Xpanse is now a data centre and data management partner with Telstra. Working across Telstra Global Enterprise Services (GES) and Telstra Business, Xpanse and Telstra provide Telstra ‘Cloud’ solutions to their clients.

Xpanse compliment the Telstra carriage model by providing expert design, supply, install and support solutions for all data management requirements. The Telstra partnership allows Xpanse to assist in the sale and supporting services for the full range of Xpanse products including NetApp, Pure, CommVault, Riverbed and Cisco. In addition, Xpanse has access to highly competitive pricing of additional vendor’s products by leveraging Telstra’s procurement channels and Xpanse can now also resell Telstra carriage solutions to complement Xpanse Data Centre projects.

Xpanse Professional Services add significant value to Telstra Cloud solutions by providing local/national expertise in the design and delivery of these solutions. Xpanse services can all now additionally be billed on Telstra accounts.

The recent announcement and collaboration between NetApp & Telstra offering Cloud Storage as a service – Telstra Data Fabric – means our clients can now purchase Xpanse and NetApp solutions in an as a Service (XaaS) model.

For more information on Telstra backed solutions and engagements please contact sales@xpanse.com.au or your aligned Xpanse Account Manager.

Xpanse IT Infrastructure Management (XITIM)

Xpanse has recently launched a new and improved managed service agreement framework offering a range of services to complement our customers’ existing vendor support agreements. XITIM services have been designed to be modular, flexible and affordable, allowing our customers to pick and choose the level of coverage that suits their budget and their environment needs. Xpanse are able to support a wide range of platforms including NetApp, Pure, VMware, CommVault, Riverbed and Cisco UCS environments. Whether its incident management, onsite assistance, proactive reporting or complete monitoring and management of your environment, contact sales@xpanse.com.au today to learn more about these offerings and how they can benefit you.

Tech Talk

NetApp All-Flash FAS (AFF) Arrays & FAS2600 Series Announcements

NetApp has launched two new all-flash FAS arrays, won a top 3 SPC-1 storage benchmark result, and announced a new flash capacity guarantee programme.

In addition to the A700 and A700s, the NetApp AFF A-Series also includes the entry-level A200 and midrange A300. All models support 15.3 TB Samsung SSDs as well as lower capacity 3.8 TB and 960 GB SSDs from multiple manufacturers. You can read the NetApp release here.

Self-encrypting drives are available at 3.8 TB on all models, with additional 800 GB self-encrypting options for the A200 and A300. NetApp also offers software-based drive encryption through its ONTAP 9.1 operating system.

Entry-level FAS2650 and FAS2620 arrays deliver up to three times the performance and reduce latency, compared with the previous FAS2500 generation, thanks, in part, to Flash Cache technology that now supports nonvolatile memory express (NVMe), according to NetApp. All new AFF and FAS models support NVMe-based Flash Cache, use new Intel Broadwell multicore processors and benefit from performance-boosting ONTAP operating system improvements.

Another enhancement in ONTAP 9.1 is FlexGroup technology that can enable NAS users to scale up to 20 PB and 400 billion files in a single namespace. NetApp said it envisions use cases in the high-tech, media and entertainment, oil and gas, and electronic-design industries.

NetApp says the AFF & FAS products "can connect to public clouds from AWS, Azure, IBM Cloud and more, while retaining maximum visibility and seamless data control across cloud and on-premises environments". Customers have the option to offload data to Amazon Simple Storage Service or Microsoft Azure object storage, or run ONTAP Select on servers with accompanying block-based storage in those public clouds. NetApp added support for all-flash commodity servers with ONTAP Select. You can read more about the AFF A-Series arrays here.

For more information on these products, you can visit these pages:

Data ONTAP 9 Availability

A reminder to our customers that Data ONTAP 9 is now available. ONTAP 9 prides itself on simplicity, flexibility and security, allowing workload consolidation across converged infrastructure, third party arrays, next to the cloud systems and the cloud.

Further information can be found here, by contacting sales@xpanse.com.au or by speaking to your dedicated Xpanse Account Manager.

Upcoming NetApp Training

VMware vSphere 6.5 Release & Current Upgrade Promotions

VMware vSphere 6.5 is the latest version of its industry-leading virtualization platform. This new release of vSphere features a dramatically simplified experience, comprehensive built-in security, and a universal app platform for running any application, providing exceptional management simplicity, operational efficiency, and faster time to market.

vSphere 6.5 makes the vCenter Server Appliance the fundamental building block of a vSphere environment. The core vSphere architecture is built around this easy to deploy and manage approach that reduces operational complexity by embedding key functionality into a single location. Capabilities such as vSphere host management (with a fully integrated vSphere Update Manager), file-based backup and recovery, native VCSA high availability, and much more are now embedded in this new one-stop appliance model. Because everything is centralized, vCenter Server Appliance generates a tremendous amount of optimisation and innovation, including an over 2x increase in scale and 3x in performance. Upgrading to this building block will be easier than ever as users can now convert from their traditional Windows deployment into the new appliance model using the new vCenter Server Appliance Migration tool.

vCenter Server Appliance: The fundamental building block of a vSphere environment

For more detailed information regarding vSphere 6.5 you can visit their blog here.

Upgrade Promotion - vSphere Enterprise and vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise

For a limited time, VMware are offering substantial discounts when you upgrade from vSphere or vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise to vSphere or vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus. You can also upgrade from vSphere Enterprise edition to vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus edition.

The Enterprise Plus editions provide the full range of vSphere features, including Distributed Switch, Host Profiles and Auto Deploy. These new features can improve application availability and performance, helping transform your data centres into dramatically simplified cloud computing environments. The vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus edition takes vSphere to the next level with intelligent operations and consistent management.

Compare vSphere and vSphere with Operations Management editions and learn more about how this promotion works here.

Additionally, VMware are offering upgrade promotions for the following products:

  • VMware Horizon Apps Advanced 7.1 Promotion
  • vRealize Suite and vCloud Suite Upgrade Promotion
  • Horizon Air Hybrid-mode Promotion (ELAs Only)

If you’d like any further information on the above promotions or upgrading to vSphere 6, please contact sales@xpanse.com.au or your friendly Xpanse Account Manager.

CommVault Version 11 Availability

CommVault are pleased to announce the eleventh generation of their industry leading software!

In addition to the new software features and usability enhancements in this release, CommVault have re-architectured the core software. This includes the Security layer for greater access control and flexibility, and to address the needs of mobile users; the Networking layer to support new transport modes, and provide greater speeds and better scaling; the Database layer which has been simplified to eliminate potential bottlenecks; the Indexing layer to support multiple databases as well as live edit capabilities; and Deduplication to use an in-memory database to support high availability.

Refer to the CommVault Newsletter, which highlights the major new features and capabilities, including a description, applicable agents, use cases and license information. In addition, the newsletter contains information about Early Release features, providing an advanced look at the very latest capabilities.

Xpanse offer CommVault design, planning, implementation and upgrade services. If you’d like any further information, please contact sales@xpanse.com.auor your aligned Xpanse Account Manager.