Larry Smith Jr. takes a look at the open source initiatives from NetApp, as presented at Tech Field Day earlier this year. This reflects a change in focus from the company. Previously seen as a pure storage company, their embrace of open source and DevOps culture through thePub marks a decidedly different company. Larry was particularly impressed by their NetApp Docker Volume Plugin, moving into the world of container storage management.
NetApp at DockerCon – What’s that about then?
For Ian Sanderson, he thought of NetApp as just another storage vendor. After seeing their Tech Field Day Extra presentation from DockerCon EU, he’s definitely changed his tune! He was impressed with the company’s efforts to fully support containers across their product portfolio, as well as putting in lots of open source code via The Pub.
Why Do Technology Vendors Invest In Open Source?
James Green looks at the motivations behind companies investing in open source projects. NetApp has made major strides in this over the past 18-months, and presented extensively on it at Tech Field Day.
NetApp is Taking Point with Trident
At Tech Field Day this month, NetApp talked about their initiatives in open source and DevOps. Matt Crape was impressed with what he heard. Their Trident project gives developers resources to provision storage without having to go through a storage administrator. What makes this practical from an operations side is that the admins can preset quotas and storage limits to make sure their developers aren’t going overboard. Matt thinks its impressive the way NetApp is adapting their company to take advantage of a new IT landscape.
NetApp and Open Source
NetApp and open source isn’t an association that immediately springs to mind. Rich Stroffolino wrote up a piece giving an overview of why that’s about to change. The company has actively engaged with the open source community over the past 18 months, centered around their developer site, thePub. Their efforts originally started back in 2011 around OpenStack, and now they have made significant contributions to the Cinder and Manila projects as well.
