Judsonian.com – Tech notes from yet another random tech guy

NetApp Insight 2023 – Event Rundown and Tech Updates

October 27, 2023 Judson McKratz Cloud, Storage

Before I start rattling off some tech updates to come out of NetApp Insight 2023 I wanted to start by rambling about the event in general. On the off chance someone who’s actually in charge of the event will swing by here. I know a lot of my colleagues will swing by here, and a lot will be on the same page. First and foremost, after being remote for several years, Insight back in person was fantastic. I got to meet friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in ages, and meet new folks I would’ve never spoken to otherwise. Everyone[…]

Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix – What it means for you

October 6, 2023 Judson McKratz Compute and Virtualization

An alternate title for this blog was “Cisco divorces wife for friends-with-benefits relationship,” or some such. Unfortunately nothing I can come up with is as absurd as the spoonful of words that is Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix. For the sake of simplicity I’m just going to refer to this solution stack as Nutanix on Cisco. For the unaware, Cisco came out of the blue and announced they’re killing their hyperconverged (HCI) solution, HyperFlex, in favor of just reselling industry leader Nutanix. How this affects HyperFlex customers really depends on where said customer is with adoption and product lifecycle. If[…]

Cribl – A Long Ass Beginners Introduction

July 10, 2023 Judson McKratz Cloud, Monitoring, Security

Welcome to the first of what’s likely to be a series of blog articles about Cribl. Don’t know what Cribl is? That’s okay, neither did I a few weeks ago. It’s something I found very interesting and valuable, and those of you who know me personally recognize my need write things down as part of a self education exercise. Gotta do something to make roots in the mind an engineer pulled six ways from Sunday. So what is Cribl? Well I’m going to cheat and ask what ChatGPT thinks first… Me > Tell me about Cribl ChatGPT > Cribl is[…]

ONTAP Temperature Sensitive Storage Efficiency (TSSE) – A Simple Introduction

June 15, 2023 Judson McKratz Storage

I wanted to take a few minutes (famous last words before this becomes essay length) about Temperature Sensitive Storage Efficiency (TSSE) available on NetApp ONTAP platforms. It’s a fairly straightforward concept, but enhancements and the release of NetApp’s new AFF C line have injected a bit of confusion. Hopefully this helps clear things up, or at least points you in the right direction. What is TSSE? A core component of ONTAP is a series of built in storage efficiencies, including deduplication, compression, and compaction. Through in-line processes data that is written to an AFF ONTAP platform is reduced before being[…]

NetApp BlueXP – Setting up an on-premises Cloud Connector

February 15, 2023 Judson McKratz Cloud

Before you can roll up your sleeves and start using BlueXP from NetApp you need to set up a Cloud Connector. These are small virtual machines which run a myriad of containers to facilitate all the various bits and bobs that provide a connectivity foundation for the BlueXP feature set. Ideally, well, ideally if you’re using resources in one of the large hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) you want to deploy a connector there. That gives you the ability to use the Cloud Connector as, basically, a API and command pass through. Essentially allowing BlueXP to talk directly to the hyperscaler[…]

NetApp ONTAP – Setting up Multi-Admin Verification via CLI and System Manager

October 29, 2022 Judson McKratz Security, Storage

Okay, so maybe hiring that guy who looks like Snidely Whiplash was a poor choice. Starting with ONTAP 9.11.1 you can enable further secure ONTAP by setting up multi-admin verification, or MAV for short. MAV can prevent system administrators from taking certain data disruptive actions without getting approval from at least one other administrator. How it Works MAV works by creating a rule set of commands or GUI operations that require multiple users to approve before it can be executed. Alongside are administrator groups which can provide authentication for those actions. When an action is triggered that’s a part of[…]

NetApp ONTAP – Whitelist and Blacklist Extensions with FPolicy via CLI, API, and System Manager

October 24, 2022 Judson McKratz Security, Storage

Within NetApp’s ONTAP software there’s the ability to monitor NAS actions via functionality called FPolicy. It’s essentially a notification framework that’s built around the logging and notification of actions against SMB/CIFS and NFS shares. The real power of FPolicy comes to light when you partner it with an off-system engine like Varonis or Cloud Secure, opening the door to all kinds of smart security controls. Native on-system FPolicy functionality is comparatively limited. While the framework is active and feeds info back into the other areas like logging, it lacks the majority of feature rich components an off-system partner provides. One[…]

AWS and VMware Cloud go live with FSx NetApp ONTAP datastores – An introduction and guide

September 19, 2022 Judson McKratz Cloud, Storage

Recently, at VMworld Explore, VMware and AWS announced general availability of the much-anticipated integration of AWS’ FSx NetApp ONTAP NFS shares for use in their VMware Cloud virtualization stack. This article will cover the benefits and considerations so you can see whether it fits with your cloud journey. I tried to create a title for this post that wasn’t incredibly long, without using a metric ton of acronyms. Forewarning this post is going to be acronym heavy, even more so as usual, since we’re combining technical concepts across three acronym pushing tech companies. TL;DR VMware’s stack in AWS, VMC, now[…]

Deploying Azure NetApp Files – A Quick Guide

July 1, 2022 Judson McKratz Backup, Cloud

I wanted to write a quick guide on Azure NetApp Files in Microsoft Azure, with info on how the service works and how to deploy it. I say quick but ended up adding more technical details than one might say is required – that’s just he engineer in me. I hope you find this helpful and relatively straight forward. Azure NetApp Files – What Is It? Azure NetApp Files (ANF) is an Azure native deployment of NetApp’s ONTAP platform in their cloud environment. ANF is simply high performance file shares using NFSv3, NFSv4.1, SMB, or a combination. As part of[…]