At VMworld 2016 TechField Day extra, PrimaryData announced the launch of DataSphere allowing for simplified management and orchestration, as well as increased application uptime, and ability to scale out any storage vendor.

To be honest, I was not familiar with PrimaryData before TFDx; however, I can see say that there is a future for this technology.

What does PrimaryData bring to the table?

Well, to put it in simple terms, PrimaryData does to storage what VMware did to compute. Yes, PrimaryData virtualizes the data and is able to decouple the data from silo storage arrays, allowing admins to move data between different storage vendors with little to no downtime. PrimaryData is a software solution, so it can be deployed as an OVA or on physical hardware.

This is very powerful, in my humble opinion. I have spent the last year and a half moving customers from NetApp 7-mode to clustered mode. If the customers run VMware, then moves are as easy as a storage vMotion, but other workloads for NAS and SAN can be tricky, mainly because customers are not allowed to have downtime. Although NetApp has a tool called 7MTT, it is ok for basic moves, but not very user friendly to the point where customers require PS in order to be able to use.

I would love to see PrimaryData involved for NetApp migrations. I think this will make the adoption to clustered mode more enticing, faster, and easier.

Aside from migrations, you can look at this solution as a way to tier your data among different vendors and types of media. You can do automatic tiering based on objectives, and the software is smart enough to move your data for compliance of such objectives, whether it is on different storage vendors or the cloud.

PrimaryData works with VMware’s VSAN AND VVols, how cool is that?!?!?

Definitely check them out. This is a technology everyone should keep their eye on…

Check out their TFDx presentation here