Regular readers of my blog are probably familiar with the idea of the NetApp data fabric.

This fabric defines NetApp’s strategic direction for data management. How to plan, develop and deploy a solution suitable for a modern organisations data needs, not only the needs for today but also those for the mid and long term.

What I like about this data fabric approach is that it allows us to move away from thinking about “traditional” storage deployments, that you may associate with a vendor like NetApp, or It’s well known competitors’ like Dell-EMC, HPE, IBM and even the new kids like Pure, and to have a much broader data management conversation that encompasses cloud, analytics, software defined, security and privacy.

By shifting this focus, NetApp have been smart, but importantly for us as consumers of storage, they have allowed us to be smart as well, by focussing on the data and not on where it’s housed or the technology it lives on.

Recently a friend of mine from the NetApp A-Team, Mark Carlton, wrote an excellent blog post “Top 4 questions about the value of the NetApp data fabric” in which he discussed the practicalities of this strategy, looking at its component parts, as well as some great examples of customer deployment.

It was such a good article, I thought I’d ask him onto this weeks Tech Interviews, so we could discuss in more detail his take on and experience of this data fabric strategy.

We not only discuss NetApp’s implementation of this, but also, and maybe more importantly, how the fabric has grown beyond a NetApp centric view and how 3rd party tools from the likes of Varonis, Veritas and Veeam are integrated into this fabric to enhance it further, making your data management solution more insightful, more complete.

Enjoy the conversation with Mark and then ask yourself, are you planning a data fabric strategy that allows you to meet your businesses ever changing needs? Because in the end, it’s all about the data!

If you want to follow up with either myself or Mark on this episode, you can find Mark on twitter @mcarlton1983 or of course me @techstringy

Don’t forget you can read Marks’ excellent blog post here “Top 4 questions about the value of the NetApp data fabric”

If you want more data fabric musings, then I wrote this piece about data fabric a little while a go, Data Fabric – What is it good for?

To make sure you catch the next Tech Interview, you can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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