By Mark Davison at NetApp Insight, Dublin – NetApp has set the cat among the flash array pigeons in Dublin with the launch today of three new platforms – its E2700, E5500 and, more importantly, its EF550.
Matt Watts, director of technology and strategy at NetApp EMEA, says that the EF550 will compete directly with traditional Tier 1 storage arrays providing improved performance at a fraction of the price. The footprint of the new flash storage array, he adds, will also be a major factor in times when space, cooling and power have come under the spotlight.
“Traditional Tier 1 storage arrays which are used mainly for performance reasons consume two or three racks and customers will pay seven-figure sums for these,” Watts says. “The EF550 is two rack units – that is units, not racks – and will come in at about 10% of the cost of a Tier 1 array.
“The EF550 is available today and we have already shipped 550 units to customers,” he adds. “Not only is it available, but it is available from NetApp, the world’s leading independent storage vendor, so customers have peace of mind in terms of support and the fact that we are here for the long-run. We’re not a start-up in the flash array business looking at an IPO or to become an acquisition target.”
The EF550 flash array, designed for low latency for business-critical applications, is one of two new platforms announced. The NetApp E2700 is for small remote or branch offices that require optimal price performance.
The company has also updated the NetApp E5500 for performance, density and modular flexibility for the widest range of data-intensive workloads.
George Kurian, executive vice-president: product operations at NetApp, adds: “Our product innovation strategy is to deliver the industry’s leading portfolio of cloud-integrated and flash-accelerated storage and data management solutions. These solutions satisfy our customers’ needs for their multiple workloads and deployment models – either dedicated or as part of a shared infrastructure.
“By expanding our EF-Series all-flash arrays and E-Series platforms we are meeting growing market demand for dense, performance-oriented architectures and delivering superior performance, reliability, efficiency and scale.”
NetApp has shipped over 62Pb of flash storage to date.
The new platform releases continue to execute against the storage industry’s most innovative roadmap, which recently included NetApp’s unveiling of a comprehensive strategy for cloud integration. As organisations turn to hybrid cloud environments to optimise costs, seize opportunities and mitigate risks, NetApp is providing its clustered Data ONTAP platform for seamless cloud management across any blend of private and public cloud resources.
Already, more than 175 cloud service providers deliver cloud services built on Data ONTAP. IDC named NetApp Data ONTAP as the world’s number-one branded storage operating system.
The EF550 Flash Array delivers consistent, predictable, sub-millisecond response times to accelerate the latency-sensitive applications responsible for driving revenue, productivity and/or customer satisfaction on a day-in, day-out basis.
Key applications include database, VDI and web services. The EF550’s scale-up architecture provides more data access to low-latency performance while remote replication enables business-critical application to be fully protected at a remote site.
Operational costs are dramatically lowered with the EF550 due to the elimination of over-provisioning. In fact, a single EF550 is able to match the performance of two full racks of traditional spinning drives. This results in significant savings of space, power and cooling.
The NetApp E-Series leads in innovation with Dynamic Disk Pools, Intelligent Cache Tiering with SSD Cache, the NetApp AutoSupport tool, remote replication in a simple array, and the latest release of 12G SAS. The E-Series is part of the NetApp portfolio of block-based, performance optimized storage. Easily scalable by design, the E-Series is for workloads requiring 99,999% reliability and consistently high performance.
The E2700 offers simple and flexible management, allowing IT staff to focus on adding business value versus managing storage. IT departments can add storage capacity as their organizations grow without reconfiguring running applications.
By introducing 12G SAS, the E2700 dramatically accelerates application performance for price/performance value. Seamless operations with seamless application integration meet the demands of any application environment with the support of fabric controller (FC), Internet small computer system interface (iSCSI) and SAS.
The performance-efficient E5500 expands enterprise data protection with the SANtricity suite of data replication features and flexible interface offerings with 10G iSCSI and 16G FC, in addition to SAS and IB. With NetApp AutoSupport, users have enterprise monitoring and installed-base analytics for proactive operations. The E5500 scales to 1.5Pb per system for data-intensive storage at scale.
In 2013, NetApp discussed its vision to provide seamless data management and control across a blend of private and public cloud resources. By harnessing the versatility and efficiency of Data ONTAP, NetApp now delivers a universal data platform, enabling dynamic data portability and extensive customer choice across private cloud, public cloud service provider and hyperscale cloud provider options.
NetApp has more than 175 cloud service providers delivering over 300 cloud services built on Data ONTAP. It is the first and only major storage supplier building an ecosystem around a private storage solution for Amazon Web Services and was recognised as the Private Cloud Partner of the Year by Microsoft.
In addition, the number one integrated infrastructure platform, FlexPod, from Cisco and NetApp is a proven platform for service providers and enterprises.