NetApp: FAS8000 Unified Systems Scaling to 57PB and 216TB of Flash Cache

Customers moving to unbound clouds struggle to manage their data freely across both private and public clouds. To address this challenge, NetApp, Inc. delivers new unified, scale-out innovations that enable enterprise customers to flexibly and efficiently manage and control their data through a single storage and data management platform.

• The new FAS8000 series scale-out enterprise storage systems are NetApp’s most powerful and feature-rich storage systems with I/O flexibility to simplify and eliminate complex upgrades as IT needs change.
• With the new FlexArray virtualization software, NetApp V-Series becomes a software option that can be licensed on the FAS8000. It enables the FAS8000 to virtualize and manage multi-vendor storage platforms, paving the way for software-defined storage.
• The latest release of clustered Data ONTAP helps organizations seamlessly scale-out operations and manage data consistently and without disruption across both private and public cloud environments.

George Kurian, EVP, product operations, NetApp, said: “As they adapt their IT operations to improve service delivery and embrace cloud mandates, CIOs recognize the advantages of shared storage infrastructures. Our proven, flash-accelerated FAS enterprise storage systems combine scale-out innovation and rich data management capabilities in a single unified platform. Our new FAS8000 series and enhanced software offerings allow customers to respond quickly to changing business needs, move seamlessly to an era of unbound clouds, and eliminate the overprovisioning of people, time, and money.”

With more organizations embracing cloud mandates and moving quickly to flash-accelerated, shared storage infrastructures, NetApp introduced a new line of enterprise storage systems and enhanced software designed to accelerate the broadest range of virtualized applications.

• The FAS8000 series is an enterprise storage system to unify SAN, NAS and storage virtualization into a single hybrid array. It is NetApp’s first FAS platform designed for scale-out storage environments built on clustered Data ONTAP.
• The FlexArray virtualization software enables existing storage to be managed by Data ONTAP for ROI and makes legacy storage cloud-ready. The software enables the FAS8000 to virtualize and manage third-party arrays and delivers a nine-month payback guarantee.1
• The new release of clustered Data ONTAP, version 8.2.1, extends nondisruptive operations (NDOs) and improves data security and management of CIFS environments.

  NetApp centers on its strategy for flash-accelerated, cloud-integrated storage solutions for a range of shared and dedicated infrastructure environments. Data is at the heart of business innovation, and NetApp helps organizations free data to move unbound across private and public clouds. Its enterprise storage systems and software meet customer needs across any workload, any deployment model, and any data type.

FAS8000 Enterprise Storage Systems Deliver a Unified Scale-Out Platform
to Adapt to Changing Business Needs Quickly and Efficiently
The FAS8000 supports a range of SAN and NAS workloads with a single system optimized for scale-out deployments. The new storage systems can improve performance (up to 2x) and deliver better flash acceleration benefits (up to 3x more flash) than previous FAS platforms. Additional improvements with the FAS8000 include a new, storage I/O-optimized architecture including the Intel microarchitecture (formerly code-named Sandy Bridge), expanded memory, and improved flash support to deliver low-latency performance for enterprise workloads.

Organizations can invest in the right long-term platform with the FAS systems and transition their applications to a private, public, or hybrid cloud deployment by leveraging the adaptive, patented Data ONTAP OS and connectivity options. The FAS8000 provides an enterprise storage solution that enables ROI and accelerates resource-intensive applications with hybrid flash arrays that give more than 2.6 million IO/s of flash-integrated, low-latency performance.

FlexArray Virtualization Software Enables Storage Virtualization and Management
It enables customers to use existing storage as FAS capacity for a greater return on assets and to deliver Data ONTAP value to more IT operations. It supports SAN and NAS, without complex add-ons, and it allows customers to unify their IT architecture under a common data management umbrella that is easy to manage and offers application integration and data protection. This is the foundation for software-defined storage, enabling organizations to provision and consume storage services based on policies and to deploy resources on a range of hardware. FlexArray software can be purchased and enabled at any time on the FAS8000.

Clustered Data ONTAP Provides Universal Data Platform for Hybrid Cloud
With it, organizations can help eliminate planned downtime and service their infrastructure without disrupting access to user data and applications. Organizations have the ability to add or replace storage shelves without disruption to business operations and access improved data security and the management of Microsoft CIFS environments. Clustered Data ONTAP simplifies and automates the delivery of IT services to users and applications, making it the foundation for private, public, and hybrid clouds.

Flash-Accelerated Storage Solutions
In 2013, NetApp expanded its flash offerings in enterprise flash storage. With a strong and broad flash portfolio, it offers a line of products, including intelligent caching technologies and all-flash arrays that provide the flexibility and choice to maximize the value of flash across the entire compute, network, and storage stack. To date, NetApp has shipped nearly 75PBs of flash storage. Its storage portfolio and open partner ecosystem deliver the responsiveness IT customers need to achieve more with their resources, advance new opportunities, and be ready for the unanticipated.

The FAS8000 enterprise storage systems, FlexArray virtualization software, and clustered Data ONTAP 8.2.1 are available.

Ashish Nadkarni, research director, storage systems and big data research, IDC, said: “CIOs and IT executives are constantly looking to simplify operations, make infrastructure decisions that can scale to demand, and deliver a solid ROI for their organizations. Building or implementing cloud-supported infrastructures however requires storage and data management product and solutions that satisfy cloud requirements. With the introduction of its new enterprise storage systems and software, NetApp is innovating the underlying storage infrastructure in such a way that enables this type of flexible and efficient storage infrastructure.”

Dan Timko, president and CTO, Cirrity LLC, said: “As a cloud service provider, you don’t necessarily know the peaks and valleys of a new customer’s workloads. With NetApp’s clustered Data ONTAP and Flash Cache in our systems, we can handle those peak times, scale-up and scale-out as needed and ensure that our operations are never down thanks to the centralized management system.”

Michael Tran, CTO, Digital Sense Pty Ltd, said: “As a cloud service provider, our growth and utilization is unpredictable. Clustered Data ONTAP delivers Digital Sense a solution that allows dynamic scale up and scale out, in order to meet our customers’ demands in a totally non-disruptive manner. We’re able to deliver storage through NetApp’s multi-protocol storage systems to all of our customers, using the exact same technologies they already know and trust. This makes moving to the cloud much easier. NetApp’s flash technology enables us to deliver extreme performance across all tiers of storage. Most importantly, it provides us a cost effective method to deliver scale-out, reliable storage to compete with international cloud offerings.”

Tim Frazier, CIO, National Ignition Facility (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), said: “The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs is home to the world’s largest laser and scientific teams that conduct critical research that could solve some of the most critical problems of our time. A key IT priority is to continuously improve uptime and availability of computing environments for our scientists. Having a unified cluster architecture such as clustered Data ONTAP is incredibly valuable to help ensure that we maintain constant data availability and can scale-out as needed to handle the large amounts of data being generated and analyzed.”

Michael Clark, CTO, Photobucket, said: “Photobucket stores more than 14 billion images and videos with five million uploaded to our site daily, so having an IT infrastructure that can support continuous operations for our cloud-based service is critical. With the new FAS8000 systems and clustered Data ONTAP, we have access to a unified, scale-out architect that enables us to scale on demand, delivering improved operational efficiencies and directly impacting customer satisfaction.”

Adam Padee, head of computational infrastructure, Poland’s National Centre for Nuclear Research, said: “Achieving reliability and speed with a single storage platform has traditionally been challenging for us. The combination of clustered Data ONTAP and FAS systems with Flash Cache solved that problem and is dramatically helping us accelerate our research. We now have performance, stability, and simplicity in a single system, which makes life easier for both IT and our scientists.”

Steve Wesling, IT operations/network manager, Tri-State Electric Supply, Inc., said: “As an electric power supplier, the ability to operate with near-zero downtime is absolutely critical to our business. Clustered Data ONTAP gives us a highly available storage platform with the ability to scale out so that we can accommodate unforeseen spikes in growth without downtime or forklift upgrades. With clustered Data ONTAP, our energy production business benefits from a better performing, more resilient storage infrastructure, allowing us to exceed the timeline that we’d originally planned for deployment of our private cloud.”

Satinder Sethi, VP, data center solutions, Cisco Systems, Inc., said: “For more than a decade, Cisco and NetApp have successfully partnered to bring innovations, like FlexPod, that accelerates IT’s ability to build internal and external cloud services spanning multiple sites, and connect the business to its data. Our combined focus is to make sure our customers’ cloud strategy benefits the goal of their IT organization for the long term. Together we can help our customers use their data center investment to address the challenges of the cloud era.”

Krishna Subramanian, VP, cloud products group, Citrix Systems, Inc., said: “NetApp and Citrix have successfully delivered innovative solutions through our long-standing partnership that help our customers leverage the efficiency and agility of cloud architectures. NetApp’s new FAS8000 solutions together with Citrix CloudPlatform will provide a simple infrastructure for customers to scale out their environments without over-provisioning, while seamlessly managing data and applications across hybrid clouds.”

Sanjay Katyal, VP, global strategic alliances, VMware, Inc., said: “Organizations are moving to the cloud to meet the needs of the mobile workforce. NetApp and VMware have worked together to build a global presence and deliver collaborative solutions to build a more efficient cloud computing environment for organizations of all sizes. The new FAS8000 products with VMware solutions will provide customers with a unified and simple platform to easily scale out storage environments in the cloud.”