Improvements of NetApp E-series Platform for OEMs

The sheer volume of data and information produced by big data and high-performance applications continues to grow. How organisations store, manage, analyse, and protect this data can mean the difference between forging ahead and falling behind. As a result, the decision an organisation makes about the storage platform or solution that serves as the foundation for its IT infrastructure is critical.
 
NetApp; Inc. announced several major enhancements to its E-Series platform to help its OEM partners more effectively serve their customers’ big data requirements and also serve as the platform for NetApp’s own big data solutions.

The new features, which are available in the latest version of NetApp SANtricity software, the storage management software for the E-Series platform, include improved data protection, performance, and management capabilities. With the enhanced platform, OEMs have a storage foundation they can build to deliver their own storage solutions to address their customers’ high-performance needs and continue to grow their own business. .
 
OEMs can also leverage the E-Series platform to address other environments, such as virtualised infrastructures and Microsoft applications, providing them with the versatility to serve additional customer segments to help further expand their business opportunities.
 
New features in the enhanced E-Series platform include:

• Dynamic Disk Pools (DDP) is a new technology that provides customers with enhanced data protection and improves overall performance. DDP administers dynamic reconstructions of failed drives, providing customers with the ability to restore a storage system to optimal conditions following a drive failure eight times faster than with traditional RAID architectures. DDP can also reduce the impact on the performance customers experience while restoring from a drive failure by nearly 60%. This enhanced data protection technology enables big data customers to maintain business continuity and reduce overall storage system costs.
• Additional data protection capabilities are provided by enhanced SANtricity Snapshot technology that enables customers to schedule more frequent and flexible Snapshot copies, helping to improve overall RPO and RTO performance. The improved RPO and RTO performance increases data availability and reduces the amount of time and money an organisation needs to allocate to recover valuable information.
• VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration is now available across the E-Series platform. This provides customers with integration between the storage array and VMware tools to help manage their storage environments. The added integration offers customers in virtualised environments increased flexibility, more efficient use of server resources, and increased performance and scalability.
• Thin-provisioning capabilities enable organisations to enhance overall efficiency by increasing storage utilization and reducing administrative costs.
• Active-active LUN ownership enables customers to standardise and simplify system configurations since LUN ownership to each controller does not have to be performed manually. This feature also balances the load automatically across both controllers, which helps optimise performance.

Jeff Barber, VP and business line executive, IBM Corp.‘s Mid-Range/Low-End Disk, said: "IBM continues to enjoy a successful OEM relationship with NetApp, delivering leading products like the IBM DS3500 for entry-level storage, the IBM DCS3700 targeted to high- performance computing customers, and the recently announced N3220 and N3240 for the NAS market. IBM and NetApp are delivering on our mutual roadmap to enhance and grow these OEM-based offerings and continue to serve these markets."

Jose Reinoso, VP of Storage Engineering, SGI, said: "As drive sizes grow, our customers rely on SGI to stay ahead of the curve with storage technology to ensure the highest level of data integrity. By incorporating NetApp’s DDP as an option into the SGI InfiniteStorage 5500 and 5000 platforms, customers are able to leverage protection and utilisation advantages over traditional RAID architectures, effectively making storage worry free."

Ben Woo, program VP of Worldwide Storage Systems, IDC, said: "The latest enhancements to the NetApp E-Series platform strengthen what was already a very successful and powerful storage platform for OEMs. By incorporating technologies such as Dynamic Disk Pooling into the platform, NetApp is providing its OEM partners with a foundation they can build on to deliver innovative storage solutions across many different customer segments while meeting a wide variety of use cases and applications."

Joel Reich, VP of the Array Products Group, NetApp, said: "In less than a year the NetApp E-Series platform has experienced tremendous momentum and adoption among our OEMs, and today’s announcement will only further strengthen that momentum. The latest enhancements to the E-Series build on what is already an industry-leading platform and provide innovative technologies that address real customer challenges across big data markets. NetApp is committed to helping drive our OEM partners’ success, and the NetApp E-Series platform is the high-performance storage building block that makes that possible."