Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


NetApp Debuts Enterprise Storage Systems

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 11/16/10

NetApp has launched several new technologies designed for building the kind of shared IT infrastructure that's inherent to cloud computing operations. New products include two new families of storage systems; enhancements to its operating system, Data ONTOP; and OnCommand, a new management suite.

The NetApp FAS6200 and FAS3200 series of storage systems address different organizational requirements. The feature set of the FAS6200 models is intended for large enterprise demands. The high-end FAS6280 has a maximum raw storage capacity of 2.9 PB, up to 192 GB of memory, up to 8 TB of flash cache, and a maximum of 1,440 disk drives. The midrange FAS3200 systems scales to nearly 2 PB of storage capacity and accommodates a maximum of 960 disk drives, 2 TB of flash cache, and 32 GB of memory.

The new line of storage is also available in a "V-series" version for environments already running disk arrays from IBM, Hitachi, HP, EMC, Fujitsu, and 3PAR (now part of HP). This virtual line allows administrators to manage multi-vendor storage as if it was all from NetApp.

Both sets of storage systems run Data ONTAP 8.0.1. Among other enhancements, this new release of the company's operating system introduces data compression. The block-level compression capability can be used alone or with a highly popular deduplication feature already present in the software, to store more data using fewer physical resources. According to company blogger and global systems engineer Nick Triantos, "We see primary use of compression taking place in environments that are not application performance sensitive, such as file services, home [directories], seismic data, engineering data, backups, and archives."

NetApp has released OnCommand, a set of management tools intended to improve storage and service operations with functions that help the storage administrator control, automate, and analyze the storage infrastructure. The suite has plugins to integrate NetApp features with third-party management products and hypervisors.

The company also announced its participation along with Cisco and VMware in offering a virtualized data center consisting of components from all three companies. Besides central management of components, FlexPod for VMware is expected to provide a more streamlined response, the companies said, to problems that surface in shared infrastructures. Its base configuration consists of VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter, Cisco Unified Computing System and Nexus switches, and NetApp FAS storage. FlexPod will be built and sold through the vendor partners.

"Facing the dual challenges of flat IT budgets and exploding data growth, IT organizations need to keep pace with the business requirements of today yet also be ready to adapt and respond to the demands of tomorrow," said Mark Peters, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "The resulting urgency to employ more dynamic, flexible, and efficient IT approaches--including various cloud implementations--is being enabled by many new technologies that have matured, including those that NetApp is announcing. These can be used to create a genuine shared IT infrastructure that combines the best of traditional and cloud approaches in order to allow organizations to seize new opportunities and ultimately to advance and accelerate their business objectives."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • large cloud icon with abstract code and interconnected polygons

    Report: Enterprise AI Workloads Are Tipping Toward Private Cloud

    Broadcom's 2026 Private Coud Outlook report says enterprise AI is moving from experimentation into production, with private cloud emerging as the preferred deployment environment for AI inference among surveyed organizations.

  • digital brain integrating legal regulation and security interface

    Survey: Agentic AI Moves from Pilot Phase to Production, Bringing Governance to the Forefront

    A new report from Caylent, an AI-focused Amazon Web Services Premier Tier Services Partner, found that enterprises are already moving agentic AI beyond pilots and into production environments. At the same time, organizations are putting strict conditions around autonomy, making governance and control the next major challenge for enterprise AI adoption.

  • Young Woman Programmer Uses Laptop To Analyze Neural Network Models

    AI Leaders Warn of Risks at United Nations Security Council Briefing

    The heads of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face recently joined AI researcher Yoshua Bengio at the United Nations headquarters in New York to warn the UN Security Council about the security risks of increasingly capable AI.

  • abstract smartphone translucent screen displaying AI interface

    Apple Unveils Redesigned Siri AI

    At its recent Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced Siri AI, a redesigned version of its voice assistant that Apple describes in its own announcement as "a profoundly more capable and personal assistant." The update is intended to make Siri more conversational, more context-aware, and more useful across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro.