Clouds and Big Data – Setting the foundations for innovation
In 1992, NetApp created Data ONTAP, which has
been the innovation platform driving the success of NetApp and our
customers for the last twenty years. When it was launched, it
effectively created the marketplace for enterprise class NAS and
provided high-performance storage for chip design and technical
computing. Most of the internet companies that launched the
consumer driven Cloud computing revolution built their business
using ONTAP. In 1998, NetApp built multi-tenant capabilities into
ONTAP with its vfiler technology and in 2008 this became the
foundation of Telstra's "Omnipresence" Private Cloud
infrastructure, years before Cloud hit the hype-cycle www.netapp.com/au/library/customer-stories/telstra-omnipresence.html
A decade after ONTAP was launched, NetApp
created the first Unified Storage Array, an approach which has
taken followers in the storage industry almost 10 years to
replicate. Those competitors are about to be left behind again as
NetApp sets the agenda for the next decade of innovation; Agile
Data Infrastructure will be the foundation for shared virtualised
infrastructure in both public, private and hybrid Clouds.
But while Cloud and virtualisation are
popular infrastructures, there is also a growing class of
applications that doesn't need the advanced data management
capabilities that ONTAP provides. Collectively known as "Big Data",
these applications are focused on providing business insights from
very large datasets through the use of extreme IT engineering.
While the value is in the specific application, they all have one
thing in common: they need lots of data, and they need it as fast
as they can get it. This is where NetApp's new E-Series solutions
come in.
E-Series has a lineage of performance
leadership supporting the world's most demanding and complex
computing environments. The strengths of these products line up
with the key requirements for supporting NetApp's Big Data
Strategy, which is focused on three areas: Analytics, Bandwidth and
Content.
There are two systems in the E-Series family;
the E5400 and E2600. While these systems have their differences,
overall both deliver on the same set of core values of performance,
density, reliability, availability, and serviceability.
E-Series systems are well suited for the
following workloads:
- University or research laboratory deploying a high performance
computer based on Lustre
- Government agency ingesting large amounts of video from UAVs,
satellites or other sensors
- Media and entertainment account developing a high ingest
workflow of over 5Gb/s
- Oil and gas account requiring multiple Gb/s reads and writes
for processing seismic data
- Large-scale video surveillance deployments
- Large enterprise building a content repository of over
500TB
The E-Series arrays can be purchased as a
part of a pre-integrated solution rack which includes servers,
networking, storage and software, or the E-5400 can be purchased as
separate component for integration into your existing IT
infrastructure. These solutions can be ordered today from NetApp
and our selected channel partners. For more information, head to
the Big Data landing page at www.netapp.com/au/solutions/big-data/