NetApp believes in and supports the open
source community and process, donating equipment, money, and code
of our own as well as participating in several open source
communities. We are concerned about open
source license proliferation and therefore only license our
code contributions using the same license as the open source
project, or in the case of an independent contribution, a license
that is widely used, usually GPL or BSD.
The following are some of the areas in which NetApp engages with
the open source community:
FreeBSD
As the basis of Data ONTAP,
NetApp makes regular bug fixes and enhancements to the FreeBSD Project and
is an annual sponsor.
iSCSI
NetApp has made several contributions to iSCSI
including the Linux drivers and daemon, as well as defining and
writing the reference implementation of the SNIA management API.
Linux
We employ one of the Linux maintainers and regularly make bug fixes
and enhancements. Of the identified companies, NetApp is tied for
the seventh most active contributor to the 2.6.23 kernel.
We are also on the board of directors of the Linux Foundation.
NDMJOB
NDMJOB
is an NDMP-compatible backup/restore package, reference
implementation, and conformance test. It is furnished in source
code form to the public by Traakan, Inc. and other contributors free of
charge or restriction. NDMJOB may be used as a ready-to-run backup
package, used in conjunction with other NDMP products, as the basis
for new products, as a verification of NDMP products, and as a
reference of the NDMP protocol standards and conventions.
NDMP (Network Data Management Protocol) is an open
protocol for network based backup enabling multi-vendor backup
solutions. NetApp has been a leading developer of the NDMP
specification since the late 1990's and has donated significant
software code contributions to the NDMP reference implementation
code base.
NFS
With one of the members of the original NFS development team,
co-authors of NFS Version 3 and Version 4, co-chair of the NFS
Version 4 IETF
working group, and the Linux NFS maintainer on staff, NetApp is a
driving force in the NFS community. Our open source contributions
include Linux's NFS implementation and a Linux client for
pNFS that allows parallelization of data
accesses.
nfsdump and nfsscan
A NetApp employee maintains nfsdump and nfsscan, a widely used
NFS trace analysis package.
NFS/RDMA
The NFS/RDMA protocol specifications were jointly authored by
NetApp, and a full implementation of the NFS/RDMA client and server
for Linux were written or jointly developed by NetApp. In addition,
we work with universities and researchers in the industry to
advance NFS/RDMA and broaden its use. NFS/RDMA can provide dramatic
performance benefits to clients and servers.
Open SPC-1
NetApp has contributed an open source implementation of the SPC-1
Benchmark, simulating the demands placed upon on-line,
non-volatile storage in a typical server class computer system.
RDMA
NetApp started the DAT Collaborative as the open source common API
for all RDMA transports such as InfiniBand and iWARP. NetApp has contributed a reference
implementation of the Direct
Access Programming Language (DAPL) and is a member and regular
contributor of the Open Fabrics Alliance.
Wireshark
NetApp has contributed NFS Version 3 and Version 4 features to
Wireshark,
an open source network protocol analyzer formerly called Ethereal.
As Ethereal, NetApp contributed NFS Version 3 and CIFS protocol support.