EMBARGOED - June 12, 2006 - Network
Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) is now shipping its powerful new
Data ONTAP GX operating system, giving customers with
high-performance computing (HPC) applications extreme throughput,
unsurpassed flexibility, and NetApp® hallmark simplicity and
reliability, which don't exist in other options currently on the
market. Data ONTAP GX is the result of over two years of strategic
engineering work, combining the global namespace functionality of
SpinOS (which NetApp acquired when it bought Spinnaker
Networks®) with the key data management, performance, and
high-availability features of Data ONTAP 7G. Additional details on
Data ONTAP GX are available at
www.netapp.com/see/ontap-gx/pr/
Although the needs of NetApp enterprise customers are well served
by the performance, features, and functionality of Data ONTAP 7G,
HPC customers in the areas of energy (seismic processing
applications), entertainment (movie content creation and visual
effects rendering), and electronic design automation (chip design
and simulation) have an insatiable demand for extreme levels of
performance. Data ONTAP GX delivers what those customers need,
along with a single global namespace, which enables multiple nodes
to be presented to applications as a single system and data to be
moved between storage nodes and/or tiers transparently, simplifying
data retrieval and management. Coupled with the new FAS6070 and/or
FAS3050 system, HPC customers can leverage the clustered file
system technology inherent in Data ONTAP GX, which enables
individual files or datasets to be striped across multiple nodes to
achieve far greater performance than can be achieved with a
traditional storage system. For instance, Data ONTAP GX, coupled
with the new FAS6070, scales in capacity up to 6PB and achieves
unprecedented industry performance of more than 1 million
operations per second, based on the SPEC SFS benchmark.
Steve Kowalski, senior systems architect, Research and Development
at Sony Pictures Imageworks said: "As beta testers of Data ONTAP
GX, we were impressed with its performance and stability. Our
technology profile at Imageworks is a hybrid, combining elements of
enterprise infrastructure with high-performance computing. Data
ONTAP GX from NetApp delivers high-performance features today, and
we look forward to the enterprise features on the Data ONTAP GX
roadmap."
Michael Thompson, senior systems engineer at Industrial Light &
Magic said: "NetApp is not asking me to trade management ease or
system reliability for massive scale-out and amazing performance.
Data ONTAP GX has been very impressive, with huge data throughput,
a single global namespace scalable to multiple petabytes, no
client-side software requirements, and ease of moving data between
controllers and/or storage tiers. All this has me convinced that
it's the best HPC storage solution out there."
Addison Snell, research director for HPC at IDC said: "Performance
is obviously an important criterion for HPC, but it's not the only
criterion. HPC customers cite ease of management, scalability, and
data protection features as critical in making purchase decisions.
Storage vendors who take a broader view of what HPC customers need
will find themselves in a better position to address all of the
customer's concerns."
Data ONTAP GX distinguishes itself among competitors with:
- Breakthrough performance. Data ONTAP GX provides linear scaling
to extreme levels. A recent SPEC SFS test demonstrated performance
of over 1 million operations per second, a leap of more than three
times that of the next closest competitor. More details are
available in a separate release at www.netapp.com/news/press/news_rel_20060612a.
- Linear scalability. Modular scalability ranges from small to
huge, with the flexibility to optionally stripe volumes for massive
throughput on a single file.
- Management ease and simplicity. The system scales to multiple
petabytes under a single global namespace, no client-side software
is required, and data can be easily and transparently moved between
or among controllers and storage tiers to applications.
- High reliability. The NetApp WAFL® file system is at the
heart of Data ONTAP GX and is real-world proven in more than 60,000
installations around the globe. RAID-DP� provides tolerance
to multiple simultaneous disk failures, and Data ONTAP GX systems
have no single point of failure.
Patrick Rogers, vice president of marketing, Products and Alliances
said: "Until now, storage solutions have constrained HPC customers
with large compute clusters. With Data ONTAP GX, NetApp enables HPC
customers to unleash the value of their Linux compute clusters,
providing the extreme performance they crave while bringing a new
level of management simplicity to HPC environments."
Data ONTAP GX is available immediately for customers in HPC
environments. Pricing is available from NetApp sales and sales
partners.
About Network Appliance
Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions
for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992,
Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner
firsts. Information about Network Appliance solutions and services
is available at
www-uk.netapp.com.
NetApp, the NetApp logo, Data ONTAP, Spinnaker Networks, and WAFL
are registered trademarks and Network Appliance and RAID-DP are
trademarks of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other
countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be
treated as such.
SPEC and the benchmark name SPECsfs97_R1 are registered trademarks
of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Competitive
benchmark results stated above reflect results published on
www.spec.org as of June 12, 2006. For the latest SPECsfs97_R1
benchmark results visit www.spec.org/osg/sfs97_R1
For Further Information, please contact:
Elisabeth van de Mandele/Sally Robards
Kaizo
netapp@kaizo.net
020 7580 8852