Sunnyvale, CA - April 7, 2005 - Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), a leader in advanced networked storage solutions, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Alacritus, a privately held company based in Pleasanton, California, for approximately $11 million in an all-cash transaction. Alacritus is best known for its Virtual Tape Library (VTL) software product, which makes disks emulate tape to provide high performance for large-scale backup environments without disrupting established tape-backup workflow and processes.

"Alacritus extends our ability to provide a robust data protection solution to our customers and will help accelerate their transitions to disk-based backup," said Amit Pandey, vice president and general manager of the Network Appliance™ NearStore® business unit. "VTL complements and expands our comprehensive suite of disk-based backup solutions to protect the enterprise and rapidly recover data. For customers who want improved reliability and performance with their backup solutions without altering their current tape environments, VTL offers a simple and economical path to disk."

In December 2004, NetApp announced a solution combining Alacritus VTL with NetApp® NearStore and FAS storage systems designed to back up NetApp storage as well as UNIX® and Windows® servers. That solution is certified with backup software from Bakbone, CA, CommVault, Dantz, EMC/Legato, IBM, and VERITAS.

The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the fourth fiscal quarter of 2005.

About Alacritus
Alacritus Software is the storage industry's innovation engine for disk-based data protection software solutions. The principals of Alacritus continue in the tradition responsible for many key storage industry technological breakthroughs, including Chronospan for Time Addressable Storage, Celestra for serverless backup, the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) co developed with NetApp, Third Party Copy, and the first backup and restore tool for networked, UNIX-based environments.

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 that continue to drive "The evolution of storage™." Information about Network Appliance solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include continued customer acceptance and adoption rates of the Company's solutions. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could vary. Factors that could impact our ability to achieve our goals include general economic and industry conditions, including expenditure trends for storage-related products; our ability to deliver new product architectures and products that meet market acceptance; our ability to design products that compete effectively from a price and performance perspective; and other important factors as described in Network Appliance, Inc.'s reports and documents filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recently submitted 10-K and 10-Q.

Media Contacts:
Eric Brown
Network Appliance, Inc.
408-822-3463
ebrown@netapp.com

Jodi Baumann
Network Appliance, Inc.
(408) 822-3974
jodi.baumann@netapp.com

Investor Contacts:
Tara Calhoun
Network Appliance, Inc.
408-822-6909
tara.calhoun@netapp.com