NetApp Bolsters Midrange Storage Offering With New FAS3160 and V3160
Now Customers Can Improve Data Center Performance and Efficiency with 8Gb Fibre Channel, Flash-Ready Systems, and Integrated Support Automation Tools
Sunnyvale, Calif. - November 4,
2008 - NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced the addition
of the FAS3160 and V3160, strengthening its current series of
midrange storage offerings for customers. As part of today's news,
NetApp unveiled its plans to enable 8Gb Fibre Channel (FC) support
and provide enterprise flash Solid-State Drive (SSD) storage and
flash-based caching modules for its FAS and V-Series products,
helping customers to further enhance their data center
infrastructures through improved performance, lower cost, and
increased efficiencies.
The FAS3160 joins the FAS3140 and FAS3170
models, offering customers improved price/performance, flexibility,
and scalability over other midrange storage systems. The
NetApp® FAS3100 series of storage systems offers customers a
single unified storage architecture to meet their needs and a
common suite of application-aware software and management tools
that are part of the Data ONTAP® operating system. In
addition, with features such as thin provisioning, deduplication,
RAID-DP®, and FlexClone®, customers can boost storage
efficiency and performance without breaking the bank. The NetApp
V3160 provides customers additional flexibility to meet their
diverse and changing business needs by extending the features and
capabilities of Data ONTAP, including deduplication, to disk arrays
from other storage vendors, such as EMC and HP.
"We needed a storage solution for our virtual
server hosting service to help address the challenging nature of
providing data management solutions to our enterprise client base
at an overall cost point that could make the model sustainable,"
said Matt Stein, VP of Network Services, Primus Telecommunications
Canada Inc., a NetApp FAS3100 customer. "NetApp provided us with
the performance and capacity desired while also delivering
increased efficiencies and flexibility through features like
deduplication and thin provisioning. Combined with our VMware®
solution, Primus is able to provide a high level of service to a
broader base of our clientele with pricing that is competitive in
the Canadian marketplace."
8Gb FC Support Enables Customers to
Better Meet Virtualization Demands
NetApp will expand its industry-leading
support of 8Gb FC SAN solutions for all NetApp FAS and V-Series
storage systems to deliver additional value and performance.
Customers can now augment their virtualized data centers by
addressing their server virtualization demands on storage networks
while improving investment protection. Customers who upgrade to an
8Gb SAN can achieve higher performance and cost efficiencies
because of shortened recovery times, increased productivity, faster
data access, and increased throughput for virtualized servers.
Also, the addition of an 8Gb target host bus adapter will enable
FAS and V-Series customers to easily upgrade systems with no
additional training.
"As more customers move to virtualized data
centers, their networking and storage requirements become more
pronounced," said Rajiv Ramaswami, VP and general manager of the
Data Center Switching Technology Group at Cisco. "With the new
Cisco 8Gbps line cards for the Cisco MDS 9500 Series within
NetApp's SAN switching portfolio, customers gain better end-to-end
performance, scalability, and manageability in their virtualized
data centers, while at the same time fully preserving their
existing investment in their SAN infrastructure."
NetApp Storage Systems Will Be Flash
Ready
NetApp also unveiled today that the new
FAS3160, V3160, and other FAS and V-Series storage systems will be
enterprise flash ready. As part of its innovative strategy, NetApp
will combine flash memory with its unified storage architecture to
meet the performance needs of both leading-edge and mainstream IT
professionals. Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp will give
customers practical options by using flash memory both as
persistent storage and also for caching purposes. Leveraging flash
memory as a modular read cache in the storage controller enables
customers to have a cost-effective way to optimize performance for
common enterprise applications. Furthermore, NetApp's unified
storage architecture expands on the benefits of flash memory by
multiplying customer savings of power, cooling, and space through
the use of deduplication and other storage efficiency features.
New Integrated Suite of eSupport
Tools Provides End-to-End Support
New next-generation support automation tools
provide customers with additional ease of use and complete
end-to-end support for all FAS and V-Series systems. This
integrated support toolset combines NetApp AutoSupport, NetApp
Premium AutoSupport, and the NetApp Remote Support Diagnostics Tool
to provide customers with high levels of storage availability and
performance.
NetApp AutoSupport is recognized as the
industry's leading "call home" tool and a built-in system
monitoring capability available to all NetApp customers at no
additional charge. By monitoring hundreds of system parameters with
the ability to, in most cases, resolve issues without customer
intervention, NetApp AutoSupport catches small issues before they
become bigger problems that can negatively impact customer
applications. Premium AutoSupport complements the baseline
AutoSupport capability by providing the customer with the
capability to do storage configuration management, autogenerated
software upgrade plans, trend analysis, and performance trending.
The NetApp Remote Support Diagnostics Tool provides faster remote
24x7 diagnostics and case resolution by NetApp Technical Support,
resulting in reduced customer involvement in diagnostics and
troubleshooting.
"NetApp has created support automation tools
that help ensure its support infrastructure meets the needs of
mission-critical enterprise environments," said Matt Healey,
research manager, IDC Software and Hardware Support Services. "With
new product and technologies, customers now more than ever require
support that is 24x7, includes minimal customer intervention,
provides rapid response and resolution, and is highly secure.
NetApp is addressing these needs with the new eSupport suite."
To learn more about these industry-leading
tools that differentiate NetApp support, visit http://www.netapp.com/us/support/esupport.html.
"Data center customers are looking for ways
to reduce their costs, increase efficiencies, and boost
performance," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions
Marketing, NetApp. "Our flash roadmap and expanded 8Gb FC support
are two key components that deliver these benefits to customers.
With our unique approach to flash storage, customers will not only
experience streamlined management and increased performance, but
will do so while reducing their power, cooling, and space needs. At
the same time, 8Gb FC support enables customers to fully utilize
their virtualized environments in order to take advantage of the
cost efficiencies and increased production associated with this
architecture."
To listen to Jay Kidd, chief marketing
officer at NetApp, discuss NetApp's flash strategy, listen to the
NetApp TechTalk podcast at
http://communicate.netapp.com/forms/verify?seminarID=20081104POD.
Also, for more information on NetApp's approach to flash
technology, read the white paper "Flash Memory Technology in
Enterprise Storage," at http://www.NetApp.com/flash.
For information on NetApp's unified storage
architecture, visit http://www.netapp.com/us/technology/unified-storage/.
Discuss this news in the NetApp Community,
where you can exchange thoughts and ideas on a variety of topics
with our community members. Collaborate with our company, engage in
conversation with NetApp leaders and employees, and participate in
our passion to go further, faster. Join now at http://www.netapp.com/us/communities/.
Pricing and
Availability
Customer pricing for products described in this press release is
available from NetApp sales or reseller partners. The FAS/V3160
system and the eSupport product suite are available immediately.
The add-on 8Gb adapter for NetApp FAS and V-Series, to enable 8Gb
FC support, will be available in February 2009. The first flash
plug-ins will be available in Q2 of 2009.
About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions
that accelerate business breakthroughs and achieve outstanding cost
efficiency. Discover our passion for helping companies around the
world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.
Press Contact:
Ryan Lowry
NetApp
(408) 822-7544
ryanl@netapp.com
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