How NetApp’s All-Flash Storage Can Improve Performance and Business Outcomes
Rob McDonald
What could your business do if you could do it 6 times faster?
At NetApp, we know customer business outcomes matter most, whether that’s saving lives or making movies. Many factors in the storage system contribute to these outcomes but foremost is often system performance. As someone who works in technology, I enjoy talking about performance. And as an engineer, I gravitate to product details. Benchmarks, IOPS, latency, capacity, and data reduction are metrics I rely on to compare different storage offerings. Most storage administrators are well versed in how these metrics relate to benefits they, their team, and their company experience. But how do you help your stakeholders, who are not technologists, understand how system performance impacts your business?
Let’s take a look at some real stories from customers who have experienced performance gains with NetApp all-flash storage.
Mercy Technology Services
The World Health Organization reports that sepsis affects 30 million people every year, and the mortality rate is about 20%. Because the risk of mortality increases with every hour of delay in administering antibiotics, early diagnosis is critical. After Mercy Technology Services, the technology backbone of Mercyhealth, deployed NetApp flash storage, they accelerated query response times 6X and by doing so improved early sepsis identification by 30%. System performance translated to saving lives.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIQTzu2qGwY
Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD)
The forecasts produced by Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Germany’s national meteorological service, are used by emergency responders nationwide. After deploying NetApp flash storage, DWD was able to reduce the time to calculate weather from 15 seconds to under 1 second. During an emergency, these seconds can make a difference.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b67bhdI7nL0
NetApp has been a leader in driving performance improvements with technology innovations that are customer-centric. For example, IT has begun exploring NVMe, a new storage access and network transport protocol for flash. Using NVMe for the network protocol to clients delivers the most performance advantage. NetApp was the first enterprise storage vendor to deliver NVMe/FC on all midrange and high-end all-flash A-series storage. This innovation allows our many customers using 16Gb or 32Gb fibre channel to immediately see latencies drop to under ½ millisecond. Now NetApp recently was the first storage vendor to introduce the management of server-side persistent memory with MAX Data, delivering latencies in the range of 10s of microseconds.
That said, whether it's NVMe/FC, management of data in the server’s persistent memory or simply the fastest fibre channel and Ethernet networking, individual technology advancements are not as impactful as how they together affect overall system performance. That’s why NetApp is not hesitant to publish industry standard performance benchmarks. And why NetApp is the only enterprise storage vendor to offer a low latency guarantee.
Obviously getting the performance you need to drive your business is only one consideration when you’re making a purchase decision. It’s imperative to thoroughly explore the product’s capabilities and have confidence the system will enable you to meet your business requirements today and into the future. Download a checklist of 7 things to keep in mind when purchasing all-flash storage.
Rob McDonald
At NetApp, Rob has global responsibility for all outbound marketing strategy (awareness, demand generation, and enablement) for enterprise applications. His main focus is to show how NetApp customers benefit from and the business value of running their enterprise applications on NetApp solutions. His previous experience includes driving high-visibility flagship products and programs at multibillion dollar high-technology companies including Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and Quantum. Rob lives in San Carlos in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, three kids, and dog, and when not working is mostly driving his family to various sporting events.
