On this storage provider profile, we take a look at NetApp, which made its identify synonymous with the network-attached storage (NAS) filer for the primary decade or two of its existence. Because it was based, NetApp has been on an upward income trajectory, with the one wrinkle coming when it was a little bit late to the flash storage revolution early within the final decade.
However it has since constructed itself out, with a eager eye on a cloud-focused future, which began with array connectivity to the cloud and now encompasses containerisation and the power for purchasers to work seamlessly throughout on-premise and cloud areas, notably with the 2022 launch of BlueXP. It has additionally embraced consumption fashions of storage buying, with Keystone.
On this article, we take a look at NetApp, its origins, its key storage merchandise, and its strategy to the cloud, containers and consumption fashions of storage buying.
The place did NetApp come from?
NetApp was based in 1992 as Community Equipment, obtained enterprise capital funding in 1995, and had its preliminary public providing in 1995. It grew massively in the course of the Nineteen Nineties dot com bubble years, then suffered a giant decline in 2002 as that bubble burst, however has seen revenues enhance since then.
An early competitor to NetApp was Auspex Techniques, which launched the primary NAS product. NetApp later grew to become synonymous with the NAS filer, and by 2003, Auspex had turn out to be defunct and Community Equipment had gained its patents.
It formally grew to become NetApp in 2008. Acquisitions through the years replicate the corporate’s evolution, with for instance:
- Spinnaker Networks acquired in 2004, which offered clustered NAS performance.
- Bycast in 2010, which gave it what grew to become StorageGrid object storage.
- Engenio in 2011, which introduced within the E-Sequence array product line.
- Solidfire and its household of all-flash arrays in 2015, as flash storage took off and NetApp got here late to the celebration.
- Then, reflecting NetApp’s current evolution in the direction of cloud storage, information administration and containerisation, purchases included Greenqloud in 2017 (cloud companies and orchestration), StackPointCloud in 2018 (Kubernetes as a service), Spot in 2020 and CloudCheckr in 2021 (cloud value optimisation), and Instaclustr in 2022 (cloud database provision).
How does NetApp rank towards different storage gamers?
By the second quarter of 2021, IDC ranked third among the many massive six storage array makers with market share of slightly below 10%, a little bit forward of Huawei with 9%. NetApp was behind Dell (27%) and HPE (11%).
NetApp was ranked 411th within the 2014 Fortune 500, and by 2018 had dropped to 495th, earlier than dropping out in newer years.
In 2001, NetApp had revenues of slightly below $1bn. That elevated to $6.29bn by 2014, with development within the 20- and 30-something per cent vary in some years. However, from its 2014 excessive level, revenues declined, solely to start restoration because it tailored to the modifications out there introduced by all-flash arrays and the rising development in the direction of cloud.
What are NetApp’s key storage merchandise?
The important thing lineage in NetApp’s on-premise storage {hardware} lies within the AFF collection, which stands for “all-flash FAS”. FAS was the acronym for “fabric-attached storage”, extra colloquially generally known as a filer – ie a NAS field – in NetApp-speak.
AFF arrays vary in most capability from the A150 with 26PB (petabytes) to round 700PB within the flagship A900, and include NVMe flash, NVMe-over-Fibre Channel and TCP connectivity, in addition to NAS functionality through NFS, CIFS and restricted S3 connections.
In March 2023, NetApp added a brand new all-flash quad-level cell (QLC)-based storage array line, the all-flash FAS C-Sequence. The three arrays obtainable at launch included AFF C250, AFF C400 and AFF C800 – with the C250 thought of the low-end mannequin and the C800 the high-end mannequin.
In Could 2023, NetApp added its all-flash SAN array (ASA), a part of a current foray into block storage. NetApp rolled out 5 variations of the ASA that use triple-level cell (TLC) flash and vary from 13PB to 351PB of efficient capability after compression.
NetApp’s EF collection dates again to its acquisition of Engenio in 2011, whose arrays had been designed for spinning disk. They run the SanTricity working system, which is a legacy of that pedigree. Sticking flash in these was, in truth, NetApp’s first foray into the flash array market, with the EF540 in 2013.
There are two arrays within the present collection, the EF300 and EF600, which supply as much as 670,000 IOPS and two million IOPS respectively. That degree of efficiency comes with choices for 96 SAS drives whereas decrease enter/output (I/O) charges are presumably achieved with nearline-SAS exhausting disk drives (HDDs), which may also be utilized in EF collection arrays. Most uncooked capability goes as much as round 1.8PB with solid-state drives (SSDs).
NetApp’s core object storage supply is StorageGrid. It is a software-defined product that may run on-premise or within the cloud, however can also be obtainable in all-flash and HDD-equipped SGF StorageGrid home equipment.
NetApp’s OnTap storage working system runs by way of almost all its arrays and in addition runs as a digital equipment in cloud eventualities. OnTap had reached model 9.12.1 on the time of writing. The OS dates again to 1992 when it was developed by NetApp’s founders. It has undergone many iterations through the years to incorporate deduplication, compression, snapshots, cloning, skinny provisioning, clustered NAS, WORM (write as soon as, learn many) and high-availability functionality.
OnTap has largely been geared in the direction of file storage, with restricted S3 functionality added extra not too long ago. Cloud Volumes OnTap is a digital storage equipment that may be run within the hyperscaler clouds equivalent to Amazon Internet Providers (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
What markets and workloads does NetApp goal?
NetApp’s clients are unfold throughout all sectors. The corporate can provide storage, information administration and cloud options to all verticals.
How does the cloud match NetApp’s technique?
NetApp has positioned a giant guess on the way forward for IT being a future within the cloud. Its storage array {hardware} permits for connectivity to the main public clouds, whereas its storage can also be obtainable in AWS, Azure and GCP.
These companies embrace, for instance:
- Amazon FSx for NetApp OnTap, which is delivered on AWS companies and lets clients entry information over NFS, SMB and iSCSI.
- Azure NetApp Information, which is used as shared file storage in eventualities equivalent to migration of Linux and Home windows functions, SAP Hana, databases, high-performance compute (HPC) and apps, and enterprise internet functions.
- Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, which is a completely managed file storage service in Google Cloud geared toward file sharing, enterprise functions, distant information replication, and complete information safety.
To handle on-premise and cloud assets, NetApp’s BlueXP offers an outline of its NAS or S3 storage in a single internet interface with the power emigrate information throughout any NetApp service. Different performance contains difficulty remediation strategies, equivalent to scheduling snapshot backups and highlighting configurations which can be susceptible to ransomware assaults. BlueXP is free for all new and present NetApp storage clients.
Different cloud-focused additions of current years embrace:
- Spot by NetApp, which incorporates merchandise that help cloud operations and automation, efficiency and optimisation. Different Spot by NetApp merchandise embrace CloudCheckr, which displays cloud prices and purchases, and Ocean suite orchestration and provisioning for Kubernetes workloads.
- Instaclustr, which offers a platform for administration of open supply databases, pipeline and workflow functions that embrace PostgreSQL, occasion streaming product Apache Kafka, Apache’s NoSQL database Cassandra, in-memory datastore Redis, and (Uber-designed) enterprise logic orchestrator Cadence.
What’s the NetApp container technique?
NetApp introduced Astra Knowledge Retailer in 2021. This was its first information retailer and useful resource pool for containers and digital machines (VMs), however in late 2022 it was folded into BlueXP, which acts as a management aircraft throughout Astra and NetApp’s on-premise and cloud storage merchandise.
Astra Management offers information safety options equivalent to snapshots that enable clients to roll again Kubernetes clusters to a earlier state if one thing goes flawed. Total functions and their information will be cloned and moved between Kubernetes clusters, too.
In the meantime, Astra Trident offers orchestration and information connectivity for Kubernetes functions through a Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver.
What consumption fashions of buying does NetApp supply?
NetApp’s consumption mannequin supply is Keystone, which provides {hardware} in numerous non-capital expenditure codecs on-premise in addition to within the cloud.
Keystone cost choices vary from pay upfront for {hardware} (Flex Pay), by way of Flex Subscription pay-as-you-go, which incorporates cloud capability, and Flex Utility, which aligns prices to utilization.
A spread of service ranges is on the market, with billing for predicted dedicated capability, plus pay-per-use burst capability and bundle pricing that features {hardware}, core OS and file, block, object and cloud storage companies.
NetApp’s Lively IQ dashboard permits clients to observe and handle storage, set information safety insurance policies, and overview burst capability, utilization and billing.
