NetApp Offers Its Version Of Shared Infrastructure

NetApp has introduced a new suite of storage products, an updated operating system, management software and solid state disk drives that, combined, are its offering of a converged IT infrastructure, the current trend in data center design. The different products form a pool of shared IT resources that serve an organization's needs more efficiently than so-called "siloed" data centers.

At the center of NetApp's offering are updated storage systems, the FAS/V6200 high-end storage system and the V3200 midrange system. Each series has three models. Also new is the DS4243 solid-state-disk drive appliance and the DS2246 SAS Disk Shelf, which runs 2.5-inch disks. Both are 24-drive appliances.

The product launch also includes Data ONTAP 8, the newest version of NetApp's storage operating system (OS). It brings together storage efficient technology including deduplication, data compression, thin provisioning and snapshots to reduce the number of disks needed to store an increasingly large volume of data. The new OS also includes a feature called Unified Connect, which eases data center cabling complexity by supporting all major networking protocols on one wire, including Common Internet File System (CIFS) Fibre Channel, Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI), and Network File System (NFS).

NetApp is also partnering with Cisco Systems and VMware to offer FlexPod, a pre-sized and pre-validated data center architecture design that brings together NetApp storage with Cisco servers and networking equipment with VMware virtualization software.

Still another part of the shared infrastructure suite is the OnCommand system management software that works in a number of data center environments including HP, IBM, Fujitsu, Microsoft among others.NetApp's strategy mirrors that of other tech companies selling hardware and software in a shared IT infrastructure model. HP, for instance, promotes its "Converged Infrastructure" effort. In a siloed infrastructure, servers and other IT assets are dedicated to specific software applications, which has proved to be inefficient.

With these announcements, NetApp is targeting the virtual machine market and is offering a "future-ready infrastructure," wrote Tom Trainer, a Network Computing blogger, in a recent post.

"NetApp has also put the proverbial stake in the ground with its offerings for public and private cloud infrastructure solutions via FlexPods," Trainer wrote. "Given constrained IT budgets and no slowdown of data growth foreseen in the near term, [these] products and solutions ... will be attractive to [customers] needing to leverage flexible technology for future infrastructure requirements."