Expanded NetApp Deduplication Technology Now Deployed on More Than 30,000 Systems Worldwide

Business Wire, March 04, 2009

Strong Adoption Rate Means More Customers Are Experiencing Improved Storage Efficiencies

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) today announced that deduplication adoption among its customer base continues to grow at an impressive rate. Already one of the fastest growing technologies in the company’s history, NetApp® deduplication has been delivered to more than 5,000 customers worldwide, comprising more than 30,000 systems containing 385PB of storage capacity. With NetApp’s unique deduplication technology, customers are able to eliminate duplicate data across all tiers of storage, allowing them to combat data proliferation while creating a more efficient storage infrastructure.

In addition to NetApp's complete family of FAS systems, the power of its deduplication technology was also recently extended to NetApp V-Series virtualized storage systems and Virtual Tape Library (VTL) systems. As a result, NetApp deduplication can now be applied to storage systems manufactured by EMC, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, and others, providing customers with the industry’s only end-to-end deduplication solution, spanning primary, backup, and archival storage applications.

"Users are under growing pressure to increase the efficiency of their storage assets,” said Benjamin Woo, vice president and senior analyst at IDC. “One way of achieving this is by boosting utilization levels by leveraging deduplication in newer, nontraditional use cases. NetApp has made considerable progress by delivering over 30,000 systems with its deduplication technology, and, as such, it has validated the fact that deduplication can be applied across a wide variety of applications and storage tiers."

The City of Hartford, a NetApp customer, is Connecticut's largest metropolitan area, with over one million residents. In its attempt to become one of the nation's most energy-efficient and environmentally friendly cities, the City of Hartford has developed a cleaner, more cost-effective IT infrastructure. NetApp deduplication technology has played a major role in this initiative.

"NetApp's deduplication technology helps us conserve as much storage space as possible, especially with desktop virtualization, where all of our machines are based off a single image," said Jonathan Shevis, Server Systems manager, Metro Hartford Information Services, The City of Hartford. "In fact, initial deduplication tests that we conducted on our NetApp volumes that support virtual desktops showed very promising space savings of over 50%."

“In today’s economy, IT departments are searching for ways to optimize their data centers in a more efficient manner,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing, NetApp. “As data growth continues at a rapid pace, deduplication is a key technology that allows IT departments to do more with less, while extending the value of their storage purchase decisions. The fact that NetApp now offers deduplication across its entire enterprise product line illustrates our commitment to providing customers with the most efficient storage systems in the industry.”

NetApp deduplication strengthens NetApp's portfolio of space-saving technologies, which includes thin provisioning, Snapshot™ copies, and flexible clones. Like most of these space-saving technologies, NetApp deduplication is a feature that comes at no extra cost. NetApp is the only major storage and data management vendor to embed deduplication technology in all of its unified storage systems.

Learn more about the latest in NetApp and industry deduplication news by visiting NetApp’s Dr. Dedupe Blog at http://blogs.netapp.com/drdedupe/. NetApp’s Larry Freeman, who has more than 25 years of storage industry experience, is Dr. Dedupe. Freeman’s current role at NetApp is to provide clarity around data storage efficiency techniques, including deduplication. Freeman is the founder and cochair of SNIA’s Data Deduplication and Space Reduction Special Interest Group and is also active within the SNIA Green Storage Initiative.

Also, listen to the podcast titled “Deduplication: Myths and Realities,” with Larry Freeman on best practices and current myths around heterogeneous storage environments, including applications, benefits, and performance of deduplication solutions.

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