NetApp Accelerates Costs Savings, Boosts Performance with Solid-State Technologies

Business Wire, Feb 3, 2009

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) announced two significant advancements today to deliver on its strategy to drive IT costs down and improve performance through the use of solid-state memory for disk as well as for controller caches. As part of its news, NetApp unveiled V-Series support for Texas Memory Systems' RamSan-500 solid-state disk (SSD) array and new industry-standard benchmark results for the NetApp Performance Acceleration Module.

NetApp Supports High-Performance SSD Array with V-Series Family

NetApp[R] V-Series is an open storage controller that unifies NetApp and non-NetApp storage--including systems from EMC, IBM, HP, HDS, and Texas Memory Systems--under a common architecture to consolidate business-critical data and dramatically simplify management. Now NetApp customers can leverage V-Series with the RamSan-500 to use flash memory as persistent storage and cost-effectively meet the needs of performance-intensive applications. NetApp V-Series and Texas Memory Systems combine the full benefits of the NetApp Data ONTAP[R] operating system with SSD storage to improve application performance and offer advanced features such as thin provisioning, Snapshot[TM] copies, and deduplication to improve storage efficiency and management with solid-state technology.

"Texas Memory Systems brings more than 30 years of enterprise-class SSD technology expertise to NetApp customers," said Woody Hutsell, executive vice president, Texas Memory Systems. "Now our customers can deploy our SSDs with the best platform for storage efficiency, data management, and protection from NetApp. Together, we're providing a powerful combination of leading SSD technology with advanced capabilities that are inherent in all NetApp systems that our customers can use for their most critical business applications."

NetApp Performance Acceleration Module Improves Efficiency and Performance

The NetApp Performance Acceleration Module enables customers to leverage solid state technology, currently DRAM, as a modular read cache in the storage controller to improve efficiency and performance of mainstream storage platforms and common enterprise applications. New SPECsfs2008[R] benchmark results for the FAS3140 storage system with the Performance Acceleration Module demonstrate the following advantages for data center environments:

* Improve efficiency and reduce costs. Customers can deliver the same level of throughput with half as many hard disk drives (HDDs) to lower cost by 27%, reduce rack space by 44%, and lower electricity usage by 47-54%.

* Make SATA disk drives viable as primary storage. Customers can increase storage capacity with SATA disk drives by 75% while using half as many drives and achieve a similar level of performance as Fibre Channel disk drives, which are typical for primary storage environments. Now customers can save precious data center real estate with higher-density drives.

* Improve response times. Customers can improve overall response times in a Fibre Channel disk drive configuration by 35% while reducing the number of drives by half with a single Performance Acceleration Module.

Today's demonstrated advantages of the Performance Acceleration Module are consistent with NetApp's strategy to use solid-state technology in innovative ways, and further paves the way for future similar products based on higher density flash memory.

NetApp's Performance Acceleration Module helps customers grow cost effectively without the need to add shelf space or power. Storage administrators typically add hard disk drives, whether or not more storage capacity is needed, to achieve increased throughput for file services and similar workloads. This consumes space and power that are in short supply in many data centers.

Alternatively, the Performance Acceleration Module fits directly into an existing storage controller to provide customers an innovative way to improve application response times and increase throughput without adding disk drives. Up to five modules can be supported to provide a single pool of cache so that customers can scale performance depending on their application needs. The module also consumes no rack space and 95% less power than a shelf of Fibre Channel disk drives. Furthermore, by using the Performance Acceleration Module with NetApp V-Series, customers can realize the same performance, storage efficiency, and cost benefits of NetApp storage with their existing HDD-based third-party storage.

"NetApp is fulfilling our strategy to give customers innovative choices in deploying SSD and flash technology," said Jay Kidd, chief marketing officer of NetApp. "Our partnership with Texas Memory Systems combines the industry's leading SSD technology with NetApp data management and storage efficiency technologies that have proven to help customers significantly lower their IT infrastructure costs. For cost-sensitive customers, our Performance Acceleration Module gives them yet another unique way to improve performance and efficiency and reach the full potential of their overall storage capacity with a smaller investment."