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2016 Press Releases

September 26, 2016

New NetApp Software and Flash Systems Simplify Data Management, Boost Performance in the Hybrid Cloud

NetApp announced new NetApp ONTAP software, flash systems and enlarged public cloud support that offer the modern foundation to help customers take full advantage the value of their data in the hybrid cloud.

According to Reinoud Reynders, IT Manager, Infrastructure and Operations at The University Hospitals in Leuven, Belgium, “Hospitals produce a lot of data, from radiology images to patient records, and also email. We currently generate up to 6 petabytes of data that grows by more than 50% year-over-year.” He noted, “NetApp ONTAP software with the All Flash FAS systems gives us a flexible environment with the performance and capacity we need to manage our data at a low total cost of ownership. For us, that is very important.”

The new offerings are input to helping customers transform their IT. Successful IT transformations integrate data siloes, automate processes to accelerate results and eliminate barriers to scale that limit growth. The announcement includes:

  • An update to NetApp ONTAP 9 software, making the company’s rich data services offering even better with built in encryption for improved data security, support for massively scalable high-performance NAS containers and simplified provisioning for enterprise applications. 
  • Six new flash-optimized storage arrays, including the industry’s fastest unified all-flash systems and highly scalable hybrid flash arrays, with simpler set-up and serviceability.
  • Expanded choice with ONTAP Cloud now supporting the Microsoft Azure public cloud, complementing existing support for the AWS public cloud.
  • In addition, NetApp has taken the lead in optimizing the data center for flash with its support of industry-leading connectivity options.
 
IDC Storage Research Director, Eric Burgener said “IDC believes that the future of IT is hybrid cloud, and we see enterprise storage companies like NetApp making strategic shifts to focus on flash storage, virtualisation, high-performance hybrid cloud, and other cloud-related technologies that enable the portability of data and applications.” He then added, “Vendors like NetApp are paving the way for customers who are rapidly transitioning to flash-optimized, software-defined storage architectures with rich and proven data services that monetize big-data analytics by delivering meaningful insight for making critical, fact-based decisions for their businesses.”
 
Maximising the Value of Data Across Flash, Disk and Cloud Deployments 

New qualities in ONTAP 9 include:

  • NetApp ONTAP FlexGroup is a tremendously scalable, high performance NAS container ideal for the newest generation of applications in the EDA, high-tech, oil and gas, and media and entertainment industries. FlexGroup enables customers to scale a single container up to 20PB and 400 billion files.
  • NetApp Volume Encryption provides granular, volume-level, software-based, encryption for data on any type of drives across AFF, FAS, or ONTAP Select systems without involving special additional self-encrypting disks.
  • ONTAP Cloud support for Microsoft Azure. ONTAP Cloud is software-defined storage running in Azure that allows customers to use advanced ONTAP data services to efficiently share, move, secure and manage their cloud data. Customers can now gain greater Flexibility of infrastructure by integrating Azure cloud services into their enterprise data fabric.
  • ONTAP Select now supports all-flash commodity servers.
 
NetApp also revitalised its industry-leading portfolio of ONTAP-powered all-flash and hybrid arrays, to offer customers unrivaled scale, speed, and data services as they transform their IT. New features and capabilities introduced comprising:
  • The AFF A700 all-flash system, created for high performance and configuration flexibility; and the AFF A300 all-flash system, optimised for midrange all-flash configurations. These new systems provide up to twice the performance of prior NetApp systems at half the latency. The systems are easy to set-up within 10 minutes, have greater serviceability and provide expanded support for multi-stream-write (MSW) and 15TB SSDs.
  • New hybrid flash systems including the FAS8200 for enterprise workloads and the FAS2650 and FAS2620, optimised for small-enterprises and mid-size businesses. The new FAS systems offer increased speed and responsiveness with up to 200% higher performance than that of earlier NetApp systems and integrated NVMe NetApp Flash Cache intelligent caching.
  • The new FAS9000 for business critical workloads, which gives customers the ability to easily scale-up to 14PB in a system and scale out to 172PB in a cluster. This capability offers customers with the right size solution for their demands today and growth options for the future.
  • The industry’s first support of leading connectivity with 32Gb Fibre Channel and 40Gb Ethernet, in addition to the 12Gb SAS-3 storage connection, optimizing the infrastructure for flash.
  • Intelligent modular design for AFF A700 and FAS9000 to improve reliability, availability, and serviceability, and simplify future upgrades.
 
Meanwhile, Joel Reich, Executive Vice President, Products and Operations at NetApp said, “Simplification is a key enabler for today’s digital transformation.” He added, “NetApp’s new ONTAP software and flash systems give customers a way to bridge existing and emerging IT architectures as they build and evolve their hybrid cloud.”
 

In addition, Vice President of Storage Networking at Brocade, Jack Rondoni said, “Flash technology is accelerating the pace of innovation in storage.” He noted, “NetApp’s introduction of 32Gb Gen 6 Fibre Channel flash systems creates a new industry benchmark for storage performance. NetApp’s flash-optimized storage arrays and ONTAP software, along with Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions, enable application infrastructure with unprecedented performance and availability for next-generation data centers.”

Jim Elliott, Corporate Vice President, Memory Marketing, Samsung Semiconductor said, “Applications need the optimum storage to process large amounts of data with the utmost efficiency,” He added, “Samsung’s advanced 3D V-NAND-based SSD portfolio and solutions, combined with NetApp’s ONTAP 9 software and flash array technology, provide a compelling approach to meeting critical storage speed requirements, while eradicating storage performance and efficiency bottlenecks.”