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

NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced new NetApp® ONTAP® software, flash systems and expanded public cloud support that provide the modern foundation to help customers maximise the value of their data in the hybrid cloud.

The new offerings are key to helping customers transform their IT. Successful IT transformations integrate data siloes, automate processes to speed results and remove barriers to scale that limit growth. Today’s 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-optimised storage arrays, including the industry’s fastest unified all-flash systems[1] and highly scalable hybrid flash arrays, with simpler setup 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 optimising the data centre for flash with its support for industry-leading connectivity options.

“Hospitals produce a lot of data, from radiology images to patient records and email. We currently generate up to 6 petabytes of data that grows by more than 50% year-on-year,” said Reinoud Reynders, IT manager, Infrastructure and Operations at The University Hospitals in Leuven, Belgium. “NetApp ONTAP software with 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.”

“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,” said IDC Storage Research Director Eric Burgener. “Vendors like NetApp are paving the way for customers who are rapidly transitioning to flash-optimised, software-defined storage architectures with rich and proven data services that monetise 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 features in ONTAP 9 include:

·         NetApp ONTAP FlexGroup is a massively scalable, high performance NAS container ideal for the latest generation of applications in the EDA, high-tech, oil and gas, and media and entertainment industries. FlexGroup allows customers to scale a single container up to 20PB and 400 billion files.

·         NetApp Volume Encryption offers granular, volume-level, software-based, encryption for data on any type of drives across AFF, FAS, or ONTAP Select systems without requiring special additional self-encrypting disks. 

·         ONTAP Cloud support for Microsoft Azure ONTAP Cloud is software-defined storage running in Azure that enables customers to use advanced ONTAP data services to efficiently share, move, protect and manage their cloud data. Customers can now gain greater infrastructure flexibility by integrating Azure cloud services into their enterprise data fabric.

·         ONTAP Select now supports all-flash commodity servers.

NetApp also refreshed its industry-leading portfolio of ONTAP-powered all-flash and hybrid arrays, to provide customers with unrivalled scale, speed and data services as they transform their IT. New features and capabilities introduced today include: 

·         The AFF A700 all-flash system, designed for high performance and configuration flexibility; and the AFF A300 all-flash system, optimised for midrange all-flash configurations. These new systems offer up to twice the performance of prior NetApp systems at half the latency. The systems are easy to set up in under 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 medium-size businesses. The new FAS systems offer dramatically 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 gives customers the ability to easily scale up to 14PB in a system and scale out to 172PB in a cluster. This capability provides customers with the right size solution for their needs today and growth options for the future.

·         The industry’s first support for leading connectivity with 32Gb Fibre Channel and 40Gb Ethernet, in addition to the 12Gb SAS-3 storage connection, optimising the infrastructure for flash.

·         Intelligent modular design for AFF A700 and FAS9000 to enhance reliability, availability and serviceability, and simplify future upgrades.

“Simplification is a key enabler for today’s digital transformation,” said Joel Reich, executive vice president, Products and Operations at NetApp. “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.”