NetApp - Exposed

Sunrise, Sunset

Andy Bechtolsheim is an industry legend, so it's no wonder we're seeing a tug-o-war emerging between Sun and Arista regarding where he will be spending his time.

NetApp's Prestige

On Monday of this week we reviewed EMC's botched attempt at a multi-vendor storage efficiency comparison and yesterday we debunked some lingering misconceptions around provisioning capacity for LUN's on a NetApp SAN.

It was probably not Chuck's intention, but he's actually helped bring incremental attention to NetApp's industry-leading storage efficiency via some interesting disclosures by EMC and Industry Experts along the way.

Time to get back to the movie analogies and wrap-up what we've learned as a result of it all

We've got your back

After outlining the advantages of NetApp's unique data deduplication capabilities earlier today, it's time to play along with Beth and extend the fun a bit :)

Pervasive, end-to-end deduplication is such a powerful capability that in true NetApp fashion, we couldn't just keep it to ourselves.  It's our nature to share.

Hitachi, HP, IBM and even 3PAR users can now finally enjoy deduplication savings and efficiency for their primary apps via today's NetApp V-Series announcement.  But our sympathies go out to EMC, who seems really conflicted about how to deal with this unexpected new capability.

The Power of Pervasive, End-to-End Deduplication

People are starting to get it.  As usual, advanced customers are ahead of the pundits but one major milestone at a time, NetApp's dedupe innovation leadership continues to set the bar for the industry.

Remind me again who the storage deduplication leader is?

One-trick ponies like Data Domain have the luxury of pounding home marketing messages with a single-minded purpose using silly headlines, but the hard data released by NetApp this week exposes the underling truth.  On their latest earnings call, DDUP disclosed they have about 2100 customers, which I will generously extrapolate equals roughly 5000-6000 systems deployed in the field (they tend to be sold in pairs using IP replication).

Meanwhile we announced today over 2500 customers and 10,000 systems using NetApp Deduplication!  As an aside, we probably have triple that number using Thin Provisioning while 3PAR claims only hundreds of customers, yet who do the misinformed pundits associate as the leader in that regard?  Some days, I truly feel like Rodney Dangerfield - but not today! :)

Performance as a measure of usable capacity

EMC’s StorageAnarchist took the bait and asked the logical question I was hoping he would when I blogged on the relative complexity of calculating usable capacity on feature rich and resilient enterprise storage arrays. He was at a disadvantage though, because he is operating under the spell of EMC’s competitive FUD which is (sadly for him) far removed from customer reality.

A simple question deserves a simple answer (even if the questioner won't like it)

I do owe the Anarchist thanks though, for picking such nice round numbers to work with, since that will help. To summarize, basically he wanted to know what 100TB raw (200 x 500GB disks) would look like as usable under a true enterprise (OLTP) workload. As a matter of fact, his question has actually been asked and definitively answered for both of us earlier this year.

The answer is at least 62TB usable (conservatively, see better number below) for NetApp and 38TB usable for EMC (as well as most of the rest of the mainstream primary storage vendors).

In January 2008, NetApp published a benchmarked result for a proven OLTP workload agreed upon by most of the enterprise storage industry. This public benchmark result was rigorously and independently audited. As with all highly respected and credible benchmarks, it’s open to peer review by experts from competing vendors in our industry.

So, what's the catch?

Two major influences on Enterprise Storage

Music and complexity.

Apple's iPod

The connection is not immediately obvious to some, but this nice overview of the current state of Flash Storage reveals the risks and opportunities that this promising technology revolution is confronting our industry with. Were it not for the overwhelming popularity (especially unit volume of Apple's flash-based) iPod models, the momentum of price reductions driving this trend would not be possible.

Flash changes *everything*

The more I study the impact of flash, the more I'm convinced of two conclusions:

1. The storage industry impact of this technology reaches *far* beyond most people's imaginations, and
2. NetApp's Hardware and Software Intellectual Property is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend in a manner far greater than current NetApp competitors.

I plan to spend a lot of time blogging on the huge NetApp potential for this technology, so stay tuned and feel free to share comments on related topics and ramifications you'd like me to address.

Faster, greener storage is not necessarily simpler

The powerfully simple concepts of "Data Sets" and "Policies" will save enterprise storage. The more our industry brings cool products to market, the more challenges we present our user base with regarding managing them all.

Read Kostadis' coverage of a pivotal NetApp solution to this problem.

As per above, you can expect more coverage on this topic here in the future.

The force is also strong with Chris

Chris Mellor that is, from Blocks & Files.

I summarized the Zen of NetApp in one of my first blog posts, and despite the mixed metaphors, Chris did an outstanding job in his opinion piece on us the other day very much in the same vein.

If you want to *really* understand NetApp, it's definitely worth a read!

And "Hulk" makes 10

EMC just wrapped up their annual user/partner conference in Vegas, and believe it or not - announced even more incompatible HW/SW platforms for their poor sales, partner and customer communities to wade through in search of "simple" solutions to business problems.

EMC - Where buzzwords live

Never missing an opportunity to jump on a proven buzzword bandwagon, EMC managed to add Deduplication, MAID/spin-down, Green, Reduced Energy, and of course the ubiquitous "TCO" to their backup repertoire.  Everyone's favorite storage curmudgeon Jon Toigo had a pretty good take on the announcement as well as the paid analyst commentary.

Aiming low - Clouds at our feet

Pun Alert - Pun Alert!  I apologize in advance for the gratuitous weather-related puns in this and other blog posts regarding Cloud (or next-gen clustered aka scale-out) Storage, but we can't help ourselves.  Pithy blog titles are practically mandatory, aren't they?

Storage vendors both large and small are clamoring to announce their next-generation offerings.  The pace of announcements has been accelerating in 2008.  Without trying to ignore anyone in particular, my alphabetical list of next-gen storage competitors to NetApp includes but is not limited to:

• ExaNet (making waves with Fujitsu-Siemens lately)
• Ibrix (which I predict will be assimilated by the EMC Borg as early as next week)
• Isilon (neat technology, but still learning how to run a business)
• OnStor (still around, seemingly partnering with Fujitsu-not-Siemens now that 3Par prefers NetApp as their NAS Gateway)
• Panasas (diligently working to break out of their niche any decade now)
• PolyServe (HP's clustered NAS science project)
• XIV (IBM's play, notable for possessing the lone block-based architecture of this group)

So why am I disappointed?

Zen and the Art of Enterprise Storage

Almost a decade and counting now, my time at NetApp has been a career oxymoron.  You see, I've never been at a job (or contract) longer than 3 years before I joined NetApp (known as Network Appliance then) back in 1998.  Those who know me well often ask me why I'm still here, because they're keenly aware of my tendency to get bored easily and look towards the next challenge after the inevitable multi-year itch comes around.

I plan to expose many things in this blog, so in the spirit of fairness let me first expose myself a bit and explain the Zen of NetApp that not only keeps me here, but has me looking forward to my next decade @ NetApp.  To do that, I had to look waaaay back to my formative years when I read Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Robert's book title and text is widely quoted on the Internet, but it's his exploration of the spirituality of quality regarding how things are made and how they're used that always stuck with me.  Interestingly, that Zen seems to resonate increasingly over time during my career at NetApp.  So let's break that down a bit.

INNOVATION

Innovation is probably at the heart of it all.  This covers the "how things are made" part of the Zen in question.  My inner geek is still drawn to cool technology.  Our core DNA (summarized here by Bruce) is what attracted me to NetApp a decade ago, and our engineers continue to re-capture my imagination every few months with each new product release cycle.  I will no doubt post countless blogs on this topic alone, so I won't belabor the point here, but click on the graphic above & to the right for a short flash overview of but one great example of NetApp technology innovation widely used today.

APPLICATION

Layered on top of innovation is the "how it's used" part of the Zen.  The application of our innovation knows few limits today, being used across all industry verticals spanning the globe.  We help Main Street make and sell things, and we help Wall Street trade.  We help move people by land, sea and air.  We help provide energy, offer cost-effective services and after a good day's work we also help people play, but I personally believe there is no more noble application of technology than helping people heal.

SATISFACTION

One of my proudest moments at NetApp was seeing my initial storage customer in 1998 be awarded the inaugural NetApp Award for Individual Innovation several years later .  In and of itself that would have been cool.  But what took it to a higher plane was that Mark's organization was the first to decode the SARS virus applying NetApp innovation!

Seemingly many others enjoy a high sense of satisfaction with NetApp.  We are not only one of the highest ranking storage suppliers to be selected by Fortune Magazine in their Best Places to Work surveys, but we are actually the only tech company other than Google to crack the top 10!  Fortune also lists NetApp as one of the most admired tech companies.  Cross reference those two Fortune Mag lists and we humbly find ourselves in some pretty heady company!

Pulling it all together for me, "Zen and the Art of Enterprise Storage" is really about a heightened sense of personal satisfaction from the broad application of NetApp's unique innovation.

P.S. Ironically my day job running our competitive team is conversely related to this Zen, where my team and I work hard to make sure our competitors sing the blues, specifically the Rolling Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.  I'll have much more on that later, so stay tuned!