Business Operations Run Faster And Scale Further On New NetApp Midrange Storage Platforms

New Cluster- and Flash-Enabled FAS3220 and FAS3250 Set Performance, Efficiency, and Scalability Foundation for a Dynamic, Always-On Agile Data Infrastructure

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Balancing the data infrastructure realities of today with the growth promise of tomorrow, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today updated its FAS midrange storage systems with the introduction of the FAS3220 and FAS3250. The new systems deliver a superior mix of industry-leading performance, capacity scaling, and value to create an infrastructure foundation that accelerates business growth.

Designed for stringent SAN and NAS environments, the new FAS storage systems help enterprises and midsized businesses that are consolidating operations onto a shared storage platform improve performance by up to 80% and increase storage capacity up to 100% over existing midrange products. Native support for high-speed, low-latency Flash and industry-leading nondisruptive operations provides organizations with the necessary foundation for an intelligent, immortal, and infinitely scalable agile data infrastructure.

“Most enterprises, despite uncertain economic conditions, continue to aggressively invest in technology leaders that can drive agility cost savings into their IT infrastructure,” said Brendon Howe, vice president, Product and Solutions Marketing, NetApp. “Our new unified midrange products are optimized for both mission-critical SAN and NAS environments, leverage technologies such as Flash and clustered Data ONTAP® to address today’s performance and capacity needs and nonstop operations, and are architected to scale for future needs.”

Watch Brendon Howe discuss why the new FAS3200 series is an ideal building block for an agile data infrastructure.

With NetApp® SAN solutions, organizations can double storage utilization, cut storage spending in half, and boost productivity across the entire business, while enjoying high performance and availability. NetApp’s award-winning FC SAN solutions show industry-leading performance for clustered storage. Customers using NetApp SAN technology experience storage efficiency through thin provisioning and data deduplication of up to 50% or greater.

Powerful and Affordable Midrange Systems Deliver Enterprise Scalability and Efficiency

The FAS3200 series is a flexible platform that can be tailored for virtualized, private cloud or traditional environments, requiring only a few terabytes of storage to over 2PB in a single system. When clustered, a FAS infrastructure can scale performance and capacity across 24 storage nodes. This architecture provides significant performance and capacity scale while delivering nondisruptive operations by enabling transparent upgrades, system replacements, and performance balancing.

Clustered Data ONTAP enhances industry-leading NetApp Data ONTAP storage operating system features by enabling high-availability storage platforms, such as FAS3220 and FAS3250, to operate as a shared pool of resources. This capability offers massive scalability and performance, simplified management, and the ability to transparently migrate application data. Data ONTAP is the number one storage operating system and—in a single, feature-rich data management platform—offers data protection, massive scalability, thin provisioning, deduplication, thin clones, Snapshot™ copies, backup, and disaster recovery.

To ease expansion and allow system customization, the new systems include up to three times the number of PCIe expansion slots, which can be used to support network cards, Flash Cache cards, and additional storage connectivity.

As with all FAS systems, the FAS3220 and FAS3250 enable companies to reduce disk purchases by 50% through a superior set of storage efficiency features that apply to both primary and secondary storage.

Optimized System Performance with Flash-Enabled Platforms

Both the FAS3220 and FAS3250 systems are designed to boost application responsiveness and performance by leveraging NetApp's powerful Flash technologies, all of which are designed to provide fully automated, virtual storage tiering. NetApp Flash Cache, which is a controller-based PCIe card, speeds data access through intelligent caching of recently read user data and metadata in the storage controller. No setup or ongoing administration is needed, and by adding NetApp Flash Cache intelligent caching, IT administrators can optimize storage system performance, improve storage efficiency, and reduce costs with an increase in I/O throughput of up to 75% and use fewer disk drives without compromising performance.

NetApp Flash Pool is a software feature within Data ONTAP that enables automated storage tiering across combinations of solid state disks (SSDs) and traditional hard disk (HDD) based on traffic patterns, providing better performance under load without requiring users to migrate data in demand. The Flash Accel™ software product leverages Flash technology on the server to deliver I/O throughput gains of up to 80% and average response time improvements of up to 90%. With support for “hot” data access at the server, as well as Flash-based storage caching with Flash Cache and Flash Pool, organizations can meet service levels and gain storage efficiencies in excess of 60% by enabling the right storage media to be used at the right time for the right data.

IT infrastructure, through speed, capacity, and reliability, is turned into a competitive advantage. Combined with NetApp virtual storage tiering, Flash also improves storage efficiency by enabling reductions in power, cooling, and data center space requirements.

A Building Block for Partners to Meet More Customer Requirements and Drive Long-Term Sales

The FAS3200 platform is designed for environments spanning traditional to cloud and enables partners to meet their customer-specific needs and foster long-term business sales. These systems address the needs of enterprises and midsize businesses alike with the agility to respond to customer needs dynamically and without interruption. The FAS3220 and FAS3250 provide the predictability, connectivity, and scalability to meet the many needs of the customer and manage growth with an intelligent, simple, predictable, and scalable platform.

To help customers maximize the technology advantages of the new platforms and generate higher ROI by managing cash flow and utilizing limited budgets more efficiently, NetApp is offering 0% financing for customers who are trading-up to the newly released FAS3200 systems. Promotional financing is made available to customers in countries and regions where NetApp Capital Solutions is available. Offer valid until 04/19/2013. To learn more about NetApp Capital Solutions or this offer, contact your local NetApp Sales Representative or a NetApp Authorized Partner for additional information.

Availability

Both the FAS3220 and FAS3250 are available and orderable today. Both systems will be available through NetApp’s worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors, and systems integrators.

Key Specifications

Customer Quotes:

• Bob Hunt, Manager, Enterprise Systems Management, American Greetings

“As we expand our operations globally and online, one of our challenges is creating an infrastructure that can scale continuously to meet our ever-changing needs. NetApp’s unique approach to storage clustering, coupled with the implementation guidance from Datalink, has enabled our IT organization to deliver immediate business value to the company as it grows, including the elimination of planned downtime and the delivery of essential IT services 24/7. Now, as our business continues to grow its presence online, our capacity requirements continue to grow and we look forward to further collaboration with NetApp and Datalink to ensure that our infrastructure scales seamlessly."

• Greg Flanik, Chief Information Officer, Baldwin-Wallace University

“With year-round courses, over 4,000 students and 3,000 computer connections, our IT infrastructure at Baldwin-Wallace University is always looking for ways to get leaner, more efficient with no disruption. The NetApp storage solution built on FAS provided better system performance and storage efficiency which had a positive impact on our end users: students, administrators, and professors. The FAS3200 enabled us to streamline system administration, build a strong foundation for growth, and scale to our end user needs.”

• Darrell Williams, Director of Information Technology, Katz, Sapper & Miller

“With our business growth, our company’s data footprint and IT requirements have escalated to where we need a strong storage foundation to support our business needs and performance. NetApp FAS3200 systems serve as the foundation of our IT infrastructure, and upon these systems we deliver and backup our critical client information. The FAS3200 product line helps us quickly deploy new applications while providing a higher performance and reliable platform. This gave a new definition to an agile data infrastructure.”

• Omer Mushahwar, Senior Associate, Torti Gallas and Partners

“Torti Gallas is a global architecture firm focused on expanding our worldwide activities with nearly 100 staff across five offices. With a limited size IT staff, we need a technology infrastructure that supports our global business and addresses data growth, server sprawl and storage inefficiencies. NetApp storage – with the FAS3200 as the building block – is helping us decrease our storage requirements, increase space savings, and focus on our business of designing innovative residential, commercial, and institutional buildings and public spaces.”

Analyst Quote:

• Brian Babineau, Vice President, Research and Analyst Services, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)                 

“The growth and management of data continue to present a challenge for IT. Midsized businesses and enterprises are looking for the building blocks that will create a flexible infrastructure that can scale, perform, and deliver results to meet that challenge. Today’s announcement introduces a new level of performance-driven systems that help organizations create a strong technology platform to grow as needed.”

Additional Resources

• Read further about today’s announcement: “The FAS3200 Series: The Perfect Balance of Price and Performance for Both Enterprise and Midsized Business Organizations”
• Learn about: “5 Steps to an Agile Data Infrastructure”
• Watch the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)’s video: “NetApp Introduces FAS3200 Series”
• Follow NetApp on Twitter
• Connect with NetApp on LinkedIn
• View NetApp videos on YouTube

About NetApp

NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that deliver outstanding cost efficiency and accelerate business breakthroughs. Our commitment to living our core values and consistently being recognized as a great place to work around the world are fundamental to our long-term growth and success, as well as the success of our pathway partners and customers. Discover our passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.