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Network Appliance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Network Appliance, Inc. | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: NTAP) |
| Founded | 1992 |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California, USA |
| Key people | Dan Warmenhoven, CEO Tom Mendoza, President Steve Gomo, CFO David Hitz, Executive Vice President (EVP) & Founder Steve Kleiman, Chief Scientist James Lau, EVP, Founder, and Chief Strategy Officer Tom Georgens, EVP Product Operations |
| Industry | Data storage devices |
| Products | FAS2000, FAS3000, FAS6000, NearStore®, NearStore VTL, Decru DataFort, Information Server, V-Series, StoreVault |
| Revenue |  $2.8 billion USD (FY 2007) |
| Employees | 6600+ |
| Website | www.netapp.com |
Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), commonly known as NetApp, is a network storage and data management company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It is a member of the NASDAQ-100 and ranks on the Fortune 1000. Network Appliance is credited with the widespread adoption of Network Attached Storage or "NAS". This is a type of disk storage where the Storage Array, owns and controls the filesystem and then present files and directories to hosts. This is sometimes called "File Storage". Other Storage vendors like EMC and HDS tradtionally provided "Block Storage" over a Storage Area Network via the Fibre Channel protocol. NetApp's NAS approach has meant that many large corporation have adopted NetApp File Storage running on NetApp Filers for Home Directories and Group Data. In 2002, NetApp added Block Storage access as well, in an attempt to increase market share. Today, NetApp support disk storage access via NFS, CIFS, Fibre Channel and the rapidy emerging iSCSI protocol. In 2006, NetApp lauched a Virtual Tape Library or VTL product.
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Network Appliance was founded in 1992 by David Hitz, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm [1] [2]. At the time, its major competitor was Auspex. In 1994, Network Appliance received venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital [3]. It had its initial public offering in 1995. Network Appliance thrived in the internet bubble years of the mid 1990s to 2001, during which the company grew to $1 billion in annual revenue. After the bubble burst, Network Appliance's revenues quickly declined to $800 million in its fiscal year 2002. Since then, the company's revenues have steadily climbed.
NetApp filers are actually high-end personal computers, with Intel or AMD processors but with a proprietary NVRAM adapter to prevent power failures from corrupting disks. Two filers can be linked together as a cluster, although NetApp now uses the more correct term Active/Active. NetApp filers implement a single proprietary file system called WAFL controlled by Data ONTAP. When used for File Storage, ONTAP emulates a NFS Server and/or a Microsoft Windows File server, despite the fact that the WAFL file system is used in both cases. This makes it possible for Unix and Windows to share files, although in practice implementing this is difficult due to the different security models between the two environments.
Each Filer model comes with a set configuration of RAM and NVRAM, which cannot be expanded once purchased.
NetApp support either SATA or Fibre Channel disk drives, which are group into RAID Group of up to 28 disks. The RAID Group can then be used to create either "Traditional" or "Flexible" volumes. With "Flexible Volumes" , multiple RAID Groups form an Aggregate and then the Flexible Volume is created on top of these. With "Traditional Volumes', one or more RAID groups form a single Traditional Volume. The advantage of Flexible Volumes, is that many of them can be created on a single aggregate and resized at any time. There can only be one Traditional Volume and it can only be expanded, never contracted. However, Traditional have can handle slightly higher I/O throughput, than Flexible Volumes.
WAFL is a robust versioning file system and as such provide Snapshots, which literally allows end-users to go back in time. Snapshot appear in a hidden directory ~snapshot for Windows (CIFS) or .snapshot for Unix (NFS). Up to 255 Snapshot can be made of any Traditional or Flexible volume. Snapshots are read only although ONTAP 7 provides the ability to make Snapshots writable as "FlexClones".
Snapshots are implementing by tracking change disk blocks between files, and can be created in seconds because ONTAP owns the file system. This is different to other storage vendor "snapshots" which the entire block of storage has to be copied, which can take many hours.
Snapshot are the basis for NetApp disk replication technology SnapMirror, which is effectively replicated Snapshots between two NetApp Filers. Later ONTAP versions cascading replication, where one file could replicate to another and then another etc.. NetApp also offer a backup product based around Snapshots, called SnapVault.
Data ONTAP also implements an option called "SyncMirror" where the entire RAID Group is duplicated on another set of hard disks, typically at another site via a Fibre Channel link. NetApp provides a "MetroCluster" option, that uses "SyncMirror" to provide a geo-cluster or active/active cluster between two sites over 100km apart.
Other product options include "SnapLock" which implements a WORM functionality, so that data cannot be deleted (even by the administrator) until it meets certain criteria.
NetApp also offers products for taking application consistent snapshots of Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Sharepoint and SAS data. These products are known as SnapManager.
- NetApp's internal codenames for ONTAP releases are name different brands of beer, including "Budweiser", "Victora Bitter" etc..
- The name ONTAP also comes from beer, ie beer is ontap, becomes data ontap.
- When providing Block Storage, the underlying data is still stored in a file on the WAFL filesystem, so ONTAP doesn't provide traditional Block Storage, it just emulates it.
- 1997 - Internet Middleware (IMC). IMC's web proxy caching software became the NetCache product line (which was resold in 2006).
- 2004 - Spinnaker Networks, Inc. The technology Spinnaker brought to NetApp® was integrated into Data ONTAP GX and first released in 2006.
- 2005 - Alacritus The technology Alacritus brought to NetApp® was integrated into the NetApp NearStore VTL product line
- 2005 - Decru. Decru continues to operate as a separate business for data encryption.
- 2006 - Topio. Software that helps replicate, recover, and protect data over any distance regardless of the underlying server or storage infrastructure. This technology became known as ReplicatorX.
- 2006 - NetCache product line sold to Blue Coat Systems, Inc.
The NetCache software formerly produced by Network Appliance is used in Tunisia to censor Internet access. Technically, censorship in Tunisia uses a transparent proxy that processes every HTTP request sent out and filters out sites based on hostnames. Empirical evidence shows that NetApp hardware was used to implement the controls. [4]
In September 2007, Network Appliance initiated proceedings against Sun Microsystems, claiming that the ZFS File System developed by Sun infringed its patents. [5] The following month, Sun announced plans to countersue based on alleged misuse by Network Appliance of Sun's own patented technology [6].
NetApp competes in the Data Storage Devices industry[7]. NetApp ranks third in market capitalization in its industry, behind EMC and Seagate Technology, and ahead of Western Digital, Brocade, Data Domain, Imation, Quantum, and Isilon [8]. In total revenue, NetApp ranks fourth behind EMC, Seagate, Western Digital, and ahead of Imation, Brocade, Xyratex, and Hutchinson Technology [9]. Note that these lists of competitors do not include companies with significant storage businesses, such as Hewlett Packard, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems, Dell, and Sun Microsystems.
Network Appliance also has a long history of making "Best Places to Work" lists. In 2007 the company ranked 6th on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For. This is the fifth consecutive year NetApp has earned a spot on the list, placing in the top 50 each time. NetApp also earned top honors in the "Best Companies to Work for in Research Triangle Park" competition in 2006. Other previous distinctions include making ComputerWorld's "Top 100 Places to Work in IT 2005", "Best Places to Work" in the Greater Bay Area in 2006 by the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, and the 8th spot on the 2006 list of "Best Workplaces in Germany" by Capital Magazine.
- ^ Management. NetApp (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ Michael Malcolm Resigns as Chairman of the Board of CacheFlow to Focus on New Start-Up Opportunity. Find Articles (2000, Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ Sequoia Capital funds Network Appliance.
- ^ Beaupré, Antoine (2005-11-23). Comment la Tunisie censure l'internet.
- ^ NetApp files patent suit against Sun (September 5, 2007).
- ^ Sun plans to countersue NetApp (October 24, 2007).
- ^ Industry Center - Data Storage Devices. Yahoo (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ Industry Center - Data Storage Devices, Leaders in Market Capitalization. Yahoo (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- ^ Industry Center - Data Storage Devices, Leaders in Total Revenue (ttm). Yahoo (Retrieved 2007-09-06).
- Network Appliance
- StoreVault
- Decru
- Blue Coat Systems & Netcache
- IDC Press Releases:
- The NetApp Effect on Apple's ZFS Plans, IT Business Edge, October 2007
