NetApp speeds performance

NetApp helps customers speed their access to storage

Developments of the week in storage

NetApp this week plans to announce products and technologies that are all about performance.

The company is introducing new storage systems, an acceleration appliance and an acceleration module (Compare Application Acceleration products) that will let customers speed their access to storage (Compare Storage products).

NetApp is rolling out the FAS3100 and V3100 storage family. The FAS3140 and FAS3170, which replace the FAS3020, FAS3040 and FAS3070 storage systems, offer scalability of 420TB and 840TB respectively. They use the same Data ONTAP operating system as previous models. The V3140 and V3170 replace the V3040 and V3070 – they scale to 420TB and 840TB also. NetApp’s V-Series files front-end storage systems from 3PAR, IBM, Hitachi, EMC, Fujitsu and HP.

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NetApp this week plans to announce products and technologies that are all about performance.

The company is introducing new storage systems, an acceleration appliance and an acceleration module (Compare Application Acceleration products) that will let customers speed their access to storage (Compare Storage products).

NetApp is rolling out the FAS3100 and V3100 storage family. The FAS3140 and FAS3170, which replace the FAS3020, FAS3040 and FAS3070 storage systems, offer scalability of 420TB and 840TB respectively. They use the same Data ONTAP operating system as previous models. The V3140 and V3170 replace the V3040 and V3070 – they scale to 420TB and 840TB also. NetApp’s V-Series files front-end storage systems from 3PAR, IBM, Hitachi, EMC, Fujitsu and HP.

NetApp claims that the new FAS3170 performs at 137,306 IOPS (I/O Per Second) with 0.94ms overall response time (ORT) with the FAS3170 on SPEC_SFS97 benchmarks. Test results can be viewed here.

The company also announced the Storage Acceleration Appliance, a caching appliance that uses NetApp’s FlexCache technology. Three models are available – the SA200, SA300 and SA600 – each model caches Data ONTAP 7G and Data ONTAP GX volumes. The appliance sits between the NetApp storage system and the Network File System client and accelerates performance in the data center. It can be added to a NetApp network without re-architecting the environment.

The Performance Acceleration Module is an add-in PCI Express-based adapter for NetApp storage controllers that includes read cache for random-read intensive applications such as file serving. As many as five modules can be installed in any controller.

The FAS3100 with 7TB of storage starts at $69,780. The V3100 starts at $56,365 and the Performance Acceleration Module is $15,000. The software for the module is $20,000 – one software license is required for each storage controller.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.