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Follow UsNEW DELHI, INDIA: NetApp says its customers looking to improve performance and storage efficiency have purchased more than one petabyte (PB) of NetApp Flash Cache capacity since its introduction in September 2009.
By incorporating flash memory as intelligent cache in its unified storage systems, NetApp adds it helps customers optimize performance without adding complexity, while decreasing both capital and operating expenses. Customer adoption and industry standard tests underscore NetApp’s success in helping customers make the most of their data centers with Flash Cache.
As an alternative to adding a storage tier of solid state disks, NetApp applies solid state technology as intelligent cache to optimize performance for workloads such as file services, messaging, virtual infrastructure, and Online Transaction Processing databases. Flash Cache modules are easy to install, require no ongoing administration, and automatically cache data that is under high demand to provide read times at least 10 times faster than hard disk drives and to help reduce storage system costs by up to 50 per cent for mainstream applications. Each Flash Cache module can provide performance equivalent to dozens of high-performance disk drives, helping customers realize substantial savings by configuring storage systems with fewer, larger, and cheaper hard disk drives.
“Using flash memory to automatically cache frequently accessed data gives customers the speed and accessibility they need without sacrificing simplicity and efficiency,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp. “Customers have validated our distinct approach to solid state technology by purchasing more than 5,000 caching modules so far. They also buy Flash Cache with nearly 20 per cent of the systems for which it is available, which is significantly higher than estimated attach rates for vendors that offer flash as persistent storage. Caching can give customers an easy, cost-effective way to apply solid state technology for better storage system performance.”
One NetApp customer seeing real-world benefits from Flash Cache is Apache Corporation. Apache is a $29.53 billion independent energy company that explores, develops, and produces natural gas, crude oil, and natural gas liquids. To meet growing customer demand, Apache is placing greater emphasis on its exploration and production efforts. This involves intensive geologic and seismic modeling using a collaborative, high-performance 64-bit Windows environment. In the last four years, data volumes have grown 700 per cent, to 3.5PB. Apache uses Flash Cache to optimize its exploration efforts and shorten the time it takes to get product to its customers.
“Decreasing our time to discovÂery is vital to the company’s continued success, and we need solutions that can keep up with the pace and scale of exploration and give us a competitive advanÂtage,” said Bradley Lauritsen, manager of Exploration Computing at Apache Corp. “With NetApp Flash Cache, we’re seeing nearly a 70 per cent cache hit rate in a shared seismic working environment, eliminating the need for the system to retrieve data from the SATA drives 70 per cent of the time. This helps deliver data in seconds instead of minutes or tens of minutes, which keeps our geoscientists working efficiently and effectively.”