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'NetApp is a big software player too'

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: In 2009, when NetApp lost the battle with storage giant EMC in its race for Data Domain, many thought that the troubled NAS player would be the next acquisition target. However, even after a year, it is still guarding its forte 'single-handedly', unlike other pure-play storage players such as Compellent or 3Par, who went in for bigger suitors.

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Syed Masroor, pre-sales manager, NetApp India, in a candid chat with CIOL talks about NetApp's unified storage plans, its tag being still referred to as a NAS player and not unified storage player, why it is happy being a pure-play storage player and how it is more than just a hardware player today. Excerpts:

CIOL: Can you tell us about your unified product FlexPod and how is it different from EMC's VBlock?

Syed Masroor: NetApp pioneered the concept of unified storage in 2002. We unified SAN, NAS and iSCSI into one storage system.

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FlexPod is basically a VMware, Cisco UCS server, Nexus Switches and NetApp all brought together in a standard format, where performance and scalability is guaranteed. It offers secure multi-tenancy and is a packaged product that can be readily deployed.

Also Read: Acquisitions: The year that was for storage industry

NetApp built multi-tenancy into its storage system back in 2002, with MultiStore. What it does is exactly what VMware does, but from a storage standpoint.

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MultiStore can partition a physical NetApp system into 64 virtual systems, similar to how VMware partitions a physical sever into multiple virtual servers. Thus, NetApp can create a virtual machine, a virtual server and integrate them. That means that with NetApp, one can have multiple virtual NetApp systems on one hardware.

Thus, we can have ten different customers on the same hardware and guarantee security, from servers to the disk layer.

Moreover, our configurations are not tightly bound. We provide flexibility for customers in terms of number of servers and storage systems.

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So what we brought was a highly flexible environment and at the same time is highly dynamic in terms of security features and multi tenancy. I think that is where the difference is.

CIOL: Although NetApp pioneered the concept of unified storage back in 2002, you have been always known as a NAS player. Is that why you have been of late concentrating more on unified storage with new launches and announcements?

Syed: We keep fighting against this tag. Our customers are our biggest advocates of our acceptance in the market that we are in, as a unified storage product company.

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NetApp started off as a NAS company back in 1992. With our first system we could do file service to Unix market. Then we brought file services to Windows, thus introducing the first multi-protocol system.

A decade later, in 2002, when others were only introducing NAS, NetApp had already created a NAS market; a billion dollar worth of business product.

However, back then, we could see that a lot of applications will go on SAN. However, when we introduced SAN, we did not introduce it on a separate system like others.

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NetApp said SAN is a protocol. So if you can speak fibre channel protocol language then you have SAN. Thus we integrated that language into our existing operating system, so that our customers, who were doing NAS, were able to do SAN also in the same system.

Today we have 1,80,000 unified systems deployed and moreover, iSCSI protocol ships free with every NetApp system today.

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CIOL: Are all your unified products compatible with competitor products?

Syed: Yes, they are. When we launched our unified system, we found that there were customers who have already invested in other storage products. That is when we introduced the V-Series products. We don't ship any hard disks, but just the controllers.

So, irrespective of the system a customer has, they can still use the same hard disk and do SAN, NAS and iSCSI on it, along with SnapShot, SnapRestrore, SnapManager, SnapMirror, de-duplication, thin provisioning, FlexCone etc., which our operating system (OS) DataOntap is capable of.

NetApp V-Series is one of the largest selling systems for NetApp today. It gave NetApp a lot of leverage in the competitive market. All our mid-range and high-end products can virtualize any other storage system.

Although there are a few competitor products, which can extend the same functions, they come as separate products, on a separate software. Whereas, it is the same system that does all these functions for NetApp. All our systems, from low-end to high-end, run on single operating system, DataOntap.

CIOL: Do you see a threat coming since EMC recently announced its unified storage product, VNX, with a special edition for the small and mid-market, considered to be NetApp's forte?

Syed: NetApp has always provided enterprise-class products to all, irrespective of the size of the company. We provision enterprise-class feature even for small players.

Whether our customer buys an entry-level system, such as FAS 2020, FAS 2040, or mid-range system, such as FAS 3200 series, or high-end series, such as FAS 6200, all have the same architecture. They only differ in their performance, flexibility and scalability.

In terms of features, EMC's VNXe is an inferior product. NetApp's low-end products can do fibre channel, SAN, NAS, iSCSI, de-duplication, thin provisioning, FlexWall Magic etc.

Whereas, VNX can do only iSCSI and NAS. It cannot do SAN. EMC believes that SMB players do not need SAN. Whereas, even SMBs' high performance applications definitely need SAN.

We believe that NetApp's position has only strengthened with such products and NetApp's is clearly a superior product in its space.

CIOL: Do you feel that you are losing out in the race because of being a pure storage hardware player, since you don't have a presence in the software or server space?

Syed: NetApp always believed in the concept of best of breed versus full stack. We believe that when you focus on a special breed, you can bring extremely compelling solution for that space, whereas when you become a full stack vendor you put in things, but there won't be much innovations going into it.

This clearly shows in the way we have grown from eighth position to one among the top three storage players today. It is all because of our focus and also partnership with the best of breed such as VMware, Cisco, Microsoft etc.

Though NetApp makes hardware such as controllers, disk drives etc, at the heart of our system is the operating system DataOntap.

Capabilities such as data storage, data protection, data recovery, disaster recovery, back-up, de-duplication, thin provisioning, compression, multi protocol, SAN, NAS, everything is built into our software DataOntap.

Moreover, we also make software modules, such as SnapManager, which help us to integrate NetApp features with any other application. We also make management software such as NetApp Operation Manager.

We recently announced the latest version of our OS, DataOntap 8, that comes with features such as compression and unified connect and have also introduced 'Future IT' and OnCommand management suite to support a 'shared infrastructure'.

Thus, in a sense we are a very big software player too.

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