Network Appliance joins the Intel enterprise server acceleration alliance

SUNNYVALE: Network Appliance, Inc. joined the Intel Enterprise Server Acceleration Alliance (ESAA).

As a member of the alliance, NetApp unified storage systems-including the fabric-attached storage (FAS) product suite, V-Series virtualization systems for multi-vendor storage environments, NearStore nearline storage systems, NetApp Snapshot technology, and Data ONTAP 7G software armed with FlexVol and FlexClone technology-will be pre-certified to work with Intel-based server configurations.

NetApp membership will help enable the delivery of easy-to-manage, cost-effective enterprise storage solutions.

The objectives of the alliance are to validate key software and hardware components on Intel-based server platforms and to provide pre-certified solutions to Intel worldwide original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and channel partners.

Membership in the alliance provides Intel OEMs and channel partners with “recipes” for building validated server solutions that are cost-effective, reduce implementation and management complexity, and meet the certification standards of independent software vendors (ISVs) and independent hardware vendors (IHVs).

“As a member of ESAA, NetApp will be able to reduce certification barriers, enabling a broad range of OEM alliance members to deliver more comprehensive, reliable, high-quality server solutions to their end users,” said Kirk Skaugen, general manager, Server Platforms Group, Intel Corporation.

The initial solutions will address ERP applications, databases, e-mail, disk-to-disk backup and archival, high-performance computing (HPC), utility and grid computing, and iSCSI solutions.