In an exciting announcement, NetApp®, a globally recognized data-centric software company, revealed significant updates to its unique unified data storage solution. These enhancements encompass a range of innovations, including new block storage products aimed at delivering unrivaled cost savings and environmental sustainability. NetApp also introduced several improvements to its public cloud storage services and upgraded its NetApp Keystone Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS), all with the goal of simplifying operations, reducing expenses, enhancing security, and promoting eco-friendliness for its customers.
NetApp’s history with unified storage dates back more than two decades, and now the company is taking this concept even further by offering an entire architecture that supports file, block, and object workloads. This unified approach incorporates a common storage operating system spanning various on-premises storage options and all major public cloud providers. These are unified through a common API set and a single control plane, which includes the highly regarded NetApp AFF (all-Flash storage), the new block-optimized NetApp ASA (all-Flash storage), and the exclusive cloud-native storage solutions for the three largest public clouds: Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, Microsoft Azure NetApp Files, and Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.
Harv Bhela, Chief Product Officer at NetApp, emphasized the transformative nature of these updates, stating, “As we unveil updates to our enterprise-grade storage portfolio, we’re setting the stage for a transformative era in data management. NetApp’s portfolio, spanning on-premises and all major public clouds, reinforces our dedication to customers to deliver unified storage solutions that meet the evolving needs of modern enterprises and provide unmatched simplicity, savings, security, and sustainability.”
Enhancing Block Storage Savings and Sustainability
Earlier this year, NetApp introduced the AFF C-Series system, a groundbreaking unified-capacity flash storage offering that quickly became the company’s fastest-ramping product introduction to date. More than 20,000 customers trust NetApp for their block workloads on mission-critical SAN infrastructure. To better serve these customers and the broader block storage market, NetApp introduced the NetApp All-Flash SAN Array (ASA), offering enterprise-grade block storage with guaranteed availability and efficiency.
Tristan Roberts, Digital Infrastructure Leader at TasNetworks, praised NetApp’s all-flash SAN storage, highlighting its positive impact on their critical infrastructure environment, including VMware and S/4 HANA. The introduction of the new NetApp ASA C-Series family at NetApp INSIGHT 2023 pushes flash and block storage innovation further. These systems use capacity flash to strike a balance between performance and cost savings, all while emphasizing sustainability. Offering high-speed flash performance at a price approaching that of traditional disk storage, the NetApp ASA guarantees 4:1 storage efficiency and boasts an impressive Six Nines (99.9999%) data availability. Notably, it also offers industry-leading cyber-resilience and eligibility for the NetApp Ransomware Recovery Guarantee. These systems are cloud-connected, enabling disaster recovery, backup, and data tiering to the cloud, thus helping organizations modernize their environments, optimize data storage for VMware vSphere, and accelerate workloads for SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL databases with integrated application-aware backup.
Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp, explained, “NetApp ASA storage provides customers with a tailored solution to deliver high-performance and guaranteed high availability (99.9999%) storage for critical applications, databases, and VMware infrastructure, without creating bespoke infrastructure silos. Our ASA C-Series now redefines block storage, combining these unmatched ASA storage capabilities and capacity flash, making enterprise-grade block storage more affordable and sustainable than ever.”
To support customers in transitioning to NetApp’s block storage solutions, a range of services is now available at no extra cost. These services include upfront solution design assessments, free data migration, software licenses, and services, as well as three months of complimentary NetApp storage support during the migration phase, along with free training workshops.
Advancements in Cloud-Native Storage
NetApp initially introduced its enterprise storage into the public cloud nearly a decade ago, with 2014 marking the beginning of this journey. Today, NetApp is the sole provider of first-party, cloud-native storage solutions across all three major public clouds.
In August 2023, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes made its debut, and it’s already receiving enhancements with the introduction of a new Standard service layer, reducing the cost per gigabyte by over 30%. This service maintains the same multi-protocol file services, integrated data protection, and availability across 14 Google Cloud regions.
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is further optimizing the total cost of ownership by leveraging VPC Peering to connect to VMware Cloud on AWS. Additionally, it now offers unified file and object access via the ONTAP S3 API, simplifying data access for cloud-native applications designed for object storage. Microsoft Azure NetApp Files has also seen improvements, including enhanced capacity scaling, improved performance for Oracle databases, and support for transparent automated data tiering to the Azure Cool Blob tier, resulting in enhanced cost savings.
Empowering Storage-as-a-Service and Assured Guarantees with NetApp Keystone
NetApp continues to provide customers with diverse options for utilizing its robust enterprise storage portfolio. Recently, Equinix and NetApp introduced NetApp Storage on Equinix Metal, powered by NetApp Keystone, enabling organizations to run business-critical workloads through a comprehensive solution and a single monthly invoice.
At NetApp INSIGHT 2023, the company elevated its Keystone Storage-as-a-Service, now offering a comprehensive set of guarantees for an STaaS offering. Customers can benefit from integrated performance and availability guarantees. The previously announced Keystone sustainability service-level agreement (SLA) helps organizations reduce their carbon footprint by automating data tiering, monitoring sustainability, and eliminating overprovisioning, both on-premises and in the cloud. NetApp is also preparing to introduce a ransomware recovery guarantee for Keystone in the next 90 days.
Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager at IDC, recognized NetApp’s ongoing innovation in the enterprise and public cloud space, emphasizing that customer demand continues to grow for simplified, cost-effective storage solutions with reduced environmental impact. The new NetApp ASA C-Series is set to provide a formidable option for customers seeking these benefits, while the NetApp Keystone program continues to evolve, providing the guarantees customers require.
