Expert View

April 15, 2005
NetApp: Classify data, adopt HSM model to manage storage

BANGALORE -- Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp) recently achieved a critical milestone in expanding and delivering its storage grid vision by shipping the latest version of its powerful enterprise storage software - Data ONTAP 7G. It is available immediately on all NetApp storage systems. NetApp also released the gFiler storage appliance. It has been playing an important role in the evolution of storage in India and the world over. According to George Thomas, country manager, India, Network Appliance, customers have deployed NetApp solutions for a variety of database, security and other data center and mission-critical applications needs. Excerpts from an interview with Convergence*plus:

Convergence*plus: What are the leading pain points in the storage industry?

George Thomas: There are several issues. Today's user is faced with many challenges of performance, uptime, reliability, technology obsolescence, etc. They are also pressed with the need to consolidate their storage, effectively use the storage by classifying data, plan an effective DR and also have to worry about compliance.

CP: What are the best practices in the storage industry?

GT: The first step is to classify data based on the need and criticality to business. For example, the systems supporting the core business, such as ERP, is mission critical, whereas, reference data is non-critical. The storage architecture should be capable of storing these different classes on different set of media (high-performance primary system for ERP data and nearline storage for reference data). The second step is to adopt a HSM (hierchical storage management) model for effectively and automatically moving the infrequently used data to cheaper media.

As the data is exploding at a tremendous pace and businesses are going online, the backup window today is almost non-existent. This is a major cause of worry for most CIOs and storage managers. The use of disk-to-disk backup technique solves this problem and the solutions available today cost nearly the same (sometimes cheaper) as the tape option. In this method, the data is always available in good shape, the restore times are very low (as compared to tape) and the nearline storage (NetApp R200) can also serve data in case the primary storage is not available.

CP: What is the opportunity in the storage and services market?

GT: Network storage systems are evolving to embrace the industry's evolving needs for open storage systems that are cost-effective, easy to manage, and integrable with multiple storage standards (both networking and data formats). Today, storage systems are largely designed in a building-block approach to allow customers to add storage as needed, or more monolithic for customers needing storage utilities. Customers must keep in mind that over the next year, the definition of what is considered a storage system will change radically. For this reason, enterprises and carriers need to pay close attention not only to what products industry leaders are planning to introduce, but also what new technologies next-generation storage system vendors will offer.

The Yankee Group sees many of these next-generation storage vendors' products as a proving ground for new storage architectures, deployment strategies, and management techniques. As customer interest starts to drive market momentum behind a select number of these startups, market leaders will also adopt some of these technologies by developing these capabilities, partnering, or acquiring startups.

CP: There is lot of talk about intelligence in a storage network. Are customers ready for distributed storage?

GT: Customers are beginning to evaluate systems on more than simply specific hardware features such as the number of disks or terabytes supported. The Yankee Group recommends that customers evaluate storage vendors based on solutions packaging - ease of installation, perceived risk, presale service, long-range service costs, and integration with partners' solutions. Current economic conditions require customers to justify their RoI for all storage purchases.

CP: What are the challenges facing successful information lifecycle management?

GT: Traditional data storage solutions do not differentiate between data types. Data storage has typically been a "one size fits all" approach that handled storage, replication, backup, and data destruction in exactly the same way. The costs of managing an ever-increasing amount of data combined with the requirements imposed by new regulatory compliance regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley have made some degree of ILM mandatory. Historically, it has been difficult to segregate intermingled data types. Further, even if data could be separated, the options to manage data based on data type were extremely limited. Fortunately, the
situation has improved.

CP: How do you see the future for IP-SAN, as against SAN, NAS and FiberChannel?

GT: Organizations that have not yet implemented any kind of networked storage or have implemented only NAS would see a lot of sense in maintaining a common networking infrastructure to server their file- and block-based data. For them, the iSCSI offers an excellent value proposition. For other large enterprises that have already implemented FC-SANs in their data centers, it would co-exist with the FC-SANs and complement them. An organization like a bank may choose to run its core banking applications on FC-SAN and run all mid-sized and smaller databases on iSCSI. Almost all organizations would see value in a iSCSI SAN as it helps achieve tremendous RoI. The complexity of implementing a FC-SAN made it an extremely expensive proposition. That is why in spite of its great benefits, FC has been limited to the data centers.

The iSCSI attempts to solve many of these problems. It leverages on two standard protocols -- SCSI and IP to create another standards based protocol. The iSCSI protocol has been ratified by the IETF as a standard and therefore, it attempts to eliminate all compatibility issues.

CP: How can database and storage be successfully combined to prepare for data growth?

GT: The first step is to classify data based on the need and criticality to business. For example, systems supporting the core business, such as ERP, are mission critical, whereas, reference data is non-critical. The storage architecture should be capable of storing these different classes on different set of media (high performance primary system for ERP data and nearline storage for reference data). The second step is to adopt a HSM (hierchical storage management) model for effectively and automatically moving the infrequently used data to cheaper media.

CP: Is there a need for on-demand storage in an on-demand world?

GT: Yes, definitely, and our NetApp storage solutions are geared to fulfill that need.

CP: Is convergence ahead in the storage industry and to what extent?

GT: The industry has increasingly seen the convergence of technologies like NAS and SAN, and will continue to evolve and mature, especially on the SAN side. NetApp has used both networking and fiber channel technology, along with SCSI, for a considerable period of time. So, we are actively working toward building links to FC-SANs. In addition, we see a strong movement toward utilizing networking technology in SANs too. The major trends driving this convergence include:

• Businesses want to leverage their exiting infrastructure investments. This includes their existing human resources, applications software, compute servers, networking infrastructures, and more.
• Business cannot afford to stop doing business to deploy entirely new infrastructure. Therefore, they want their NAS and SAN implementations to come together in a mutually re-inforcing manner.
• Desire for best-of-breed solutions. Customers recognize that NAS and SAN have unique and powerful features not found in the other. Ergo, they want to combine the best of these technologies into a single system. They are deeply committed to both of these technologies. NetApp believes that customers will prefer vendors who are agnostic with respect to the plumbing layer and who focus on giving customers what they want.
• Pervasiveness of appliances in the network space. Customers like to use appliances because they are usually higher performance than general-purpose devices, plus they reduce TCO and ensure maximum uptime in our experience.
• Network bandwidth is rising rapidly and we see customers coming to believe that NAS devices will offer the best price/performance in the long term.

The power of networking also ensures that customers can ensure ubiquitous data access as well as scaling their solutions easily and without the need for large IT staff support. NAS devices are the path by which customer can leverage the power of networking for storage applications.

CP: How do you see the storage industry evolving in India?

GT: Storage vendors have to interoperate with ERP, business intelligence and ILM vendors to give a complete solution to customers. It is very important to form a partner ecosystem of platform, storage and application vendors to provide best practices and joint support escalation processes to the customer.

CP: What role have you been playing and how do you see the way forward?

GT: NetApp is playing a very important role in the evolution of storage in India and the world over. Throughout the third quarter of fiscal year 2005, Network Appliance re-inforced its leadership position by introducing the latest version of its powerful enterprise storage software, expanding partnerships, and continuing to demonstrate leadership in the iSCSI market. Customers have deployed NetApp solutions for a variety of database, security and other data center and mission-critical applications needs.

We also achieved a critical milestone in expanding and delivering our storage grid vision by shipping the latest version of its powerful enterprise storage software, Data ONTAP 7G. Customers using Data ONTAP 7G and its advanced virtualization capabilities can double their storage utilization, dramatically increase I/O performance for enterprise-class applications, and significantly reduce storage management costs for multi-application environments. Additionally, the NetApp enterprise gFiler storage systems will now provide Fiber Channel data access and fully leverage the new enterprise storage virtualization capabilities in Data ONTAP 7G for multi-vendor storage environments.

In the iSCSI arena, NetApp continued to drive iSCSI adoption. According to IDC, NetApp maintained a strong lead in the iSCSI SAN storage market for Q3-04). In its core NAS market, NetApp demonstrated continued leadership in NAS hardware for Q3-04 in both revenue and terabytes shipped. Also according to IDC, the company posted a 36.3 percent revenue market share, with a 13.8 percent increase in revenue year over year (vs. Q3-03).

On the partner front, the company achieved Gold Certified status in the Microsoft Partner Program with a competency in Advanced Infrastructure Solutions recognizing NetApp's expertise and total impact in the technology marketplace. NetApp also unveiled several new solution enhancements and partner offerings to address a variety of data concerns, including Internet access and security, virtual backup, data management, virus protection, data protection and recovery, iSCSI software for Linux environments and other business-critical initiatives facing enterprise customers.

Cited for its unrivaled unified storage architecture and its unmatched flexibility, scalability, and continuity in the storage industry, the Network Appliance FAS270c was named 'Best NAS Solution of the Year' in InfoWorld's 2005 Technology of the Year honors. NetApp was also honored by FORTUNE magazine as one of the '100 Best Companies to Work For' for the third consecutive year. This year, NetApp ranked at number 24, up from number 48 last year, reflecting the company's specific emphasis on attracting and retaining the best talent in the industry and continuing to demonstrate the values of what NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven calls a "model company."

The elite and prestigious FORTUNE listing is largely determined by employee feedback. Hence, we are very optimistic about our growth, in India as well as the world over. You will get to hear more of our new product and technology announcements.