An employee recently asked me, "Is Data ONTAP an acronym? What does it stand for?"

Data ONTAP is sort of an acronym. You know how some acronyms are just too cute? It's clear that the goal was to make a particular word, and words were chose -- sometimes almost at random -- in order to make the acronym work. Data ONTAP is like that.

The acronym itself made no sense, so I won't even share it, but the inspiration lives on. Data ONTAP was inspired by beer. The idea was that data should flow freely, just like beer flowing from a tapped keg. Except imagine a pervasive beer infrastructure that lets you get your favorite brew from any faucet at any sink.

The reason I love the name Data ONTAP is because it captures the way people think about data. You want it to be wherever you need it, whenever you need it. On tap.

By all accounts, 2012 is going to be a rough one for data storage provisioners.  IT is entering a new era characterized by an abundance of data, where growth rates will go north of 50% per year.  Add to that a predicted shortage of some 75 million HDD’s due to flooding in Thailand and, um, we have a problem here.

High data growth and a shortage of disk drives? No problem, you say – IT is used to solving problems. 

For example, here are a few ideas you might have already kicked around:

1)      Stop the data growth

a. Tell Marketing that they don’t really need that analytics app, big data is just hype, right?

b. If Engineering is generating any data from sensors, send it to /dev/null and hope they don’t notice

c. Block your users from downloading any mobile apps that generate or store data

2)   

D       Delete old data

a. Tell Sales that all powerpoints, spreadsheets, and documents older than 1 year will automatically be deleted on April 1, 2012.  They will think this is an April Fool’s prank and just laugh.  On April 2^nd when they storm your office you can say “didn’t you see my email?”

b. Tell Legal it’s OK to delete archived email – the SEC is so consumed by the elections and Occupy Wall Street that corporate eDiscovery will become obsolete

c. Convince Accounting that most of their spreadsheets and reports are unnecessary and can be deleted since no one reads them anyway

3)

Us     Use other storage technologies

a. Delete data from primary storage and copy it over to good ole tape.  Paste the word “days” into your data recovery SLA’s anywhere the word “minutes” appears

b. Ask your CFO to throw a couple more million into your budget for SSD’s.  Make sure that you don’t mention the words “early adopter” or “price erosion”  when discussing this

c. Convince your IT Director that Automated Storage Tiering really does work, but avoid the terms “Hierarchical Storage Management” or “Information Lifecycle Management” at all costs.

If, for some reason, the above tactics don’t work (and if you still have a shred of credibility) there is one more option.  Storage Efficiency is implemented for one of two reasons - inspiration or desperation.  If you are clever, you can leverage both.  Without telling your peers just how desperate you are, you can feign inspiration by quickly turning on just 3 of NetApp's Storage Efficiency features:  Thin Provisioning, Deduplication, and Compression (they are all free.)  I suggest you do this quietly on a Friday afternoon when everyone else is at the weekly Engineering beer bash. 

When you arrive at work the next Monday morning, and you’ve seen your storage requirements shrink by, say, 50%, the next step is to walk the aisles of IT with your shoulders high while crowing “well, I guess we can cancel that storage expansion project!”  As you are looked upon in disbelief, you casually mention how you spent a few hours and “turned on some efficiencies” to save the department a whole bunch of money.   Now that you have the adulation of your group, your status will suddenly elevate.  You’ll be mentioned quietly in the lunchroom as “the guy/girl that saved our skin” or “that dude/babe that freed up our budget.”  You might even be asked to train the rest of the group on “whatever the heck you did” to reduce storage requirements by so much.

Now, at this point you might be asking “how do I get started?”   Just follow DrDedupe’s 3-step plan:

Step One:  Make sure you have some NetApp storage systems somewhere on the floor

Step Two:  If you can’t find any NetApp systems, click below to read about the V-Series storage controller

http://www.netapp.com/us/products/storage-systems/v-series/

Step Three:  Download and read the following Technical Reports:

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3958.pdf

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3966.pdf

http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3965.pdf

That’s it – 3 easy steps to buying fewer disk drives 2012.

Happy New Year!

DrDedupe

Today I have a guest blog for you from Thomas Wuerz.  Thomas works across the aisle from me and is responsible for running our Efficient IT programs.  He recently heard from one of our customers who ran into a panic situation that was solved by dedupe.  Being in the Christmas spirit (this had nothing to do with the Egg Nog we were drinking at the time) Thomas decided to take this story and put a Christmas twist on it. 

Enjoy!

DrDedupe

----------------------------------------------------

A Christmas Storage Story

Picture the North Pole covered with snow, the toys are ready, and the elves are rushing about to get everything packed.  Santa was in his workshop overseeing it all when Freddie, Chief IT Elf (CIE) hurried into his office. Freddie breathlessly told Santa that there was a capacity problem on one of the key NetApp systems in the North Pole data center.

It seems that Santa’s mission-critical T-PAD application (Toy Packaging And Delivery) was at 99% capacity on a NetApp storage system. One of the elves, who will remain nameless, did a poor job with capacity management and now it was too close to Christmas for any significant change.  To make matters even worse, the system was struggling to add new data (CPU at 99%) because of lack of available space and the fact that 25,000 elves needed to access their home shares on the packaging system to make sure they made it through the Christmas rush.   At this time of year the packaging system is of course critical.  Santa had plenty of money to buy additional storage shelves to fix the problem, but even for Santa, a PO takes thirty days to process at the North Pole during the Christmas rush.  As a result, gift delivery to billions of children (nice, not naughty) all over the world was now at risk!

In the meantime, the System Admin elf, Clifford, shared his sorrow with his elf friend, Matteo.  There is a lot of magic at the North Pole, especially at Christmas, and unbeknownst to Clifford, this magic put Matteo in his path, because Matteo had lots of experience with NetApp storage systems.  Both elves began immediately discussing alternatives to avoid the unthinkable - Santa with a crashed app and millions of children waking up on Christmas morning with no gifts. Clifford and Matteo worked until they had a plan.

Matteo explained that when a storage system fills up, it begins to slow down because free blocks are literally few and far between.  Not even the most powerful fairy dust can help to solve this kind of storage capacity problem.  You have to keep in mind that Santa and the elves just naturally turn to magic to solve a problem. When they realized there was no magic to fix the problem, sadness spread like a bad wind through the North Pole.

“No problem,” Matteo said.  “We may not have magic, but we have deduplication.  It’s the quickest way to fix our problem.  After deduping, free space will be created and the system will have more than enough room to write new data.  The result will be a smooth running app and a magical boost in CPU performance.”

After hearing this, Clifford saw only one choice to avoid disaster:  turn on the NetApp deduplication feature on the main packaging system. Convinced, the IT elf enabled the free deduplication license Friday evening, only two weeks before Christmas, the busiest night of the year. They were hoping that the magic of NetApp deduplication would help with something not even their traditional magic could solve.

By Monday morning, when the Elves arrived back at work, they were overjoyed to see that the packaging storage system now had 25% available storage capacity and overall system performance was significantly improved. The CIE Elf was so impressed that he asked his IT elves to turn on deduplication on all of Santa’s NetApp systems. To date, the workshop’s IT team has enabled deduplication on 90% of their volumes and has saved 60 TB of space in their 210 TB workshop environment.

Santa was even more pleased because of the immediate availability of $60K he had saved for the PO. The investment went into a much more strategic project: more presents for more kids!

So from NetApp to all of you - Wishing you all a happy and efficient holiday season!

You wouldn't have if you updated your RSS feed for the Virtual Storage Guy...

NetApp Releases Storage Best Practices for VMware vSphere 5

If you haven't updated your RSS feed for the Virtual Storage Guy, then here's some posts you may have missed...

• FlexPod Tech Specs App Released for iPhone & iPad

• VMware Global Alliances Blog Post on Virtualizing SAP

• The ‘Storage Smackdown’ Now Available On Demand

• Join Chad Sakac and I for a ‘Storage Smackdown’ Live Webinar

Don't miss the next post, updated your RSS feed!

NetApp was conceived twenty years ago, on December 2^nd, 1991 at Hobee’s Restaurant in Mountain View.

It was Mike Malcolm who first thought of building a “storage appliance”, and he telephoned James Lau and me to see if we’d like to start a company with him. James was busy, so Mike and I had lunch without him. People always talk about scribbling on napkins in these sorts of discussions, but if you’ve ever used a ballpoint pen on flimsy napkin paper, you’d realize that placemats make much more sense. That’s what we wrote on. It was a long, long lunch. And afterwards, Mike and I spent another hour circling the parking lot and talking. I was pretty excited, so I called James right away, and I think he and Mike had their own lunch a day or two later.

I would say that NetApp’s birthday wasn’t until April, 1992 when we incorporated and got our first funding – fifty thousand each from three angel investors – but I’ve always thought of December 2^nd as our conception date.

The Virtual Storage Guy Blog has moved.

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Happy Birthday FlexPod, You’re Off to a Great Start!

It’s been one year since Cisco & NetApp launched FlexPod, a modular cloud platform designed to accelerate our customers’ evolution from traditional IT infrastructure silos to a shared, virtualized infrastructure. While ‘virtualized infrastructure stacks’ is the IT industry’s product offering du jour, there are three key areas where FlexPod truly differentiates itself from the ‘stack’ offerings. I believe discussing these keys will help you to better understand why 450 customers to date have selected FlexPod as their cloud platform.

Read the rest of this post at the VirtualStorageGuy.com

The Virtual Storage Guy Blog has moved.

Please update your RSS reader or app: http://virtualstorageguy.com/feed/

Happy Birthday FlexPod, You’re Off to a Great Start!

It’s been one year since Cisco & NetApp launched FlexPod, a modular cloud platform designed to accelerate our customers’ evolution from traditional IT infrastructure silos to a shared, virtualized infrastructure. While ‘virtualized infrastructure stacks’ is the IT industry’s product offering du jour, there are three key areas where FlexPod truly differentiates itself from the ‘stack’ offerings. I believe discussing these keys will help you to better understand why 450 customers to date have selected FlexPod as their cloud platform.

Read the rest of this post at the VirtualStorageGuy.com

Earlier today, NetApp rolled out its newest storage platform.  The FAS2240 is a great storage system for the first-time NetApp user.  For the price of a well-appointed server, you can acquire a storage system with either SAS or SATA drives and enough Terabytes to store a picture of every Mountain Dew flavor ever created (well OK almost all of them.)

More importantly, this unit offers a cornucopia of software features.  If I had to describe the FAS2240 in two words, “sophisticated simplicity” comes to mind.  Let me explain what I mean.  Although the FAS2240 is considered an entry-level storage system, it contains the same unified software architecture as our largest and most expensive models with some of the most sophisticated storage features in the world. 

With the FAS2240 you get free access to features like deduplication (of course), data compression, thin provisioning, snapshots, and RAID-DP.  Because the FAS2240 ships with our latest version of Data ONTAP – you can also take advantage of new features like volume clustering and non-disruptive data migration, the sorts of things formerly reserved only for elite storage architects.  As an owner of a FAS2240, let me be the first to welcome you to the world of the elite. 

The “Simplicity” part of the FAS2240 is handled via System Manager 2.0, a free utility that takes the rage out of storage for first-time users.  System Manager takes the complex and makes it easy.  To illustrate, I’ve included this link to a 3 minute video tour of System Manager.  Your tour guide in this video is Brian Hackworth, Technical Director for the NetApp User Experience, and a chief architect of System Manager.  Since you don’t get to see Brian’s face in the video, I’ll show it here:

Thanks Brian!

What Brian and his team have created with System Manager 2.0 is pretty incredible.  In the video, Brian shows how to turn on thin provisioning, dedupe a volume, and non-disruptively migrate the volume within a cluster in less than 3 minutes.   This is a small portion of what System Manager is capable of but gives you a taste of it's power of simplicity.

I hope you’ll consider the FAS2240 the next time you need storage for your Mountain Dew images or better yet anything your organization needs to store with more flexibility or efficiency than ever thought possible from a machine in this class.  For more information here are a few other links.

http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20111108-131064.html

http://www.netapp.com/us/solutions/midsize/?REF_SOURCE=bnritfmsbhp

Thanks!

DrDedupe

Earlier today, NetApp rolled out its newest storage platform.  The FAS2240 is a great storage system for the first-time NetApp user.  For the price of a well-appointed server, you can acquire a storage system with either SAS or SATA drives and enough Terabytes to store a picture of every Mountain Dew flavor ever created (well OK almost all of them.)

More importantly, this unit offers a cornucopia of software features.  If I had to describe the FAS2240 in two words, “sophisticated simplicity” comes to mind.  Let me explain what I mean.  Although the FAS2240 is considered an entry-level storage system, it contains the same unified software architecture as our largest and most expensive models with some of the most sophisticated storage features in the world. 

With the FAS2240 you get free access to features like deduplication (of course), data compression, thin provisioning, snapshots, and RAID-DP.  Because the FAS2240 ships with our latest version of Data ONTAP – you can also take advantage of new features like volume clustering and non-disruptive data migration, the sorts of things formerly reserved only for elite storage architects.  As an owner of a FAS2240, let me be the first to welcome you to the world of the elite. 

The “Simplicity” part of the FAS2240 is handled via System Manager 2.0, a free utility that takes the rage out of storage for first-time users.  System Manager takes the complex and makes it easy.  To illustrate, I’ve included this link to a 3 minute video tour of System Manager.  Your tour guide in this video is Brian Hackworth, Technical Director for the NetApp User Experience, and a chief architect of System Manager.  Since you don’t get to see Brian’s face in the video, I’ll show it here:

Thanks Brian!

What Brian and his team have created with System Manager 2.0 is pretty incredible.  In the video, Brian shows how to turn on thin provisioning, dedupe a volume, and non-disruptively migrate the volume within a cluster in less than 3 minutes.   This is a small portion of what System Manager is capable of but gives you a taste of it's power of simplicity.

I hope you’ll consider the FAS2240 the next time you need storage for your Mountain Dew images or better yet anything your organization needs to store with more flexibility or efficiency than ever thought possible from a machine in this class.  For more information here are a few other links.

http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20111108-131064.html

http://www.netapp.com/us/solutions/midsize/?REF_SOURCE=bnritfmsbhp

Thanks!

DrDedupe

EMC has been making a lot of noise about midsize business since they launched the VNXe. NetApp has been serving this market for years — in fact, we have over 10,000 midsize enterprise customers. For a while, EMC had the hot new box, because it was more recent. Now, with the FAS2240, we do. It's normal for technology competitors to go back and forth like that.

What's much more important than who refreshed their hardware more recently is that NetApp has a fundamentally different strategy than EMC, one that I believe serves customers better.

For my thoughts, watch the video. For details, visit nt-ap.com/midsizebus.

EMC has been making a lot of noise about midsize business since they launched the VNXe. NetApp has been serving this market for years — in fact, we have over 10,000 midsize enterprise customers. For a while, EMC had the hot new box, because it was more recent. Now, with the FAS2240, we do. It's normal for technology competitors to go back and forth like that.

What's much more important than who refreshed their hardware more recently is that NetApp has a fundamentally different strategy than EMC, one that I believe serves customers better.

For my thoughts, watch the video. For details, visit nt-ap.com/midsizebus.

Democratizing advanced storage and data management has always been a core mission at NetApp.  Unlike all the competition, NetApp's truly Unified Storage solutions provide the same functionality across our entire Entry-Level, Mid-Range and High-End product spectrum.  That's why we're so excited to introduce our new & improved Entry-Level family today - whose models all support the Data ONTAP 8 family and can therefore scale from small to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL.

Start Right

NetApp's Entry-Level systems let you be smart with your limited budget.  Our shrink-to-fit systems let you buy only what you need while still acquiring enterprise-class quality, functionality & performance.  NetApp's industry-leading complete Storage Efficiency Portfolio enables you to save 50% of your storage capacity - guaranteed!  Our advanced technology helps you avoid common storage compromises between performance, functionality and efficiency.  Finally, our "set it and forget it integrated data protection" features will cure your backup and disaster recovery headaches.

Keep it Simple

"The Ultimate Sophistication" as Leonardo Da Vinci was fond of saying is Simplicity.  NetApp has a long-established brand association with simple storage, which is a challenging expectation to match as infrastructure options around storage become increasingly complex.  We spend a lot of time analyzing common storage and application admin workflows to let you be smart about how you manage your IT infrastructure - thereby freeing your people to work on higher-value strategic projects.  Use your staff’s expertise for the extraordinary.  Let your storage automate the routine.

Right from out of the box, our newest storage systems let  customers automate & simplify all work flows (install, provision, manage, protect).  Once installed and configured, NetApp enables management from your console of choice using native plug-ins that are tightly integrated with all major virtualization and application partners.

Do more with a single Unified Storage product than you can with multiple point products from the competition.  Do in minutes what used to take hours.

Grow Smart

Grow your business without ever outgrowing your storage.  Your investment is protected with our scalable Unified portfolio because Data ONTAP 8 takes investment protection to a whole new level.  With this innovative scale-out technology, NetApp helps our customers protect storage investments by scaling granularly on demand and/or turning on new capabilities as business needs change - all without forcing data migration between systems.

Say goodbye to forklift upgrades.  No data migration, no rip and replace.  Focus on business innovation, not systems maintenance.

Bringing it all together

Customers who prefer Best-of-Breed infrastructure solutions today are tired of becoming their own Systems Integrators.  NetApp is proud to announce that we've collaborated with our strategic partner Cisco to introduce the most attractive feature of all in this difficult economic climate - a new floor for pricing of pre-validated, integrated infrastructure!  Smart Storage is indeed built on NetApp.

Democratizing advanced storage and data management has always been a core mission at NetApp.  Unlike all the competition, NetApp's truly Unified Storage solutions provide the same functionality across our entire Entry-Level, Mid-Range and High-End product spectrum.  That's why we're so excited to introduce our new & improved Entry-Level family today - whose models all support the Data ONTAP 8 family and can therefore scale from small to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL.

Start Right

NetApp's Entry-Level systems let you be smart with your limited budget.  Our shrink-to-fit systems let you buy only what you need while still acquiring enterprise-class quality, functionality & performance.  NetApp's industry-leading complete Storage Efficiency Portfolio enables you to save 50% of your storage capacity - guaranteed!  Our advanced technology helps you avoid common storage compromises between performance, functionality and efficiency.  Finally, our "set it and forget it integrated data protection" features will cure your backup and disaster recovery headaches.

Keep it Simple

"The Ultimate Sophistication" as Leonardo Da Vinci was fond of saying is Simplicity.  NetApp has a long-established brand association with simple storage, which is a challenging expectation to match as infrastructure options around storage become increasingly complex.  We spend a lot of time analyzing common storage and application admin workflows to let you be smart about how you manage your IT infrastructure - thereby freeing your people to work on higher-value strategic projects.  Use your staff’s expertise for the extraordinary.  Let your storage automate the routine.

Right from out of the box, our newest storage systems let  customers automate & simplify all work flows (install, provision, manage, protect).  Once installed and configured, NetApp enables management from your console of choice using native plug-ins that are tightly integrated with all major virtualization and application partners.

Do more with a single Unified Storage product than you can with multiple point products from the competition.  Do in minutes what used to take hours.

Grow Smart

Grow your business without ever outgrowing your storage.  Your investment is protected with our scalable Unified portfolio because Data ONTAP 8 takes investment protection to a whole new level.  With this innovative scale-out technology, NetApp helps our customers protect storage investments by scaling granularly on demand and/or turning on new capabilities as business needs change - all without forcing data migration between systems.

Say goodbye to forklift upgrades.  No data migration, no rip and replace.  Focus on business innovation, not systems maintenance.

Bringing it all together

Customers who prefer Best-of-Breed infrastructure solutions today are tired of becoming their own Systems Integrators.  NetApp is proud to announce that we've collaborated with our strategic partner Cisco to introduce the most attractive feature of all in this difficult economic climate - a new floor for pricing of pre-validated, integrated infrastructure!  Smart Storage is indeed built on NetApp.

NetApp was recently named the #3 best place to work worldwide! Here are my thoughts on what that means and why it matters. If you have any stories to share, I'd love to hear them, either in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.

NetApp was recently named the #3 best place to work worldwide! Here are my thoughts on what that means and why it matters. If you have any stories to share, I'd love to hear them, either in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.

This week NetApp issued a press release that described an organization that helps doctors match several hundred thousand potential bone marrow donors with cancer patients in need.  Using a coordinated international registry combined with sophisticated search algorithms, Be The Match is part of the National Marrow Donor Program – a 25 year old non-profit that is “dedicated to creating an opportunity for all patients to receive the bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant they need, when they need it.” 

...but something was very different about this press release:

Be The Match Leverages NetApp Technology to Help Save More Lives

When I saw this, I thought “Can NetApp technology really help save lives?” And if so, how?  I wanted to understand more of the bits and bytes behind the press release.

A quick search through the NetApp community lead me to what I was looking for.  Josh Thorstad, IT Architect for Be The Match, wrote an article in the Tech OnTap newsletter that gave me the answer.  Turns out when it comes to this sort of matching, timing is everything.  By the time recipients reach the stage where they require a marrow donation, they are often in pretty rough shape.  Finding the match is just the first step.  Once the match is made, a complex orchestration is performed where the donor is screened, the donation is made, and transferred to the waiting patient.  Needless to say, if the matching can be done quickly, the whole process benefits and lives can be saved.

Josh describes how, prior to NetApp’s involvement, his IT infrastructure consisted of 90 servers with no shared storage and no virtualized servers.  System upgrades were a problem, as was data backup and disaster recovery – resulting in unwanted and serious outages.  Then, slowly, Josh transitioned to a virtualized server environment with a robust shared storage infrastructure including automated backup and replication services.  Josh goes into much more detail in the article, including how he incorporated thin provisioning and (yes!) deduplication to add efficiencies as he improved the performance of his storage environment.  In the diagram below, he shows off his new infrastructure:

As I read this article it become clear that NetApp was indeed helping save lives through technology - as were the other vendors that participated in this transition from old to new.  Everyone involved should feel proud of their contribution - we are all technology vendors but in the end its people that create and implement these technologies.

Like many of you, I’ve had some unfortunate encounters with cancer in people close to me, but I’m happy to say I've also known courageous people that participated in the bone marrow donor registry.  It’s a great program and I encourage you to look into the information on Be The Match’s website and decide if it’s something you’d like to become involved with in some way.  For more information you can visit www.bethematch.org

Are you the match?

DrDedupe

This week NetApp issued a press release that described an organization that helps doctors match several hundred thousand potential bone marrow donors with cancer patients in need.  Using a coordinated international registry combined with sophisticated search algorithms, Be The Match is part of the National Marrow Donor Program – a 25 year old non-profit that is “dedicated to creating an opportunity for all patients to receive the bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant they need, when they need it.” 

...but something was very different about this press release:

Be The Match Leverages NetApp Technology to Help Save More Lives

When I saw this, I thought “Can NetApp technology really help save lives?” And if so, how?  I wanted to understand more of the bits and bytes behind the press release.

A quick search through the NetApp community lead me to what I was looking for.  Josh Thorstad, IT Architect for Be The Match, wrote an article in the Tech OnTap newsletter that gave me the answer.  Turns out when it comes to this sort of matching, timing is everything.  By the time recipients reach the stage where they require a marrow donation, they are often in pretty rough shape.  Finding the match is just the first step.  Once the match is made, a complex orchestration is performed where the donor is screened, the donation is made, and transferred to the waiting patient.  Needless to say, if the matching can be done quickly, the whole process benefits and lives can be saved.

Josh describes how, prior to NetApp’s involvement, his IT infrastructure consisted of 90 servers with no shared storage and no virtualized servers.  System upgrades were a problem, as was data backup and disaster recovery – resulting in unwanted and serious outages.  Then, slowly, Josh transitioned to a virtualized server environment with a robust shared storage infrastructure including automated backup and replication services.  Josh goes into much more detail in the article, including how he incorporated thin provisioning and (yes!) deduplication to add efficiencies as he improved the performance of his storage environment.  In the diagram below, he shows off his new infrastructure:

As I read this article it become clear that NetApp was indeed helping save lives through technology - as were the other vendors that participated in this transition from old to new.  Everyone involved should feel as proud as we do about our technologies. 

Like many of you, I’ve had some unfortunate encounters with cancer in people close to me, but I’m happy to say I've also known courageous people that participated in the bone marrow donor registry.  It’s a great program and I encourage you to look into the information on Be The Match’s website and decide if it’s something you’d like to become involved with in some way.  For more information you can visit www.bethematch.org

Are you the match?

DrDedupe

I’m pleased to share with you a special story about NetApp customer Be The Match, whose mission is to quickly match those in need of marrow with a donor. It’s a great example of an organization using technology to help save lives.  After you watch this video, we ask you to share it with your own online networks and go to http://marrow.org/Home.aspx to learn more. Thank you.

I’m pleased to share with you a special story about NetApp customer Be The Match, whose mission is to quickly match those in need of bone marrow with a donor. It’s a great example of an organization using technology to help save lives.  After you watch this video, we ask you to share it with your own online networks and go to http://marrow.org/Home.aspx to learn more. Thank you.

There was a time when more than a million storage I/O operations per system was automatically associated with High Performance Computing applications.  Now, the current era of massive Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Big Data is changing all that.  Scale is now the most valuable infrastructure attribute.  NetApp's formal announcement this morning of our world-record SPECsfs2008 results heralds the arrival of HPC storage systems which satisfy stringent Enterprise IT requirements.

Performance is merely the Ante

Without diminishing the awesome work of our performance engineers (whose results are covered, debated and defended thoroughly on Dimitris's blog), it's important to acknowledge that most Enterprise IT departments are driven by more acute operational requirements, financial concerns and business initiatives or opportunities.

Service providers of Shared Virtual Infrastructure or Private, Hybrid and Public Clouds determine their value, pricing and profit primarily by their availability.  Related applications are now routinely built on multiple layers of networks, platforms and servers - with storage providing the foundation for it all.  Operational realities today dictate zero downtime at this critical foundational layer, while Financial pressures dictate economies of scale to rapidly amortize the massive associated CapEx.  All of this is driven by Business initiatives to streamline operations, increase revenue and enter new markets.

As we move into the 2nd decade of the 21st century, Enterprises are demanding more from their technology investments and looking for innovation in the integration of all the requirements above.  Enter the Data ONTAP 8 family.

Delivering Business-driven Storage Innovation

This latest NetApp benchmark result comes on the heels of last month's release of the latest version of our Data ONTAP 8 family (8.1RC1) to our customers and partners. (often confused as a Stealth Launch by some industry observers)  This high-performance, scalable, robust storage operating system is finally growing beyond it's well-established HPC roots and is now laser-focused on mainstream business IT requirements.  That means broad partner ecosystem integration, Virtual Storage Tiering and the full Storage Efficiency portfolio along with complete support for Enhanced Secure Multi-Tenancy is now available at massive scale for the first time in Enterprise Storage history.

Your Turn

The same industry observer now declares:

• "NetApp couldn't have a better launchpad from which to impress upon potential ONTAP 8.1 customers that it has finally integrated the Spinnaker technology into ONTAP with sparkling results. Cluster mode works."

With high performance, massive scalability and full functionality, the newest version of the Data ONTAP 8 family is NetApp's re-imagining of Enterprise Storage.  How will you take advantage of that in your organization?

There was a time when more than a million storage I/O operations per system was automatically associated with High Performance Computing applications.  Now, the current era of massive Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Big Data is changing all that.  Scale is now the most valuable infrastructure attribute.  NetApp's formal announcement this morning of our world-record SPECsfs2008 results heralds the arrival of HPC storage systems which satisfy stringent Enterprise IT requirements.

Performance is merely the Ante

Without diminishing the awesome work of our performance engineers (whose results are covered, debated and defended thoroughly on Dimitris's blog), it's important to acknowledge that most Enterprise IT departments are driven by more acute operational requirements, financial concerns and business initiatives or opportunities.

Service providers of Shared Virtual Infrastructure or Private, Hybrid and Public Clouds determine their value, pricing and profit primarily by their availability.  Related applications are now routinely built on multiple layers of networks, platforms and servers - with storage providing the foundation for it all.  Operational realities today dictate zero downtime at this critical foundational layer, while Financial pressures dictate economies of scale to rapidly amortize the massive associated CapEx.  All of this is driven by Business initiatives to streamline operations, increase revenue and enter new markets.

As we move into the 2nd decade of the 21st century, Enterprises are demanding more from their technology investments and looking for innovation in the integration of all the requirements above.  Enter Data ONTAP 8.1.

Delivering Business-driven Storage Innovation

This latest NetApp benchmark result comes on the heels of last month's release of Data ONTAP 8.1 (RC1) to our customers and partners. (often confused as a Stealth Launch by some industry observers)  This high-performance, scalable, robust storage operating system is finally growing beyond it's well-established HPC roots and is now laser-focused on mainstream business IT requirements.  That means broad partner ecosystem integration, the full Storage Efficiency portfolio along with complete support for Enhanced Secure Multi-Tenancy is now available at massive scale for the first time in Enterprise Storage history.

Your Turn

With high performance, massive scalability and full functionality, Data ONTAP 8.1 is NetApp's re-imagining of Enterprise Storage.  How will you take advantage of that in your organization?

... your corporate culture.  The high tech industry is dominated by innovation, products, services, solutions and hype.  At any given time, certain companies lead their competitors in one of those categories via related strategic investments with a maniacal focus on execution.  Disruption however, is also a reality of this industry, so often investments in those areas have finite windows of return.

Culture on the other hand, is not an investment.  Yet it has powerful, visible and lasting benefits.  Culture is a core belief, it's a mindset and most importantly it starts from the top.  Leading by example ingrains the culture throughout the company and sets the precedent for behavior, action and results.

Inspect what you Expect

In a measure of how seriously NetApp takes our corporate culture, we not only actively nurture it, but we also work with the Great Places to Work Institute to scientifically measure our culture via detailed employee satisfaction surveys (anonymous of course) so that we can identify specific areas for improvement on an annual basis.  In the past we ranked #1 best place to work in the United States as published by Forbes Magazine, and recently placed #5 in the 2011 edition of the prestigious and high profile list.

Think Globally, Act Locally

We live in a globally interconnected and interdependent world.  Witness the effects of the Arab Spring on the Occupy Wall Street movements all over the world.  The storage industry is no different.  Talent exists all across the globe.  Extending yourself to meet the talent at home rather than always relocating the talent to your HQ is a recipe for sustainable innovation and ultimately global market success.  The tragedies earlier this year in Japan and more recently in Thailand and the rest of SouthEast Asia serve as additional reminders to the storage industry of how we're all in this together.

Until recently, GPTW didn't publish a global list of the best places to work, so in the spirit of gathering international employee feedback, each NetApp country leader worked with local employee satisfaction tracking organizations to measure themselves and hone in on regional topics identified within the community rather than back at HQ.  Today that all changed.  As of tonight, we finally have a globally consistent view of each and every NetApp community all over the world!

And the Winner IS ...

All 25 companies who were selected as global leaders in 2011 employee satisfaction!  Moreover, NetApp is thrilled to join our partners Microsoft and SAS in the top 3!  But the real winners are our customers, partners and shareholders who realize truly satisfied employees are the best possible indicator for what to expect from doing business with NetApp.

The Fine Print

Our #3 ranking was based on employee survey scores from our “Top 10” Great Place to Work” rankings around the globe including Australia #3, Canada #2, Europe #6, France #4, Germany #8, India #10, Japan #8, the Netherlands #5, Switzerland #2, the United Kingdom #2, and the United States #5.

The list is the first integrated look at survey data from employees and managers from thousands of companies across 6 continents; making it the world’s largest annual study of workplace excellence. Both our outstanding global employee survey scores and our high placement on these 11 global Great Place to Work rankings earned us this amazing recognition. Other criteria used to determine the list includes the number of rankings around the globe and the percentage of total employees participating in employee surveys. Qualifying companies must have appeared on at least five national Great Place to Work lists, have at least 5,000 employees worldwide, and at least 40 percent of their global workforce must work outside of the country where the company’s headquarters is based.

... your corporate culture.  The high tech industry is dominated by innovation, products, services, solutions and hype.  At any given time, certain companies lead their competitors in one of those categories via related strategic investments with a maniacal focus on execution.  Disruption however, is also a reality of this industry, so often investments in those areas have finite windows of return.

Culture on the other hand, is not an investment.  Yet it has powerful, visible and lasting benefits.  Culture is a core belief, it's a mindset and most importantly it starts from the top.  Leading by example ingrains the culture throughout the company and sets the precedent for behavior, action and results.

Inspect what you Expect

In a measure of how seriously NetApp takes our corporate culture, we not only actively nurture it, but we also work with the Great Places to Work Institute to scientifically measure our culture via detailed employee satisfaction surveys (anonymous of course) so that we can identify specific areas for improvement on an annual basis.  In the past we ranked #1 best place to work in the United States as published by Forbes Magazine, and recently placed #5 in the 2011 edition of the prestigious and high profile list.

Think Globally, Act Locally

We live in a globally interconnected and interdependent world.  Witness the effects of the Arab Spring on the Occupy Wall Street movements all over the world.  The storage industry is no different.  Talent exists all across the globe.  Extending yourself to meet the talent at home rather than always relocating the talent to your HQ is a recipe for sustainable innovation and ultimately global market success.  The tragedies earlier this year in Japan and more recently in Thailand and the rest of SouthEast Asia serve as additional reminders to the storage industry of how we're all in this together.

Until recently, GPTW didn't publish a global list of the best places to work, so in the spirit of gathering international employee feedback, each NetApp country leader worked with local employee satisfaction tracking organizations to measure themselves and hone in on regional topics identified within the community rather than back at HQ.  Today that all changed.  As of tonight, we finally have a globally consistent view of each and every NetApp community all over the world!

And the Winner IS ...

All 25 companies who were selected as global leaders in 2011 employee satisfaction!  Moreover, NetApp is thrilled to join our partners Microsoft and SAS in the top 3!  But the real winners are our customers, partners and shareholders who realize truly satisfied employees are the best possible indicator for what to expect from doing business with NetApp.

The Fine Print

Our #3 ranking was based on employee survey scores from our “Top 10” Great Place to Work” rankings around the globe including Australia #3, Canada #2, Europe #6, France #4, Germany #8, India #10, Japan #8, the Netherlands #5, Switzerland #2, the United Kingdom #2, and the United States #5.

The list is the first integrated look at survey data from employees and managers from thousands of companies across 6 continents; making it the world’s largest annual study of workplace excellence. Both our outstanding global employee survey scores and our high placement on these 11 global Great Place to Work rankings earned us this amazing recognition. Other criteria used to determine the list includes the number of rankings around the globe and the percentage of total employees participating in employee surveys. Qualifying companies must have appeared on at least five national Great Place to Work lists, have at least 5,000 employees worldwide, and at least 40 percent of their global workforce must work outside of the country where the company’s headquarters is based.