Customers Deploy Thousands of Systems with NetApp Data Ontap 8

Today’s demanding business pace, explosive data growth, and a shift in the market from aging, siloed architectures to shared IT infrastructures are causing customers to rethink their approach to IT. NetApp anticipated these market shifts and architected Data ONTAP 8 to address customers’ needs to scale up and scale out as they move to flexible, efficient shared IT infrastructures that drive business impact.

Customers now think differently and use new criteria to evaluate alternatives and remain competitive. More customers are migrating to Data ONTAP 8 to build flexible, scalable, and efficient shared storage environments that address today’s business challenges and the future requirements of their business. With thousands of systems deployed, Data ONTAP 8 can deliver flexible, integrated dual modes of operation and a unified, scalable platform that supports multiple workloads and drives IT consolidation.

Eight key purchasing criteria are setting the foundation for enabling a shared IT infrastructure that allows customers to efficiently deliver IT on demand and keep pace with changing business requirements.

These criteria include scale-up and scale-out, a unified architecture, integrated data protection, intelligent caching, nonstop operations, secure multi-tenancy, storage efficiency, and service automation and analytics. NetApp technologies are built on Data ONTAP, which currently, is the platform of choice for building shared IT infrastructures.

Data ONTAP 8 is currently the industry’s only platform that delivers enterprise-class functionality with clustering technology in dual modes of operation, providing customers with the flexibility to meet their individual business requirements and enable a seamless transition to shared IT infrastructures.

Customers migrating to Data ONTAP 8 are deploying shared storage infrastructures that address their data growth challenges and enable increased flexibility, performance, and efficiency while helping lower operational costs.

University Hospitals Leuven, healthcare provider in Europe, leveraged NetApp’s flexible, unified architecture to streamline their IT operations, address the demands of their business growth, and simplify access to growing volumes of business and patient data across multiple platforms.

Solution Detail

• Unified Architecture: NetApp introduced the industry’s first unified storage architecture and continues to deliver a single, unified architecture powered by Data ONTAP 8. While competitors have attempted unified approaches, NetApp has been innovating to provide a unified storage platform that is currently unmatched in the industry and ideal for customers making the transition to a shared IT infrastructure. As more customers move to shared IT environments, the technology leadership and direction NetApp established nearly a decade ago is proving optimal for customers in meeting current and future requirements for architecting scalable, efficient, and flexible infrastructures.
• Dual Operation Modes: Data ONTAP 8 is architected to allow customers to choose the system mode that supports their changing needs and make the transition to shared IT infrastructures. Data ONTAP 8, 7-Mode combines the new 64-bit scalable architecture with the functionality, features, and unified architecture that NetApp customers have come to rely on. Data ONTAP 8 Cluster-Mode offers traditional clustered deployments a path forward and provides unique capabilities necessary to simplify data management, support nonstop operations, and make the transition to shared IT infrastructures.
• Scalability: Based on a 64-bit architecture, Data ONTAP 8 offers increased performance, integrated dual modes, and advanced processing capabilities for multicore, next-generation hardware environments to help customers deliver predictable performance levels and adapt to the evolving needs of the business. Using multimode clusters of up to 24 nodes, customers can scale out as well as scale up seamlessly from low-end to high-end systems.
• Efficiency: With Data ONTAP 8, customers can optimize the utilization of infrastructure assets and improve storage efficiency with NetApp’s unique portfolio of storage efficiency technologies such as thin provisioning and deduplication.
• Flexibility: Data ONTAP 8 supports all workloads whether file or block, enabling customers to manage their explosive data growth and move to shared IT infrastructures. Support for multiple protocols on the same platform allows customers greater flexibility to mix and match protocols as necessary to suit changing environments. In addition, the ability to provide traditional 2-node HA pair deployment or multinodes of up to 24-node clusters offers customers multiple solution options, regardless of their needs within the shared IT infrastructure domain.

Ed Chow, Vice President of Product Management, Storage Systems Product Group at NetApp, said:" Customers are facing unprecedented challenges and thinking differently about how the IT infrastructure investments they make can accelerate their business today and tomorrow. NetApp architected Data ONTAP 8 to address this shift in the market and help our customers evolve to flexible and efficient environments that address changing business requirements. Our success in achieving strong adoption is a testament to the powerful innovation Data ONTAP 8 provides as a platform of choice for shared IT infrastructure."

Reinoud Reynders, IT Infrastructure Director at University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, said:" NetApp has been instrumental in helping University Hospitals Leuven achieve operational efficiencies and manage substantial data growth rates of 50% year over year. Data ONTAP 8 came at the right time for us and allows us to move volumes of data nondisruptively to support data-intensive healthcare applications. NetApp’s unified architecture provides the performance we need to support multiple transactional workloads, scalability to support large data formats, and flexibility to adapt rapidly to our changing business needs."