NetApp Announces First Shipments of FlashRay Systems

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 17, 2014) - NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced its first shipments of FlashRay™, the company's purpose-built all-flash storage array with the new NetApp® Mars™ operating system. FlashRay is designed from the ground up to improve the performance, efficiency, and manageability of all-flash storage architectures used in enterprise application environments.

The new system combines the benefits of all-flash storage technology with patented and patent-pending NetApp technology to provide breakthrough performance, storage efficiency, data protection, and data management. NetApp's "no-compromise" approach to flash storage helps customers achieve maximum enterprise application performance at a lower cost. FlashRay began shipping this month to targeted customers and partners.

"Flash storage is dramatically changing data center economics and performance," said Ty McConney, vice president, Flash Solutions, NetApp. "Increasingly customers are looking to an industry leader like NetApp to help them evolve their IT approaches and effectively integrate flash into their infrastructure. Like NetApp Data ONTAP, FlashRay is designed from the ground up and helps customers to remove compromise from consideration when assessing flash alternatives. This new platform will revolutionize storage by delivering maximum performance and simplified data management with low-cost media and the industry's most efficient storage approach."

NetApp's enterprise-class flash technology and solutions address every flash-accelerated workload requirement. The portfolio includes the company's E-Series and FAS hybrid flash arrays and its EF-Series and all-flash FAS all-flash arrays. Complementing these platforms are FlexPod Datacenter¹ with all-flash FAS arrays and NetApp's support and professional services to help organizations decide how to best realize the full benefits of flash in their current and future environments from the data center to the cloud.

"Samsung and NetApp have been working closely to help enterprise customers realize faster time-to-value for their flash investment," said Jeeho Baek, vice president, Memory Marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Our advanced flash media, coupled with NetApp FlashRay, will improve the performance of mission-critical applications, and the economics of the enterprise data centers in which they run."

Mars OS -- Breaking Down the Barriers for Enterprise-Class Flash Storage
The NetApp engineering team developed Mars OS to address the current and future challenges of flash storage performance, data efficiency, data management, and mobility across platforms and environments. The system includes technology built from the ground up to address the unique challenges of flash storage, as well as incorporates intellectual property from NetApp's extensive portfolio.

Among the innovations in this release are patented technologies related to "always-on" in-line efficiency and a variable-length block layout that together minimize the I/O activity to flash, increase the effective capacity, and deliver high throughput at consistent submillisecond latency. These features enable customers to address a wide range of workloads. FlashRay provides the ability to seamlessly upgrade to future solid-state technologies to further drive down the cost of all-flash storage.

"NetApp has defined an innovative approach to flash across its portfolio. We've deployed FlashRay in our testing environment and recognized its ability to combine the always-on efficiencies with performance," said Doug Katz, Data Center Practice Manager of Georgia, Presidio. "FlashRay will be a solid addition to NetApp's data efficiency for the enterprise."

As part of the company's roadmap, NetApp will tightly integrate the Mars OS with the NetApp Data ONTAP software. Staying true to its heritage as a data management pioneer, NetApp will enable seamless data mobility among its platforms, enabling enterprises to move data to the right storage tier as part of a comprehensive data lifecycle management strategy. Scale-out technologies will enable the seamless addition of performance and capacity as needed.

Availability
This initial release of FlashRay flash storage array is available to select customers and partners. For more information and to stay updated on the latest FlashRay news, visit http://www.netapp.com/flash.

Additional Resources

• Read more about the announcement on NetApp 360 "Built from the Ground Up and Built to Last"
• Follow NetApp on Twitter
• View NetApp videos on YouTube

About NetApp
Leading organizations worldwide count on NetApp for software, systems and services to manage and store their data. Customers value our teamwork, expertise and passion for helping them succeed now and into the future. To learn more, visit www.netapp.com.

NetApp, the NetApp logo, Go further, faster, FlashRay and Data ONTAP are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. Use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership between NetApp and any other company. 

¹ FlexPod is a converged compute, networking, and storage solution developed by Cisco® and NetApp.