NetApp storage solutions provide breakthrough storage and data center efficiencies for VMware customers

Singapore —September 18, 2008—NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced new product and solution offerings that help customers realize the full potential of their VMware® virtualized environments. NetApp is continuing to raise the bar with its innovation while providing VMware customers with industry-leading storage virtualization solutions that increase productivity, reduce storage space requirements, enhance performance, and improve overall infrastructure management in the data center. The new offerings available to VMware customers include enhanced NetApp® FlexClone® technology, the Performance Accelerator Module (PAM), the VM Insight Plug-in for VMware VirtualCenter, and the new NetApp Storage Solution for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). All of these new solutions build on several other unique NetApp technologies that are optimized for the VMware platform, providing customers with a complete portfolio of storage virtualization technologies.

One of the unique technologies already inherent in NetApp storage solutions is NetApp’s deduplication technology, which has experienced unprecedented success to date. NetApp’s ability to deduplicate primary data makes it ideal for virtual environments that contain multiple instances of the same operating system and application software. NetApp deduplication allows VMware customers to eliminate this redundant data quickly and easily, improving space and power efficiencies while reducing the amount of raw storage required. In fact, use of NetApp deduplication in VMware environments has rapidly grown to more than 1,000 NetApp systems saving an average 46% of their primary storage capacity.

“VMware and NetApp have worked closely to enable our customers to more easily benefit from our joint solutions,” said Parag Patel, vice president of alliances at VMware. “This is another example of the value that our vast ecosystem of partners brings to VMware customers. By introducing additional solutions optimized for the VMware platform, NetApp is extending the reach of virtualization to more customers who can gain significant business advantages from it, including reduced capital and operating expenses, simplified manageability, increased reliability and resiliency, and improved energy efficiency.”

VMware customers can now use an increased range of NetApp capabilities to realize the true benefits of their virtualized IT infrastructure, including:

##NetApp Storage Solution for VMware VDI is a combination of hardware, software, and services that enable VMware customers to do large-scale virtual desktop deployments by increasing flexibility while reducing risk and lowering cost. This solution allows customers to mass provision hundreds of secure, virtual desktops in minutes, enables continuous availability of virtual desktops, and allows regular backup of all client data while using as much as 90% less capacity than conventional storage for improved storage efficiency.

##NetApp FlexClone technology has been enhanced to enable rapid, space-efficient cloning of volumes, LUNs, and even individual files. This gives VMware customers the ability to rapidly clone individual virtual machines, increasing productivity and saving storage space without compromising performance.

##The NetApp Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) is an intelligent-read cache that improves virtual desktop performance for end users. It does this by storing virtual machine data in high-performance cache, which is especially effective for addressing the simultaneous system boot of hundreds of virtual desktop systems, which can overload a traditional storage system. Virtual desktop performance is further enhanced when the PAM card is combined with NetApp deduplication technology, enabling more virtual desktop systems to reside in the high-performance cache.

##NetApp SANscreen® VM Insight software provides VMware customers with end-to-end visibility into their virtual infrastructures, allowing storage and server administration teams to more easily manage their overall storage and server architectures in tandem. Further enhancing VM Insight is the new VM Insight Plug-in for VMware VirtualCenter, VMware’s centralized management console. It enables VM administrators who are leveraging heterogeneous storage solutions to better monitor SAN resources in their virtualized environments and communicate with SAN administrators for improved flexibility and operational efficiency.

##NetApp integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager provides customers with rapid, reliable, and affordable automated site disaster recovery that leverages unique NetApp cloning and replication technology.

##NetApp SnapManager® for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI) leverages NetApp Snapshot™ technology to give VMware customers an automated backup and recovery solution that enables frequent, nondisruptive backups and virtual machine consistency for reliable data recovery.

"We have experienced some tremendous benefits thanks to our NetApp storage solution, which is running in our VMware environment," said Rick Scherer, system administrator for the San Diego Data Processing Corporation, a nonprofit provider of information systems and telecommunications services for the City of San Diego, along with other county and governmental agencies. "In particular, NetApp's deduplication technology has really enabled us to increase the storage efficiency among our 200+ virtual machines. In fact, by using deduplication on our primary and backup data, we have witnessed a data savings of about 60% in our VM environment alone. This has not only provided a more streamlined storage environment, but has helped us lower our power and cooling costs as well."

“This next wave of technologies designed for VMware environments is evidence of our close and ongoing work with VMware to help provide customers with the most robust and complete storage and server virtualization solution,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing at NetApp. “We will continue to focus on building unique and industry-leading storage solutions that enable VMware customers to realize the full potential of their virtual environments.”

Further reinforcing its support of VMware, NetApp is a Platinum sponsor at this week’s VMworld, taking place in Las Vegas, September 15-18.

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