NetApp cackles as cheaper FlashRay lurches out of the door FlashRay lives! All-flash FAS is now a price/performance beast – which now comes with a substantial price cut. NetApp is doubling down on its 3-product all-flash arrays; the EF Series, All-Flash FAS (AFF) and FlashRay with its Mars operating system. Yes, FlashRay lives and has not been gobbled up and absorbed into the FAS …
Pure is about to be sandwitched between EMC and Netapp. At a minimum, that's what netapp's trying to accomplish since EMC has been successful against Pure by dropping their pants on pricing.
I'd be genuinely concerned if I were Pure because the next round of funding maybe a "down" one...
AFF is a 100% defensive strategy to protect the install base which is under massive attacks. It may curtail the bleeding a little bit but at the end of the day this will not open new doors to Netapp.
I wouldn't be to sure about this being a purely defensive play .. there is certainly an aspect to that with some of the other vendors. From my point of view even XtremIO seems to be primarily cannibalising VMAX sales. What we do see is that all flash changes people perceptions about what constitutes a "Tier-1" array. There are a lot of very large accounts where NetApp has been pigeon-holed into just NAS, leaving vendors like EMC and HDS to keep the much larger SAN portions of the overall storage spend.
We're already seeing that when enterprises are looking to replace or refresh their SAN's, they're looking at all flash arrays from a variety of vendors, and NetApp is now in a very good position to make a strong play for that SAN refresh. We already understand their business and have jumped all the hurdles around getting through the legals and purchasing contracts, we have a strong track record, and the management tools are the same. The All Flash FAS value proposition in those accounts is extremely strong.
Net result is that AFF allows NetApp to go aggressively after a market in existing large enterprise accounts that is two to four times larger than our current footprint.
For NetApp at least, all flash is much more than just a defensive play in the SAN space.
Hi Daniel from NetApp here!
Actually, and I cant believe we missed stating this (derp), we have done some nice changes around maintenance and warranties as well; lots included along with the FlashEssential package plus up to 7 year warranty, flat fee when extending, set installation costs etc.
Are we perfect? Of course not, but I would lie if I didnt think we are doing a fine job towards it right now and there is more to come. Have a chat with your closest NetApp rep or partner to find out more.
Game on! :)
HI Daniel,
A 7 year flat maintenance is good. Getting controller uplift automatically every few years as part of this would put you level with PURE. The main point of this release for me (as an existing Netapp customer with a fairly large estate) is the price. Having all SSD attached to a FAS has been a lot more expensive than the other players in the market. Hopefully this price drop will bring you more inline with the PURE, Solidfire and other startups. With the addition of inline compression and a slightly less, but still seemingly post process, dedupe, you've got the features that the EF series has been missing to make it comparable to the AFA startups.
One concern I'd have is the CPU. There doesn't seem to a massive amount of grunt in the boxes to cope with lots of IO as well as compression, dedupe, snapshots and snapmirror all running at the same time.
The other concern is monitoring. The current Netapp offerings are not as slick as EMC (ExtremeIO), PURE, NIMBLE or Solidfire.
I assume you're talking about over the 2 nodes though. Unless 1 node can share CPU resource with another that's 16 cores on a node, not 32. Seeing as one volume has to live one node (discounting infinite volumes which seem to have quite a few limitations around them) then you shouldn't talk about a HA pair as being one big unit to make it sound more powerful.
I beg to differ. The NetApp monitoring software (DFM) is relatively easy to configure, very flexible, and the one of best pieces of monitoring software I have seen from just about any vendor, let alone a storage vendor.
Add this to autosupport, and I don't know how anyone could consider NetApp monitoring something that needs vast improvement to compete with other vendors.
I had a VP tell us out of the blue to come up with real numbers to predict growth for some small subset of our volumes yesterday, and DFM had this data without us even having to configure anything. It provided easy to read colorful charts - took about 3 minutes to figure out where to find them and email them away.
Hi CoreInfMan! :)
I apologize this will be a little lengthy.
Great that you like it, I hope you’ll like the rest of the stuff that comes with this as well. I wont go into the Pure offering here (not saying it doesn’t look nice, it’s a smart message) but I will drop the old quote of “there are no free lunches”. ;)
If you would like to have our view on their offer and how we are thinking going forward I would encourage you to hook up with your Netapp rep and ask.
In terms of cost, I dare to stick out my head and say that you will be pleasantly surprised once you go and ask for a price indication, we are positioned more than well compared our competition.
And if you havent done it already and want to take the AFF for a spin, ask for a T&B/POC system (we have made that a lot easier and more importantly, risk free, for pretty much anyone involved).
Now in regards to the AFF, CPU and the compression etc, the new TR’s (Oracle and MS SQL) and other performance reports are run with efficiencies enabled. 8.3.1 with compression is faster than 8.3 without.
I have not personally had a chance to try massive amounts of snaps and mirrors on a fully loaded system so I cant say what any impact could be but since almost no one will drive a AFF8060/8080 box to its limits there will most likely be plenty of CPU left.
EF-Series will still be around and expanded, it fills a gaps where consistent super low latency is the name of the game for example, it just cant be beat. [brag]I watched it do close to 100k IOPS, 100% write at 132us the other day with customer supplied workload, not a engineered lab test and none of the competition could do that.[/brag]
For monitoring the new 8.3.1 System Manager will have a new dashboard that will help out with monitoring.
Will it at First release be as good as some of our competition? No.
Is it better than earlier version? Very much so imho.
That said we are doing some pretty neat stuff that will allow for very high detail monitoring, visualization and reporting, our CPOC labs are using it for great effect right now and it will be available for customers too.
Sorry again for tl;dr sized reply.
Regards,
Daniel
Thanks Daniel. Our current heads (3250's) are really pushing the CPU's without doing a massive amount of IO so with shackles off disk wise, I would just be a little worried that the CPU's wouldn't keep up.
I've already in contact with my sales rep. High detail monitoring sounds great as OCPM doesn't cut the mustard for me. On Command Insight is a good product but it's too expensive.
This is the same old Netapp story, plenty of capacity and no performance because the CPUs are pegged out. Answer buy a larger pair of filer heads and licencing or go cdot, buy more of everything whilst keeping the dual node silo. Alternatively you could just buy something that's software stack wasn't conceived in the early 90's.
Just an aside, but what's with the "always on" statements when patently it isn't ?
NetApp announced nothing here, other than to say they are dropping their pants on price, undoubtedly because they are losing so badly to the other players in the field, oh and they will offer 7 years of support to compete against Pure Storage's Forever flash program.
EMC did the same thing with Xtremio, albeit that happened at EMCWorld.
Flash Ray still does not exist.
Bottom line is these things were done to try and protect NetApp's existing install base. Their fundamental underlying architectural and OE problems are not fixed, and they will not be winning any competitive Net New accounts with this stuff. It is however, a step in the right direction.
This article is almost entirely pure hype with no substance. Nice Job El Reg.
Hi all, Dimitris from NetApp here.
Lots of stuff is new as of June 23rd, check here: http://recoverymonkey.org/2015/06/24/netapp-enterprise-grade-flash/
We understand this upsets competitors and people stuck in old thinking modes, but such is the way the cookie crumbles.
No, we will not apologize for causing angst to competitors ;)
Thx
D
Yey, our NetApp comedian has returned.
Dimitris, your unwavering optimism in the face of a complete onslaught and bloodbath at NetApp's expense is the 8th wonder of the world.
Have you not seen the competitive landscape? Have you not seen your customers leaving in droves? Have you not seen your share price fall? Have you not seen your, ahem, growth figures.
I applaud your loyalty but perhaps its time for you to leave the sinking ship and deploy your talents elsewhere.
Hyperbole much? :)
A slight downturn in NetApp sales can equal the combined sales of all startup flash vendors combined.
Think about that for a second. That's how big we are.
Those same companies that don't have a share price to see fall, don't disclose financials, and are burning through VC funds with alacrity. I have news for you: VC funding isn't unlimited.
We have great products and the best flash solution in the marketplace.
#1 Storage Operating System
#1 Storage for Service Providers
#1 Converged Infrastructure
#1 Storage Provider to the Federal Government
#2 In the storage market
You're obviously right, these are the clear hallmarks of a sinking ship ;)
Thx
D
Hyperbole much? :)
-Nope. The market making its choice with its cash and so too the customers.
A slight downturn in NetApp sales can equal the combined sales of all startup flash vendors combined.
-Nope. No growth for 2 years, two rounds of redundancies, shares price flunk and analysts suggesting hold or sell. This 'slight downturn' is just another element in NetApp's woes and trashing the price because the products cant compete anymore makes matter worse as margins will fall, as will revenue and your already startled shareholders wont like that one bit. I think you are also wrong on the startup figures but that comment just smacks of arrogance, which is a very unattractive disposition.
Think about that for a second. That's how big we are.
-And you think size alone will save you? Arrogance again.
Those same companies that don't have a share price to see fall, don't disclose financials, and are burning through VC funds with alacrity. I have news for you: VC funding isn't unlimited.
-Blinkered. These minnows you so readily ignore will be those companies purchased by your competitors or go it alone and will continue to take your share of the market and prevent your further growth.
We have great products and the best flash solution in the marketplace.
-Nope. The market, both customers and investors dont agree with you. You did have great products but then so did Commodore and Atari in their time.
#1 Storage Operating System
-Ill concede this one. But for how long?
#1 Storage for Service Providers
-Evidence please.
#1 Converged Infrastructure
-First market mover status only. EMC isnt far behind. Nimble is converting FlexPods to SmartStacks.
#1 Storage Provider to the Federal Government
-Perhaps
#2 In the storage market
-Perhaps, but at the rate of shrinkage compared to the growth of competitors + cloud whitelabels + hyperconverged + a gaggle of really cute hybrids ++++++++ how long will this last. vVols kills NFS, argument gone. 2012 r2 is a more accomplished fileserver and is ahead of CIFS now, argument gone. cDOT, horrendous execution of a technology bought too long ago and pushed down the throats oif customer who, quite frankly didnt need it or want it - this was also probably the biggest reason Georgens had to go due to his obsession with cNOT.
You're obviously right, these are the clear hallmarks of a sinking ship ;)
-Indeed. :)
Thx
D
If NetApp is losing so badly, why isn't EMC's business growing? If NetApp's share price is so bad, why isn't EMC's share price surging? If Pure Storage's business is so good, why are losses going up even though revenue goes up?
By the way, the first storage vendor in the industry to support vVols was... NetApp.
"By the way, the first storage vendor in the industry to support vVols was... NetApp."
Ah, ok, so that'll be why HP 3PAR was the FC development partner on VVols for 3+ years and simply unlocked the functionality with a patch the same day VMware decided to launch them.
I wonder why then HP 3PAR is missing as a supported vendor/solution for VVOLs with VMware Horizon view? Guess who is the ONLY vendor on that list so far. NetApp AFF!! For both NAS and SAN.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2109267
Disclaimer: NetApp employee
As per usual you're changing the conversation to deflect from your previously misleading statement on Vvol support. That's a Horizon View qualification not a statement of Vvol support. Maybe we should all go off and start cherry picking non related qualifications in support of equally bogus claims.
-Disclosure NetApp Employee, my opinions may not be the same as my employers-
The technical payload in ONTAP 8.3.1 to support the All Flash FAS launch today is significant, and was developed in a surprisingly short timeframe given than 8.3.0 only went GA a few months ago.
If you're interested in some of the details, I wrote up some of the most relevant changes here http://signal-over-noise.io/2015/06/all-flash-fas-its-about-time-netappflash/
Combine that with re-pricing, new software, new warrantee and support structures, and a corporate change from hybrid-first to flash-first, and you'll see this is a major turning point in NetApp's go-to-market and development strategies.
isn't FlashRay still a single controller array? That can't be a viable option for enterprise data centers.
Is AFF really a big deal? Customers have had the option to build out a FAS with all flash for a while now. The code for 8.3.1 does appear to have significant improvements for AFF, so that is a plus. And my Netapp rep has been telling me they "will not lose on price." Should be interesting.
Really? Let's start with this list and see who can match AFF:
- Synchronous replication
- Live application moving between flash and disk
- Support for NFS in a VDI environment
- Integrated data protection with a software instance running in AWS
- Simple snapshot integration with Exchange, SQL Server, and Oracle
I'm listening.
Very carefully selected and worded features list there, I'm sure pretty much every vendor could throw up a few corner cases as you've done to lockout the competition. The reality is every major vendor has most of those and the potential uniques aren't particularly important unless your a NAS only vendor, or hoping for Amazon to sail to your rescue.
Wow, only 8 really expensive controllers bunged to the hilt with expensive flash to accommodate workloads 99.99999% of the market doesnt need. And still only 5th. Sounds practical...........
......erm.......
......and affordable......
.......erm........
.......and relevant.......
.......erm.........
.......and easy to manage........
.......you get my drift. Not sure how much more sarcastic I could have been in text.
Who really cares about SPC Benchmarks and philosophical discussions about controller architecture?
It makes me laugh when I see people (presumably SE's / software engineers) argue over some irrelevant technicalities, when the companies direction is decided so many levels above you, by people that only possess a fraction of your passion and loyalty.
And of course, the customers who have decided against cDOT ( cNOT is pretty funny, though).
I'm an ex NetApp employee and I thoroughly enjoyed working there while it lasted. I once was a enthusiastic as Dimitri, but once your not surrounded by the culture brainwash anymore, you see things a bit clearer and realize that NetApp is just another Storage vendor - which currently is going through some difficult times.
Your SPC benchmark won't save the company and those enthusiastic SE's with their numbers, facts and stories won't either.
Maybe if NetApp started listening to customers and partners a bit more they can direct their innovation efforts into what the market wants - and not what Netapp thinks it needs.
It's lovely that NetApp folk are posting here and great that you're mentioning you're from NetApp (which makes a nice change from other storage firms, naming no names...). But please try and contribute something meaningful rather than just linking to your spec sheets/marketing blogs/etc.
Ta
El Mod
SPC-1 is relevant because it's the only SAN benchmark we can all* agree to run.
Is its workload realistic to what most customers run? Probably not. Are the prices and configurations realistic to what most customers buy? Probably not.
Does it show which architectures can and cannot scale? Yes. Does it show which architectures can and cannot run at speed when scaled out? Yes. Could it be improved? Yes.
* With the exception of EMC...
Disclaimer: NetApp employee
Not everyone agrees with SPC-1. The current version of the benchmark writes data in the places and I/O sizes that simulate an SQL OLTP application pretty well it always writes the same data and SPC won't certify a test run if the storage system has inline deduplication turned on because the data would dedupe down to nothing.
The problem is that dedupe is built deep into the architecture of say SolidFire and XtremIO, they can't trun dedupe off because they use the hash to determine where the data is stored.
- Howard Marks
no not the dope dealer, the storage analyst at DeepStorage
From what I have seen the pricing on AFF substantially undercuts the other premium AFAs from the likes of Pure and XtremIO when you compare like for like performance and real-world usable capacity.
There is also no question that AFF and in particular an AFF/Hybrid FAS cluster provides a range of features that neither Pure, XtremIO, or any other start-up AFA vendor can come close to matching.
I have gone into a lot more detail at http://blog.snsltd.co.uk/netapp-has-just-made-2015-the-year-of-the-affordable-all-flash-array-part-1/
I really do not see how this announcement from NetApp is anything but positive news for the customer and is likely to result in downward price pressure on all AFAs.
While they have done good work boosting performance, and reduce price on their flash offering, they are still missing the point.
Customers are moving away from ontap not because of performance or pricing but because:
1) The architecture is complex
2) Manageability requires deep administrative skillset and understanding
3) Disparate management & monitoring tools with inter-dependencies
4) Borderline unacceptable support
5) Sales team Arrogance
6) For better or for worse the market is moving away from "Swiss knife" architectures and back to purpose built so the Unified message does not resonate as well as it used to 5-6-7 yrs ago.
The days where EMC, HP, NetApp would rule the roost are long gone. Customers have plenty of choices today.
This isn't just pricing.
We have addressed the objective points you're making:
1. The architecture the customer sees is as complex as they need it to be with 8.3.1. You should ask to see a demo of the GUI and offer constructive criticism after that happens. It is of similar simplicity as much less featured systems.
2. See #1 - managing this way easier than before.
3. OPM v2 is the only monitoring tool most customers will need. And it's free to use. The admin GUI now also has plenty of performance info so most customers won't even need OPM (which does much more than competitor monitoring tools).
4. I beg to differ
5. Sales team arrogance? I've heard horror stories about competitor sales team arrogance. I wonder who all those people are.
6. Many customers moved to purpose built because the enteprise systems were not as easy to use, inexpensive and fast as some startups. Now that we've changed all this... :)
Thx
D
.... Regarding sales team arrogance.
There's no doubt that sales teams (at any vendor) are made up of Competitive Type-A personality types. sometimes this might be taken as arrogance, whereas it's most likely just pride of achievement.
You can finally impress your friends with that 5K watch that you've earned by flogging tin to some SMB business at insane margins. All the while the enterprise sales reps are giving tin away to a large brand multinational, just so we can say we own the account.
Storage is not very sexy business, but it'll pay for the pool in the next bigger house.
it is pretty easy to have a simple gui or cli if you only support one or two protocols. just as it is pretty easy to manage something when it only supports a handful of features.
isilon is easy sure because everything is in one big pool. just kidding though, try having a realistic replication scenario for a million files. let me know how it turns out won't you?
the pure storage gui is very nice, no argument there. xtremio gui looks good too from youtube videos, but again.. what does it support? just fc & iscsi. oh and a handful of plug-ins for apps. great!
speaking of no arguments, yes netapp support could be improved. so could everybody's for that matter.
Good point Mark. It gives customers tier 0 performance for a better price without compromises.
In the end it's all about the customers need.
If a customer wants to accelerate their Oracle & save money on Oracle license cost right away.
NetApp All Flash FAS could help them with that.
http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4415.pdf If you are interested.
And by the way you could use Oracle's dNFS to make it fly (or FC or NFS).
It's all about the application stack and how to support the customer requirements.
NetApp All Flash FAS includes a phenomenal package
SMB/NFS/FCP or iSCSI - all protocols included, allways on Inline Compression,
Snapshots, fast & space efficient clones, Clustered Data ONTAP based Scale-up & Scale-out
Oracle Enterprise Mgr Integration, SQL Server Integration, Block level D2D Backup, Replication to Disk, Replication to Cloud, Multi-Tenancy with even overlapping IPspaces between clients, vRealise Integration, Azure Pack Integration, Non-Disruptive Operations and migrations, OpenStack Integration, vVol / vSphere 6 integration.
you can move hot workloads from the AFF nodes to the hybrid nodes. while it's running. is that not a cluster? they're part of the same namespace. is that not a cluster? you can move volumes, aggregates and network ports from the AFF nodes to the hybrid nodes too. oh yeah while it's running
So what you're saying is Netapp can now do things others have been doing for ever in multinode clusters. Others can also move workloads non disruptively between clusters, so more work required there then Netapp.
Are we supposed to infer all this supposed innovation just happened since the new guy took the helm? The reality is Netapp are still floundering about, this is nothing more than hyper marketing of fairly run of the mill iterative features in order to play catchup until they have something viable. That and some fault obvious financial engineering on the backend.
care to reference which multinode clusters you're talking about?
isilon is a multinode cluster but only supports nfs & cifs. no block. you can mix node types, yes. you can expand the cluster online, yes. but after adding a node you need to rebalance the cluster b/c the data has to be striped across the new nodes. i hope you're not doing client i/o while that is happening?
isilon onefs can't be upgraded while the cluster is online - you have to take the whole cluster down to do it. hope you're not serving i/o! you can't move IP addresses from node to node except for failovers. you can't downgrade the version of onefs at all, ever. and snapshots.. lol
xtremio is a multinode cluster but only supports fc & iscsi. no file. you can't mix node types. you can't expand the cluster online. you can't downgrade the version of xios at all, ever. i mean up until recently you couldn't even expand the cluster without having to destroy your data first! lol. last i checked you can't remove nodes from the cluster either. their snapshots are good enough
other than that though..?
Always on inline efficiency at the volume level, so no shared blocks across data not in the same volume, got it
Easy to manage until you need to grow it, then it's decision time, and it's back to legacy disk constructs (balancing RAID groups, building more storage pools, etc.)
How many management interfaces do we need? OPM, OCI, OCUM, WFA, and the new and improved System Manager? Yeah, great job simplifying.
And, nice dodge on support, it blows, everyone knows it.
NetApp has now become Dell, and it's a race to the bottom on price. Should we expect free printers and monitors as part of our next storage purchase to sweeten the pot?
Today's Internet is just as infantile as the situation was with the Usenet News groups. Lots of anonymity and nerds flexing their muscles.
I've long said, if people were to lose the veil, they'd probably not post so freely, lest their employers have to remediate and their families live in a state of constant embarrassment.
Mike - A NetApp employee.
Maybe just try taking some points away from this Mike or coming back with some counter arguments to criticism instead of labeling some of your customers nerds. Other NetApp posters have.
I doubt it would do NetApp any good if I announced where I work, my name and my job title when I ask a few questions and express my opinions, of which some are negative. I really like NetApp tech. Anything around snapshots can't be beaten and there is probably no other vendor that has such a rounded product in terms of features offered.
This is a massive step forward for you but lets not get carried away and think the rest of the market are now way behind NetApp. Knowing your weakness' as well as your strengths is key to success.
Netapp says AFF is good enough so there you have it. No need to argue about greatness.
In a CRN UK article published on 22/06, titled "Mixed Messages" Thomas Erlich - netapp VP EMEA said to the netapp partners:
"Our technology is good enough, the ecosystem is good enough - the resellers are waiting for it."
I'm sure he got a standing ovation for "good enough"
Good enough = Adequate
When the execs don't believe in the product why should the customer?
Well, in order to belive in a product you'd have to understand what the products and their value propositiobs actually are. I have worked with executives and leaders that didn't have a clue about either.
They somehow won the job lottery and have been put in charge of teams or client/partner facing roles without actually knowing what NetApp does or how their products help customers. God forbid letting them try to articulate the before mentioned.
With some weird sense of pride they even proclaim to "be non technical" as if that's something to be proud of.
As a leader, decission maker or customer facing individual one would expect that employees of high tech companies - at the top if their game - would have the slightest technical inclination, to assess where their product stands amongst the competition.
It's hard to identify yourself with a company, product or customer when what you stand for "is good enough". Oh well, move on to the next vendor and sell their widget.
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