NetApp Ups Flash Storage Ante

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“Flash is a topic relevant in the market — it’s changing the game in terms of delivering high performance in a small footprint,” said Mark Welke, senior director of Product Marketing at NetApp.

The company has unveiled the EF540 all-flash array, built on its E series platform, designed specifically for the enterprise and its high-performance needs. “There are other all-flash arrays on the market but we bring the performance and the face that it is designed for enterprise-class customers that need high availability, reliability and protection,” Welke said.

The EF540 is geared for performance-driven applications such as transaction processing, and delivers more than 300,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and “submillisecond data access,” according to NetApp. “It’s delivering databases 500 percent faster than spinning disks,” Welke noted, and features a fully redundant architecture. It is available now in 9.6TB and a 19.2TB versions.

The company also is taking the wraps off its new FlashRay architecture, which NetApp says is a purpose-built, all-flash storage architecture. The product line will be built specifically to maximize flash array performance and will be the eventual extension of NetApp’s flash strategy, Welke said.

According to the company, the FlashRay portfolio will “combine consistent, low-latency performance, high availability and integrated data protection with enterprise storage efficiency features such as inline deduplication and compression.” It is slated for general availability in 2014.

“The FlashRay architecture will be a game changer, as it will be built from the ground up to maximize the value of flash,” Welke said.

While storage may not be the sexiest of technologies for channel partners to sell, it’s an obviously necessary part of the network. The come-on is advancements such as flash, which can reduce the time and money storage technologies can incur. NetApp is betting big on flash–the question then becomes whether partners will follow suit.