NetApp: the beginning

“NetApp? Who else is this? ”, An ordinary Russian IT person will probably say by reading the post title.
Although, undoubtedly, as a company and its products, NetApp is far less familiar to the ordinary habraiser than, for example, HP , or Microsoft , nevertheless, it’s time for it to appear on Habré. Moreover, I am sure she has something to tell interesting. NetApp has always been a "community-oriented" company that loves and appreciates its users. I sincerely wish that in Russia it would become as user-loving as, for example, in its home country, in the United States. Let's try this step here.

Starting in 1993 as a classic startup, with the idea of ​​creating an inexpensive, easy to manage, install and maintain a “device” (appliance) of data storage, accessible to anyone who needs to store a lot of data on disks, and quickly access them, the company guessed the “wave” and gained wide popularity during the years of the Internet boom of the late 90s, when young Internet companies massively needed such simple and productive storage systems based on inexpensive ethernet technologies that simply “work”.

The story of “from a three-person startup to third-largest network storage system manufacturer in the world” was described by one of these “three”, an engineer and co-founder of NetApp, and now its vice president of development Dave Hitz in his book with an unexpected name "How to castrate a bull: unexpected lessons in risk, growth and business success . " Over time, we will try to publish translations of individual interesting chapters from this book.
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It is always strange to imagine a time when something “was not”. Today it is hard to believe, but in 93rd there was no such thing as a NAS on the market, in the usual sense we used today, strictly speaking NAS - Network Attached Storage, as a familiar concept today, “invented” and distributed NetApp. In the year it entered the market, they competed with Sun's NFS servers, as well as with the systems of the now-defunct Auspex, which features hundreds of disk NFS storage systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are targeted at large corporations. And now, after 17 years, one of them is known only to IT archaeologists, and the second also “does not feel very well”. What a funny analogy with paleontology, when the kingdom of giant armored dinosaurs crushed small, puny mice with mammals that turned out to be more adapted to the competitive evolutionary struggle.
Of course, since then, the "mouse" is not quite "mouse", and NetApp has moved from low-cost NAS to powerful and productive systems that are currently running on Yahoo! and Cisco, Oracle, Facebook, and Flickr. But it all started right then. So we can assume that your home Synology or Netgear is a “distant relative” and a descendant of the idea that the storage system can be simple, inexpensive and easily managed, even by a non-specialist, and to create it you do not have to buy and administer a separate server for Solaris or AIX .

Curiously, at the heart of all NetApp storage systems, since 1993, lies the concept of a special internal file system invented by Hitz and his startup partner, and also today one of NetApp executives, James Lau. This “file system” called Write Anywhere File Layout ( WAFL ) is still based on the capabilities of NetApp storage systems unique to the market (that's what a properly thought out architecture means!), And time has shown that over the past 17 years Conceptually, it is not outdated at all; on the contrary, the key ideas used in it today are transferred and implemented in the most advanced file systems, such as, for example, ZFS.

It was WAFL, and its internal “Unix-like” specialized operating system Data ONTAP that allowed it to build an easy-to-use, reliable and productive storage system, following the same path that Cisco once came up with the idea of ​​specialized appliances - “routers” under specialized "operating system" Cisco IOS, instead of setting up routing tables on servers under UNIX OS of "general use", which was the case for everyone.

It was NetApp who first invented and implemented the idea of ​​“ snapshots ” that was widely spread in the world of storage systems, or instantaneous captured “snapshots” of data on disks, which naturally fell on WAFL’s principles, and was implemented by almost all storage system manufacturers to some degree or another. data.
It was NetApp that first implemented the so-called unified storage concept, that is, data storage operating over any protocol, both NAS and SAN, depending on what your application or server infrastructure needs.
It was the principles of work that were laid back in 1993 that made it possible to easily implement all today's hot new features on NetApp systems, such as thin provisioning or deduplication of stored data.
It was not only NetApp that was one of the first (if not the first) to use the high-performance Fiber Channel protocol to connect arrays of hard disks to the controller instead of low-tech SCSI, but also released a storage system that uses an inexpensive block protocol. iSCSI (IP-SAN), allowing you to use all the advantages of a SAN without the use of ultra-expensive and difficult to use FC infrastructure facilities.

Unfortunately, the Internet boom of the late 90s bypassed Russia, so in our country NetApp appeared relatively late, and in the form of very expensive and high-performance solutions, therefore, such a mass market as in the USA, in the form of “young and greyhounds” Internet there are no companies in NetApp in Russia, but its popularity is growing, and, quite possibly, Russia will also discover for itself that fast and reliable disk storage systems are not necessarily a matter of the life of the offices of Gazprom and Rosneft, and that they do not necessarily have to be beyond Orogen, supercomplex in the installation, maintenance and service, and inaccessible "mere mortals".

After 17 years, NetApp still has an industry reputation as an “engineering”, “geek” company that prioritizes an engineering solution, invents and promotes something new, creates a product, and not just the sales of OEM solutions and the bonuses of top managers. . It is not for nothing that the company has been on the virtual list of the “best job” for many years now , often overtaking Google and Apple. NetApp is still striving to invent, invent and “change the world”, rather than just successfully selling the invented “10 years ago” and bask in the glow of glory that has long been out of its own.

In this blog, we will continue to talk about what NetApp’s storage systems are doing today, how they work “inside”, about the companies that use their solutions, what tasks they are and how they can be solved with their help.
And, by the way, feel free to put pressure on the “like” button in the blog, it won't cost you anything, and we will be pleased to see it. :)


Cats favor Netapp!