NetApp, Inc. is an American data infrastructure company that provides unified data storage, integrated data services, and cloud operations (CloudOps) solutions to enterprise customers. The company is based in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...
. It has ranked in the
''Fortune'' 500 from 2012 to 2021.
Founded in 1992
with an
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...
in 1995,
NetApp offers cloud data services for management of applications and data both online and physically.
History

NetApp was founded in 1992 by
David Hitz, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm as Network Appliance, Inc. At the time, its major competitor was
Auspex Systems. In 1994, NetApp received venture capital funding from
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...
.
On November 21, 1995, NetApp became a public company via an
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...
, opening on
Nasdaq
The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...
at $13.50 per share.
NetApp thrived in the
internet bubble
The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Intern ...
years of the mid-1990s to 2001, during which the company grew to $1 billion in annual revenue. After the bubble burst, NetApp's revenues quickly declined to $800 million in its fiscal year 2002. Since then, the company's revenue has steadily climbed.
In 2006, NetApp sold the NetCache product line to
Blue Coat Systems
__FORCETOC__
Blue Coat Systems, Inc., was a company that provided hardware, software, and services designed for cybersecurity and network management. In 2016 it was acquired by and folded into Symantec and in 2019 as part of Symantec’s Enterpri ...
.
In 2008, Network Appliance officially changed its legal name to NetApp, Inc., reflecting the nickname by which it was already well-known.
On June 1, 2015, Tom Georgens stepped down as CEO and was replaced by
George Kurian.
In May 2018, NetApp announced its first end-to-end NVMe array called All Flash FAS A800 with the release of ONTAP 9.4 software. NetApp claims over 1.3 million IOPS at 500 microseconds per high-availability pair.
In January 2019, Dave Hitz announced his retirement from NetApp.
Organization
George Kurian is the
Chief Executive Officer
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization.
CEOs find roles in variou ...
of NetApp and a member of the
Board of Directors
A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency.
The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...
. He joined the company in 2011. The President of NetApp is César Cernuda. In December 2009, Mike Nevens was appointed as
Chairman of the Board
The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a Board of directors, board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by ...
.
NetApp employs around 12,000 people worldwide.
Acquisitions
* 1997 ''Internet Middleware'' (IMC) acquired for $10.5 million. IMC's web proxy caching software became the
NetCache product line (which was resold in 2006).
* 2000 ''Orca Systems, Inc.'', a Waltham, Massachusetts-based developer of RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) software. This led to the development of the
Direct Access File System.
* 2004 ''Spinnaker Networks'' acquired for $300 million. Technologies from Spinnaker integrated into Data ONTAP GX and first released in 2006, later Data ONTAP GX become Clustered Data
ONTAP
* 2005 ''Alacritus'' acquired for $11 million. The tape virtualization technology Alacritus brought to NetApp was integrated into the NetApp NearStore Virtual Tape Library (VTL) product line, introduced in 2006.
* 2005 ''Decru'': Storage security systems and key management.
* 2006 ''Topio'' acquired for $160 million. Software that helped replicate, recover, and protect data over any distance regardless of the underlying server or storage infrastructure. This technology became known as ReplicatorX (Open System SnapVault), and has since been abandoned.
* 2008 ''Onaro'' acquired for $120 million. Storage service management software which helps customers manage storage more efficiently with guaranteed service levels for availability and performance. Onaro's SANscreen technology launched as such and probably later influencing NetApp OnCommand Insight.
* 2010 ''Bycast'' acquired for $50 million. Technologies from Bycast gave birth to the
StorageGRID object storage product.
* 2011 ''Akorri'' acquired for $60 million, allowing for cross-domain analysis and advanced analytics across data center infrastructures.
* 2011 ''Engenio'' (LSI) acquired for $480 million. Engenio was the external storage systems business unit of the
LSI Corporation
LSI Logic Corporation was an American company founded in Santa Clara, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in dat ...
. Launched as
NetApp E-Series product line
* 2012 ''Cache IQ'': Development of NAS cache systems
* 2013 ''IonGrid'': A technology developer that allows iOS devices to access users and internal business applications through a secure connection
* 2014 ''SteelStore'': NetApp acquired
Riverbed Technology's SteelStore line of data backup and protection products, which it later renamed as AltaVault
and then to Cloud Backup
* 2015 ''SolidFire'': In December 2015 (closing in January 2016), NetApp acquired founded in 2009
flash storage vendor
SolidFire for $870 million.
* 2017 ''Plexistor'': NetApp first announced the acquisition of a company and technology called Plexistor in May 2017. Technologies from Plexistor gave start for
MAX Data product
* 2017 ''Greenqloud'' was acquired with its Qstack product. Greenqloud was a private startup company that created cloud services, orchestration and management platform for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments.
* 2017 ''Immersive Partner Solutions'', a
Littleton, Colorado
Littleton is a home rule municipality city located in Arapahoe, Douglas, and Jefferson counties, Colorado, United States. Littleton is the county seat of Arapahoe County and is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Stati ...
based developer of software to validate multiple converged infrastructures through their lifecycles
* 2018 ''StackPointCloud'': NetApp acquired StackPointCloud, a project for multi-cloud Kubernetes as-a-service and a contributor to the Kubernetes which started the Kubernetes Service product.
* 2019 ''Cognigo'': Israeli AI-driven data compliance and security supplier
* 2020 ''Talon'': Cloud Data Storage company enabling data consolidation and security for enterprises.
* 2020 ''CloudJumper'': Cloud software in
VDI and remote desktop services
* 2020 ''Spot'': handled compute management and cost optimization in the public clouds
* 2021 ''CloudHawk.io'': AWS Cloud Security Posture.
* 2021 ''CloudCheckr'': Cloud Optimization Platform.
* 2022 ''Fylamynt'': CloudOps automation technology company.
* 2022 ''Instaclustr'': open source database startup.
Business Development
NetApp's
fiscal year
A fiscal year (also known as a financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. La ...
ends at the end of April. For NetApp, the 2023 fiscal year began on April 30, 2022, and ended on April 28, 2023.
While NetApp generated revenue of $15 million for fiscal year 1995, it exceeded $1 billion for the first time in 2004. In the fiscal year 2023, revenue reached US$6.36 billion.
Sales Figures
Source:
Competition

NetApp competes in the
computer data storage
Computer data storage or digital data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers.
The cent ...
hardware industry. In 2009, NetApp ranked second in
market capitalization
Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders.
Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by ...
in its industry behind
EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation (stylized as EMC²) was an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which sold data storage device, data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud computing and other pro ...
, now Dell EMC, and ahead of
Seagate Technology
Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American Computer data storage, data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with ...
,
Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs).
History
1970s
Western Digital ...
,
Brocade
Brocade () is a class of richly decorative shuttle (weaving), shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in coloured silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian langua ...
,
Imation, and
Quantum
In physics, a quantum (: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This me ...
. In total revenue of 2009, NetApp ranked behind EMC, Seagate, Western Digital, and ahead of Imation, Brocade,
Xyratex, and
Hutchinson Technology. According to a 2014 IDC report, NetApp ranked second in the network storage industry "Big 5's list", behind EMC (Dell), and ahead of IBM, HP and Hitachi.
Partnerships
On March 1, 2021, a partnership with the
Aston Martin F1 Team
Aston Martin is a British car manufacturer that has participated in Formula One in various forms and is currently represented by a team named as Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team. The company first participated in Formula One during the 1959 Formula ...
was announced. NetApp is currently responsible for data provision and cloud services for the racing team. Similar partnerships have been in place with the
MotoGP
Grand Prix motorcycle racing is the highest class of motorcycle road racing events held on Road racing, road circuits sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). Independent motorcycle racing events have been held sin ...
team
Ducati Corse
Ducati Corse () is the racing division of Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A., Ducati Motor Holding.
Organization
The company is split into four departments with 100+ employees working for the Ducati Corse, almost 10% of the Ducati Motor Holding S.p. ...
since 2018, and the
TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team since July 2022.
Products
Hardware Appliances

NetApp's FAS (Fabric-Attached Storage), AFF (All-Flash FAS), and ASA (All SAN Array) storage systems are the company's flagship products. Such products are made up of storage controllers, and one or more enclosures of hard disks, known as shelves.
In the early 1990s, NetApp's storage systems initially offered
NFS and
SMB protocols based on standard
local area network
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...
s (LANs), whereas block storage consolidation required
storage area network
A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block device, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access Computer data storage, data storage devices, such as disk ...
s (SANs) implemented with the
Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...
(FC) protocol.
In 2002, in an attempt to increase market share, NetApp added block-storage access as well, supporting the Fibre Channel and
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...
protocols. NetApp systems support Fibre Channel,
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...
,
Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a computer network technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks. This allows Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks (or higher speeds) while preserving the Fibre Channel ...
(FCoE) and the FC-NVMe protocol.
ONTAP
Many of NetApp's products use the company's proprietary
ONTAP data management operating system, under continuous development since 1992, which includes code from Berkeley Net/2
BSD Unix, Spinnaker Networks technology and other operating systems.
[
] There are three
ONTAP platforms: FAS/AFF systems, software on commodity servers (
ONTAP Select) as virtual machine or in the cloud (
Cloud Volumes ONTAP). All ONTAP systems use
WAFL file systems which provide basis for snapshots and other snapshot-based and data protection technologies. Key IP from ONTAP is also used in NetApp Astra, a newer data management-as-a-service system built for
Kubernetes
Kubernetes (), also known as K8s is an open-source software, open-source OS-level virtualization, container orchestration (computing), orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Googl ...
.
Cloud Backup
Previously known as Riverbed SteelStor before its acquisition by NetApp, this product was later renamed to AltaVault and then to Cloud Backup. Cloud Backup was initially available in three forms: as a hardware appliance, virtual appliance, and cloud appliance. Later, NetApp announced the end of sale for hardware and virtual appliances. Data placed on NAS share on Cloud Backup deduplicated, compressed, encrypted and transferred to object storage systems like
Amazon S3
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its e-commerc ...
,
Azure Blob Storage or StorageGRID; thus Cloud Backup appears as a transparent gateway for archiving data to a private or public cloud.
NetApp HCI

NetApp
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) or sometimes referred by NetApp as Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, NetApp HCI is based on commodity blade and rack servers, NetApp Element software and
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere (formerly VMware Infrastructure 4) is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform.
It includes vCenter Configuration Manager, as well as vCenter Application Discovery Manager, and the ability of vMotion to move more than o ...
. NetApp HCI includes the NetApp Deployment Engine (NDE) for configuring vCenter,
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...
es, login and password, and storage nodes.
2U HCI Chassis with four half-width blade servers

Each storage node drive set consists of six SSD drives directly connected to a dedicated storage node and installed in front of the blade chassis. Each storage and compute blade nodes have
25 Gigabit Ethernet ports which could be used as 10 Gbit/s ports as well as dedicated 1 Gb ports for management purposes. Network switches were not included, and in NetApp HCI with Element software release 11 NetApp announced H-Series Switch as part of HCI, so all hardware components must be bought from NetApp.
ONTAP Select available as
SDS on NetApp HCI for customers interested in NAS protocols. The self-service portal allows automating common provisioning and management tasks.
SolidFire
SolidFire storage system uses an OS called NetApp Element Software (formally SolidFire Element OS) based on
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
and designed for SSDs and scale-out architecture with the ability to expand up to 100 nodes and provide access to data through SAN protocols
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...
natively and
Fiber Channel with two gateway nodes. Element OS provides a REST-based API for storage automation, configuration, management, and consumption. Element SW version 11 will not support FC. SolidFire uses iSCSI login redirection to distribute reads and writes across the cluster using helix algorithm. Each node has pre-installed SSD drives, which must all be of the same type and capacity. Each SolidFire cluster can have a mix of different node models and generations.
StorageGRID

StorageGRID is a software-defined storage system which provides access to data via object IP-based protocols like
S3 and
OpenStack Swift. It is available in the form of hardware or as software.
E-Series

Previously known as LSI Engenio RDAC after NetApp acquisition the product renamed to NetApp E-Series. It is a general-purpose enterprise storage system with two controllers for SAN protocols such as
Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to Server (computing), servers in storage area networks (SAN) in ...
,
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...
,
SAS and
InfiniBand
InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also used ...
(includes SRP, iSER, and NVMe over Fabrics protocol). NetApp E-Series platform uses proprietary OS SANtricity and proprietary
RAID
RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...
called Dynamic Disk Pool (DDP) alongside traditional RAIDs like RAID 10, RAID 6, RAID 5, etc. In DDP pool each D-Stripe works similar to traditional
RAID-4 and
RAID-6 but on block level instead of entire disk level, therefore, have no dedicated parity drives. DDP compare to traditional RAID groups restores data from lost disk drive to multiple drives which provide a few times faster reconstruction time while traditional RAIDs restores lost disk drive to a dedicated parity drive. Starting with SANtricity 11.50 E-Series systems EF570 and E5700 support
NVMe
NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...
over Ethernet (
RoCEv2) with 100 Gbit/s Ethernet ports and NVMe over InfiniBand. Starting with EF600 systems are end-to-end NVMe and capable of NVMe/FC in addition to NVMe/RoCE and NVMe/InfiniBand. Sync and async mirroring are supported with SANtricity 11.50. SANtricity Unified Manager is a web-based manager that supports up to 500 EF/E-Series arrays and supports LDAP, RBAC, CA and SSL for authorization and authentication. In August 2019 NetApp announced E600 with support for NVMe/IB, NVMe/RoCE, NVMe/FC protocols, up to 44 GBps of bandwidth and full-function embedded REST API.
Converged Infrastructure
FlexPod, nFlex and ONTAP AI are commercial names for
Converged Infrastructure (CI). Converged Infrastructures are joint products of a few vendors and consists from 3 main hardware components: computing servers, switches (in some cases switches are not necessary) and NetApp storage systems:
* FlexPod based on
Cisco Servers and
Cisco Nexus switches
The Cisco Nexus series switches are modular and fixed port network switches designed for the data center. Cisco Systems introduced the Nexus Series of switches on January 28, 2008. The first chassis in the Nexus 7000 family is a 10-slot chassis w ...
* nFlex based on
Fujitsu Servers with
Extreme Networks switching
* ONTAP AI using
NVIDIA
Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
supercomputers with Mellanox or Cisco Nexus switches.
Converged Infrastructures typically include popular infrastructure software like
Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), Red Hat OpenStack Platform,
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere (formerly VMware Infrastructure 4) is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform.
It includes vCenter Configuration Manager, as well as vCenter Application Discovery Manager, and the ability of vMotion to move more than o ...
,
Microsoft Servers
Microsoft Servers (previously called Windows Server System) is a discontinued brand that encompasses Microsoft software products for Server (computing), server computers. This includes the Windows Server editions of the Microsoft Windows operati ...
and
Hyper-V,
SQL
Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel")
is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...
,
Exchange
Exchange or exchanged may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Film and television
* Exchange (film), or ''Deep Trap'', 2015 South Korean psychological thriller
* Exchanged (film), 2019 Peruvian fantasy comedy
* Exchange (TV program), 2021 Sou ...
,
Oracle VM and
Oracle DB,
Citrix Xen,
KVM,
OpenStack
OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pla ...
,
SAP HANA etc. and might include self-service portals
PaaS
Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a cloud computing service model where users provision, instantiate, run and manage a modular bundle of a computing platform and applications, w ...
or
IaaS like
Cisco UCS Director (UCSD) or others.
FlexPod

The FlexPod platform is designed to integrate cloud services and manage data in a Converged Infrastructure. Offerings include FlexPod XCS, FlexPod Express, FlexPod Datacenter, and FlexPod AI.
NetApp ''Converged Systems Advisor'' (CSA) is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that consists of an on-premises agent and a cloud-based portal.
Multi-Pod is a FlexPod solution with a FAS or AFF system leveraging
MetroCluster technology for stretching storage system between two sites.
ONTAP AI

Converged infrastructure solution based on Cisco Nexus 3000 or Mellanox Spectrum switches with 100 Gbit/s ports, NetApp AFF storage systems,
Nvidia DGX supercomputer servers. DGX servers interconnected with each other over
RDMA over RoCE, and developed for
Deep Learning
Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...
based on Docker containers with NetApp Docker Plugin Trident. DGX servers connected to the storage with Ethernet connection and consume space over NFS protocol.
OnCommand Insight
OnCommand Insight (OCI) is software for data center management, capacity management, and infrastructure analytics.
Memory Accelerated Data
NetApp MAX Data for short, MAX Data is a proprietary
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
file system with auto-tiering from PMEM to SSD and data protection features.
MAX Data consists of two tiers: Tier 1 and Tier 2, where cold data destaged to Tier 2 from Tier 1 or promoted from Tier 2 to Tier 1 when accessed, by MAX Data tiering algorithm, transparently to the applications.
Cloud Business
''Cloud Central'' is a web-based GUI interface that provides a multi-cloud interface based on Qstack for NetApp's cloud products like Cloud Volumes Service, Cloud Sync, Cloud Insights, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, SaaS Backup in multiple public cloud providers.
''Cloud Manager'' is a service for high-level management of ONTAP-based systems on-premise and in the cloud: CVO, CVS, ONTAP Select, FAS, and AFF. Cloud Manager allow setup SnapMirror data protection replication between systems through the GUI interface with drag-and-drop.
Cloud Volumes On-Prem
It is a storage system installed on-premises in a customer's data center and available to the customer as service. All work for updates and technical support provided by NetApp while the customer consumes space from the storage using web-based GUI or API and performs data backup and replication if needed.
Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Formally ONTAP Cloud.
Cloud Volumes ONTAP (CVO) is software-defined (SDS) version of
ONTAP available in some public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud. Cloud Volumes ONTAP is a virtual machine which is using commodity equipment and running ONTAP software as a service.
Cloud Volumes Service
Cloud Volumes Service is a service in Amazon AWS and Google Cloud it is public cloud provider based on
NetApp All-Flash FAS systems and
ONTAP software, allowing for synchronizing data between cloud and on-premises NetApp systems.
NetApp Private Storage
NetApp Private Storage (NPS) is based on
Equinix partner provided
colocation service in its data centers for NetApp Storage Systems with 10 Gbit/s direct connection to public cloud providers like Azure and AWS etc. NPS storage could be connected to a few cloud providers or on-premise infrastructure, thus in case of switching between clouds does not require data migration between them.
Astra
Astra is NetApp's
Kubernetes
Kubernetes (), also known as K8s is an open-source software, open-source OS-level virtualization, container orchestration (computing), orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Googl ...
cloud service for consistent application-consistent backups, Data Cloning, and data mobility across clouds and on-premises. Astra can deploy and maintain data-rich applications across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and on-premises datacenters, enabling easily backup and restoring data or migrating the applications from one Kubernetes cluster to another in a multi-cloud environment.
SaaS Backup
NetApp SaaS Backup (Previously Cloud Control) is back up and recovery service for
SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...
Microsoft
Office 365
Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs form ...
and
Salesforce
Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and ap ...
which provide extended, granular and custom retention capabilities of backup and recovery process compare to native cloud backup. NetApp planning to extend SaaS Backup and recovery service for
Google Workspace
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps) is a collection of cloud computing, Productivity software, productivity and Collaborative software, collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It con ...
(formerly G Suite and Google Apps for Work),
Slack and
ServiceNow
ServiceNow, Inc. is an American software company based in Santa Clara, California, that supplies a cloud computing platform for the creation and management of automated business workflows. It is used predominantly for the automation of informati ...
.
Cloud Sync
Cloud Sync is service for synchronizing any NAS storage system with another NAS storage, an Object Storage like Amazon S3 or NetApp Storage GRID using an object protocol.
Cloud Insights
Cloud Insights is an
SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...
application for monitoring infrastructure application stack for customers consuming cloud resources and also build for the dynamic nature of microservices and web-scale infrastructures. Cloud Insights uses similar to OnCommand Insight front-end API but different technology on the back-end. Cloud Insights available as a preview and will have three editions: Free, Standard and Premium.
Cloud Secure
Cloud Secure is a SaaS security tool that identifies malicious data access and compromised users, in other words, user behavior analytics. Cloud Secure uses machine learning algorithms to identify unusual patterns, and can identify if users have been infected with
ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware that Encryption, encrypts the victim's personal data until a ransom is paid. Difficult-to-trace Digital currency, digital currencies such as paysafecard or Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, cryptocurrencies are com ...
, and prevent them from encrypting the files.
Currently supported data repositories include NetApp Cloud Volumes, NetApp ONTAP, NetApp StorageGRID,
OneDrive
Microsoft OneDrive is a file-hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released as SkyDrive in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share, back-up and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage Frontend and backe ...
, AWS, Google Suite, HPE, DELLEMC Isilon,
Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...
,
Box
A box (plural: boxes) is a container with rigid sides used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides (typically rectangular prisms). Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or v ...
, @workspace and
Office 365
Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs form ...
.
NDAS
NetApp Data Availability Services (NDAS) provides data protection in the cloud
GUI. This cloud service is located only in AWS but can be copied to other clouds. NDAS is for backup, data protection and disaster recovery purposes from ONTAP storage. ONTAP systems starting with ONTAP 9.5 have a built-in proxy application that converting NetApp snapshots with WAFL data and metadata into the S3 format unlike FabricPool technology, which stores only data in the object storage. NDAS is one of the Data Fabric manifestations.
Data Fabric
Often referred as to "Data Fabric Story," the variety of integrations between NetApp's products and data mobility is considered by NetApp to be its ''Data Fabric vision'' . Data Fabric defines the NetApp technology architecture for hybrid cloud and includes:
*SnapMirror replication from SolidFire to ONTAP
*SnapMirror replication from ONTAP to Cloud Backup
*FabricPool tiering feature for de-staging cold data from ONTAP to StorageGRID, Amazon S3 or Azure Blob
*Volume Encryption with FabricPool provide secure data storage and secure over the wire transfer of enterprise data in a cloud provider; SnapMirror between FAS, AFF, ONTAP Select and Cloud Volumes ONTAP
*Archiving and DR to public cloud
*CloudMirror feature in StorageGRID replicates from on-premise object storage to Amazon S3 storage and triggers some actions in AWS Cloud
*SolidFire backup to StorageGRID or Amazon S3
*Cloud Backup archiving to variety of object storage systems (including StorageGRID) or many cloud providers
*CloudSync is replication of NAS data to object format and back
*replication to Cloud Volumes Service
*Data backup to on-premise storage from SaaS Backup
*SANtricity Cloud Connector for block-based backup, copy, and restore of E-Series volumes to an S3, NetApp Data Availability Services for data protection from ONTAP to cloud S3 storage with backup, DR and data mining capabilities, etc.
Software integrations
NetApp products could be integrated with a variety of software products, mostly for
ONTAP systems.
Automation
NetApp provides a variety of automation services directly to its products with HTTP protocol or through middle-ware software.
Docker
NetApp Trident software provides a persistent volume plugin for Docker containers with both orchestrators Kubernetes and Swarm and supports ONTAP, SolidFire, E-Series, Azure NetApp Files (ANF), Cloud Volumes and NetApp Kubernetes Service in Cloud.
Also, NetApp with
Cisco
Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...
sells CI architectures which incorporate the Trident plugin: FlexPod Datacenter with Docker Enterprise Edition and ONTAP AI.
CI/CD
NetApp Jenkins Framework provides integration with ONTAP storage for DevOps, accelerating development with automation operations like provisioning and data-set cloning for test and development and leverage ONTAP for version control, create and delete checkpoints etc. Jenkins also integrate with NetApp Service Level Manager software which provides RESTful API for guarantee level of storage performance. Apprenda and CloudBees integrate and accelerate DevOps through Docker persistent volume plugin and Jenkins Framework integration. Apprenda could be integrated with OpenStack running on top of FlexPod.
Backup and recovery
CommVault, Veeam and Veritas have integrations with ONTAP, SolidFire, Cloud Backup and E-Series leveraging storage capabilities like snapshots and cloning capabilities for testing backup copies and SnapMirror for Backup and Recovery (B&R), Disaster Recovery (DR) and Data Archiving for improving restore time and number of recovery points (see
RPO/RTO). Cloud Backup integrates with nearly all B&R products for archiving capabilities since it is represented as ordinary NAS share for B&R software. Backup and recovery software from competitor vendors like IBM Spectrum Protect,
EMC NetWorker,
HP Data Protector, Dell vRanger, Acronis Backup and others also have some level of integrations with NetApp storage systems.
Enterprise applications
NetApp systems can integrate with enterprise applications for backup purposes, cloning, provisioning, and other self-service storage features. Oracle DB can be connected using Direct NFS (dNFS) client build inside database app which will provide network performance, resiliency,
load balancing for NFS protocol with ONTAP systems.
Oracle DB, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, MySQL, Mongo DB, SAP HANA, MS Exchange, VMware vSphere, Citrix Xen, KVM integrate with NetApp systems for provisioning, cloning and additional backup and recovery build - this includes capabilities like SnapShots, SnapVault and SnapMirror with a variety of software including NetApp's SnapCenter and SnapCreator.
OpenStack
NetApp systems have integration with such open source projects as OpenStack Cinder for Block storage (SolidFire, ONTAP, E-Series, OnCommand Insight, Cloud Backup), OpenStack Manila for Shared file system (ONTAP, OnCommand Insight), Docker persistent volumes through Trident plugin (SolidFire, ONTAP, E-Series) and others.
NetApp cloud technologies
NetApp's technology for private, public, and hybrid clouds includes, among other things:
* Building, protecting, and managing your hybrid multi-cloud data assets (including tiering, data classification, and infrastructure/application monitoring)
BlueXP Backup and Recovery* Storage as a Service with these public clouds:
*
Amazon FSx for NetApp*
Azure NetApp Files*
Google Cloud NetApp Volumes* Storage as a Service on-premises:
*
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
OEM
IBM used to OEM NetApp FAS systems under its own brand known as IBM N-series and this partnership ended May 29, 2014. Dell OEM NetApp E-Series under its own name PowerVault MD.
September 13, 2018, Lenovo and NetApp announced its technology partnership, so Lenovo OEM Netapp products under its own name: Lenovo ThinkSystem DE (using NetApp's EF and E-Series array technology), and ThinkSystem DM uses ONTAP software with Lenovo servers and supports FC-NVMe (analog for NetApp FAS and AFF systems).
Vector Data builds rugged and carrier-grade versions of NetApp FAS, AFF, E-Series and SolidFire products with -48V DC power and other customizations under their Vault product line.
Reception
Controversy
Syrian surveillance
In November 2011, during the
2011 Syrian uprising, NetApp was named as one of several companies whose products were being used in the Syrian government crackdown. The equipment was allegedly sold to the Syrians by an authorized NetApp reseller.
On April 7, 2014, NetApp was notified by the US Department of Commerce "that it had completed its review of this matter and determined that NetApp had not violated the U.S. export laws", and that the file on the matter had been closed.
Legal dispute with Sun Microsystems
In September 2007, NetApp started proceedings against
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...
, claiming that the
ZFS
ZFS (previously Zettabyte File System) is a file system with Volume manager, volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris (operating system), Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris, includin ...
File System developed by Sun infringed its patents. The following month, Sun announced plans to countersue based on alleged misuse by NetApp of Sun's own patented technology. Several of NetApp's patent claims were rejected on the basis of
prior art
Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria f ...
after re-examination by the
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency in the United States Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark ...
. On September 9, 2010, NetApp announced an agreement with
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...
(the new owner of Sun Microsystems) to dismiss the suits.
Accolades
NetApp was listed amongst Silicon Valley Top 25 Corporate Philanthropists in 2013. NetApp was Named Brand of the Year by the Think Global Awards in 2019.
''In 2023, NetApp was named “Best Company to Work For''” by U.S. News & World Report.
In 2024, consulting firm Frost & Sullivan named NetApp “Global Company of the Year in the hybrid cloud storage management industry.”
Charity
In fiscal year 2021, NetApp made $3 million in corporate donations.
NetApp participates in the World's Largest Lesson, a program of Project Everyone in partnership with
UNICEF
UNICEF ( ), originally the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, officially United Nations Children's Fund since 1953, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing Humanitarianism, humanitarian and Development a ...
, and with the support of
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
.
Through the NetApp Serves program, 2,141 employees volunteer for social projects and charitable causes.
Through the NetApp Community Investments program, NetApp and its employees are committed to charitable causes in education, food provision and reducing homelessness.
With Data Explorers, NetApp helps young people discover and develop data literacy.
Environment
Over the past six years (as of 2023), NetApp has reduced its greenhouse gas intensity by 70%. Between 2017 and 2022, NetApp reduced its energy consumption by 15%, and consequently reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 61%. NetApp is actively working to significantly reduce its
Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions by 2030.
In 2021, the
CDP Climate Change Score improved to B-.
In 2022, NetApp switched to a new global e-waste partner and is actively promoting
WEEE -compliant programs to reduce e-waste.
In 2022, the NetApp facility at
Wichita State University
Wichita State University (WSU) is a public research university in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. The university offers more than 60 undergraduate degree programs in more than 200 areas of study in ...
's (WSU) Innovation Campus in Kansas was completed. The facility is powered 100% by local wind power.
NetApp's
Bangalore
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
campus gets 88% of its electricity from renewable energy, including wind turbines, hydroelectric power plants, and a small on-site solar plant with a production capacity of about 100 kW.
At the end of fall 2022, NetApp ranked among the top 7% of companies rated by EcoVadis.
The NetApp Environmental Management System, and thus almost all global NetApp offices, are certified according to ISO14001:2015.
In some NetApp offices, employees have formed Green Teams to integrate sustainable values into their daily lives.
See also
*
Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL), used in ONTAP storage systems
*
Team NetApp
*
Kaleidescape
References
Further reading
*
External links
NetApp Data Storage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Netapp
Companies based in San Jose, California
Computer companies established in 1992
American companies established in 1992
1995 initial public offerings
Computer companies of the United States
Computer hardware companies
Computer storage companies
Storage Area Network companies
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Companies listed on the Nasdaq