I was browsing around the web the other day, and stumbled upon a blog entry from Jesse Ruderman.  In this blog entry, he describes one of the reasons he likes the hosting provider DreamHost so much.  You know what that is?  Snapshots.  Sweet! DreamHost uses NetApp!  He mentions in there that he can access hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots by looking in his ‘.snapshot’ folder.

Working in engineering at a storage company, it’s not too often that you get to see someone use features that are in your products.  This article is a couple years old – but it’s cool to see NetApp technology being used and appreciated.   Jesse even did his homework and found the paper that the NetApp founders Dave Hitz, James Lau and Michael Malcolm wrote.

[tags]netapp, dreamhost, snapshots, storage, wafl[/tags]

Data ONTAP(R) DSM 3.1 for Windows(R) MPIO has been posted to the NetApp NOW website. Last week, we finalized the product and it is now available for download. This release includes the following new features:

• New load balance policies that offer multiple active paths to a LUN (also known as active/active policies). The new policies are: Round Robin, which uses all optimized paths, and Round Robin with Subset, which enables you to specify the combination of active and passive paths used.
  The Round Robin and Round Robin with Subset load balance policies work only with storage systems running Data ONTAP 7.2.2 and higher that use the single_image cfmode setting.
• Support for Microsoft clusters (also known as MSCS) on Windows 2000 Server. This configuration supports only the active/passive Auto Assigned load balance policy.
• Coexistence with the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.03 and higher on the same Windows host. You cannot, however, access the same LUN using both iSCSI and FCP.

Download: NetApp on the Web (NOW, requires license key)

[tags]netapp, mpio, multipathing, dsm, fcp[/tags]

Well, after a couple months of not blogging anything, I figured it’s about time to make another attempt. I’ve been extremely busy at work lately working on our next multipathing product for Windows. But, in my copious free time, I joined the NetApp RTP softball team. On Monday, we had our first game. We played a team called WMD and ended up losing 20-13. It was one of those games where one inning decided it all….they got the bases loaded and just kept hitting over and over and we weren’t able to stop them. It’s all for fun – and I had a blast.

Here’s the schedule:

Town of Cary – Coed C TB/MC Schedule

[tags]cary, softball, netapp, rtp, north carolina, coed[/tags]

Last week was an incredible week for me at NetApp.  My team just shipped two more products for the Windows® platform.

The first being the updated FCP Windows Attach Kit that was renamed to the FCP Windows Host Utilities 3.0 for Native OS.  New for this release is support for the Itanium (IA64) platform, a bump to the new QLogic driver (9.1.2.11 for SCSIport or 9.1.2.16 for STORport), and other bug fixes to the utilities and installation packages.

Secondly, the MAJOR release our department has been focused on is the Data ONTAP® DSM 3.0 for Windows MPIO.  This takes the place of the MPIO component that was previously bundled with SnapDrive®.  Now, the multipathing component belongs to our team, and the Device Specific Module was rewritten in this new version.

The Data ONTAP DSM 3.0 for Windows MPIO enables you to manage multiple Fibre Channel protocol (FCP) paths between a Network Appliance™ storage system and a Windows host computer. You can have one active path and multiple passive paths. If the active path fails, the DSM automatically switches to a passive path, maintaining the host’s access to its storage.

New to the DSM is support for SnapDrive 4.2, Failover and Automatic load balancing, and more.  It is available for Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 (x86, x64, Itanium).

Download: FCP Windows® Host Utilities 3.0 for Native OS (NOW) 
Download: Data ONTAP® DSM 3.0 for Windows® MPIO (NOW, requires license key) 

[tags]netapp, mpio, windows, snapdrive, fcp, fibre, ontap, now, multipath, multipathing, protocol, qlogic, emulex[/tags]

I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had much of a chance to blog.  October 3rd marked my one year anniversary with Network Appliance.  My experience can pretty much be summed up the same way I did for my three month and six month – awesome!  Without sounding like I’m trying to impress anyone, I work with a really great set of fun, talented and hard working people. 

As for the projects — lately I’ve been doing a lot of InstallShield and Windows driver installation development – learning a lot, and having a great time doing it.

Our quarterly earnings report was released yesterday, and it looks like we achieved 39% year-over-year growth: 

Sunnyvale, Calif. – August 16, 2006 — Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leader in advanced networked storage solutions, today reported results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2007. Revenues for the first fiscal quarter were $621.3 million, an increase of 39% compared to revenues of $448.4 million for the same period a year ago and an increase of 4% compared to $598.0 million in the prior quarter.

Link: Network Appliance Announces Results for First Quarter Fiscal Year 2007

[tags]netapp, results, growth, quarterly, quarter, appliance, storage[/tags]

Today, Network Appliance announced that an agreement to sell its NetCache business to Blue Coat Systems has been made.  Here's an exerpt from the press release:

"NetCache and the content delivery business have been a unique and effective sales, marketing, and technology asset to help us grow to a $2 billion dollar company, and we are proud of the team for the work they have accomplished," said Jay Kidd, senior vice president and general manager of NetApp Emerging Products Group…

View:  Press Release – NetApp to Sell NetCache Business to Blue Coat Systems

Last week, Rebecca's parents flew in for a visit.  On the evening of June 7, we were sitting in the living room and the question came about…what does NetApp do?  Everytime I am asked this question, I find it incredibly difficult to explain.  Even if the person is computer savvy, it's a challenge.  I always think of just a little over 3 1/2 years ago when I joined IBM as an intern — this whole world of Enterprise Storage was new to me.  I had no idea what these huge boxes were used for, much less what Fibre Channel or iSCSI was.  But, I made a 'best-effort' attempt to explain what we do by using the good old pen and paper.  

Anyway…the very day after I faced this situation, Dave Hitz blogged about the same situation with members of a Jury…

Read more:    Dave Hitz – What Does NetApp Do? (The Non-Technical Version)  

[tags]hitz, netapp, enterprise, storage, non-technical[/tags]

Today, we celebrated the 14th birthday of Network Appliance. The celebration at Research Triangle Park took place around 1:00pm EST today, shortly after the quarterly all-hands meeting with Dan Warmenhoven.

Happy Birthday NetApp!

[tags]netapp, birthday, 14, network appliance, rtp[/tags]

On April 13, I officially closed up my first development cycle at NetApp with the release of our FCP Windows Attach Kit 3.0. April 13 is the date it was posted to NOW (NetApp On the Web) — meaning it is now available. What is the Attach Kit?

The FCP Windows® Attach Kit 3.0 contains the software components you need to configure a Microsoft® Windows 2000 and 2003 machine into the host component of a NetApp SAN environment. The individual system components of the NetApp SAN environment are a Windows host and an attached NetApp storage system running Data ONTAP software. The storage system and host are connected with either direct or fabric connection methods.

This release includes support for AMD64/x64 (64-bit architectures), support for the QLogic 2460 and 2462 4GBps initiators, support for the Emulex LP11000 and LP11002 4GBps initiators (both PCI-X and PCI-e) and more.

Download: NetApp On the Web

[tags]netapp, wak, attach kit, x64, amd64, storage, fibre, fcp, san, qlogic, emulex[/tags]