Last night, the January 2006 edition of Tech OnTap was released. Althought I haven’t had time today to review the whole thing, it looks like there is some great stuff in there. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to sign up to receive the latest editions in your inbox. To give you a preview, here are this edition’s highlights:

• NetApp Vision of the Grid.
  
• SQL Server 2005 Benchmark
  
• NFSv4 Benefits and Misconceptions
• Free Monitoring Tool: ToasterView
• Special Access: Online Launch Event
• Six Predictions for 2006

There is also a great article in there describing the new TPC-C (Transaction Processing Performance Council) record that Netapp, IBM and Microsoft jointly achieved. This performance group benchmarked the fastest TPC-C performance number ever for a 16-way, Xeon based server: 492,307 tpmC. This setup cost $3,138,060! Click here for the published document from TPC.
There’s a ton of other stuff in this month’s edition…be sure to check it out!

[tags]netapp, ontap, tpc, benchmark, grid, nfs, nfsv4, predictions, tech[/tags]

This is a little late, but January 3rd was my three month anniversary with Network Appliance. I must say, it’s went by fast and I’ve enjoyed every minute here. NetApp has such a fast-paced work environment, that I’ve been busy working on something constantly since day one (That’s a good thing). But, as I begin to learn more about our products, I understand why we have been and are continuing to be so successful. Our storage is SIMPLE, and that’s our motto “Simplifying Data Management.” Our other one is “Fast, Simple, Reliable.” And that’s exactly what I have seen over the past few months. NetApp really strives to make these things as easy to operate as a toaster. That was the vision of one of the founders, Dave Hitz. That’s also why we’re named Network Appliance, their vision was to make an appliance. You plug it in, and run with it. I must say, that’s exactly what I’ve seen. The idea is that no matter what storage appliance you buy…if someone is trained on one, they can work on all of them without any further training. Now, we do release new versions of Data ONTAP that include more features, but the core features will always remain the same across all of our product lines. For instance, creating a LUN would still be ‘lun create -s -t /vol/volx/xxx’ and removing a lun would still be ‘lun destroy /vol/volx/xxx’. And, of course if you ever get stuck, typing the command alone gets you help (ie ‘lun create’, ‘lun destroy’, or simply just ‘lun’). All of the commands are that way! Anyway, the moral of the story is, in the words of Steve Ballmer, ‘I love this company!’ …everyone works hard to ensure the highest quality product with the most simplicity. As an employee, they have treated me extremely well, and I look forward to my future with NetApp.

[tags]NetApp, anniversary, SAN, NAS, simple, NTAP, appliance, toaster[/tags]

From an internal e-mail from our CEO, Dan Warmenhoven:

For the fourth year in a row, NetApp has been recognized by FORTUNE Magazine as among the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2005. This year we are ranked #27, vs. last year’s rank of #24.

Wow, it shows us as having only 2,712 U.S. employees. This survey had to be taken in early 2005, because I know we don’t have ~1500 overseas employees. I guess that’s what happens when you’re growing like crazy and hiring ~300 new employees per quarter.

View: Fortune: 100 Best Companies to Work For

Update: The Fortune site shows that we have 1,191 employees outside the U.S., so I guess I was wrong.

[tags]NetApp, Fortune[/tags]

A common naming theme at NetApp is “OnTap.” Our filer’s operating system is called Data OnTAP, our stock symbol is NTAP, and a few months ago, NetApp announced a monthly newsletter called Tech OnTap. If any of you readers have an interest in storage, specifically NetApp storage, feel free to sign up.

“Join Tech OnTap and get monthly IT insights, plus exclusive access to real-world best practices, white papers, demos, peer reviews, and more. (Not to mention special private events and even the occasional free beer.) Tech OnTap gives IT leaders what they need to make smart data management decisions.”

Sign up for Tech OnTap

[tags]NetApp, OnTap, NTAP, storage[/tags]

As my first post in the new direction of the blog, I’d like to share something that came out just the other day from InfoWorld. On January 2, 2006, InfoWorld made a list called the “2006 Technology of the Year Awards.” On this list, NetApp won for “Best NAS” with the NetApp FAS3020c. Their comments say that the FAS3020c has “Solid performace, flawless fail-over, exceptional scalability, and (is) a jack of all trades.” I must say that in my experience with the FAS3020c, I agree. I’ve been working with it for about a month now, and I absolutely love this box. It is truly amazing, and has been rock solid…although I’ve been using it to test SAN over FCP, I have no doubt NAS is the same way.

Source: Network Appliance™ FAS3000 Series Named Best NAS Product of the Year by InfoWorld
View: InfoWorld: 2006 Technology of the Year Awards: The winners’ list

[tags]NetApp, FAS3020, FAS3000, SAN, NAS, FCP, iSCSI[/tags]

NetApp RTP Engineering has a tradition called the “Name Game.” Every new employee to Engineering has to pass the “Name Game” as part of what seems like an initiation. At the end of the Engineering all-hands every other Thursday you have to go around the room and say everyone’s first name. At the end, everyone will vote to see if you pass or not. Well, I am happy to say I got a perfect 100% today. How many Engineers are there? Last count was 112. Yes, 112 RTP Engineers. Of course, not all of them make it to the meeting, but hey….I still got 100%. I got a nifty NetApp license plate holder thing, and various other items as part of passing. I’m happy it’s over…but it was fun.

Today, Network Appliance celebrates it’s 10th anniversary of being a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. To celebrate this milestone, Dan Warmenhoven (CEO), Tom Mendoza (President), James Lau (Co-Founder), and Dave Hitz (Co-Founder) were in New York today to ring the opening bell of the NASDAQ.

View: Press Announcement, NetApp Celebrates Ten Years as a Public Company
View: Pictures from the ringing of the bell.

My company, Network Appliance, has the most bizarre fiscal year schedule I have ever seen. First quarter is May, June, July…making second quarter August, September, October. Well, today, we announced our results for Q2 of FY06.

Network Appliance Announces Results for Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2006
Achieves 29% Year-over-Year Revenue Growth and Record Operating Income

Sunnyvale, Calif. — November 16, 2005 – Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), the leader in advanced networked storage solutions, today reported results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2006. Revenues for the second fiscal quarter were $483.1 million, an increase of 29% compared to revenues of $375.2 million for the same period a year ago and an increase of 8% compared to $448.4 million in the prior quarter.

–
It also mentions that we estimate another 25-28% growth next quarter.

View Press Release

20 Petabytes. What is that? That is a “best guess” of the amount of storage that NetApp’s largest customer currently has. How much is 20 Petabytes, you may ask? Well, let’s take a look:

1 Petabyte = 1000 Terabytes = 1000000 Gigabytes = 1000000000 Megabytes
To be exact, 1 Petabyte = 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes or 2^50 bytes. A lot of times, the exact number is rounded down to 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
But, we’ll use the exact amount…therefore, 20 Petabytes is 22,517,998,136,852,480 bytes.

So, what does that number mean? Well, according to James S. Huggins’ Refrigerator Door:
1 Megabyte = A small novel; 3.5″ floppy disk (1.44 MB)
1 Gigabyte = Paper in the bed of a pickup; symphony in high-fidelity sound; broadcast quality movie
1 Terabyte = Automated tape robot; all the X-ray films in a large technological hospital; 50,000 trees made into paper and printed; daily rate of EOS (Earth Orbiting System) data (1998)
1 Petabyte = 3 years of EOS data (2001)
2 Petabytes = All U. S. academic research libraries
20 Petabytes = 1995 production of hard-disk drives

Just think. A blank CD-R can hold approximately 650-700 Megabytes of data. That means that 20 Petabytes of storage is enough to hold the contents of about 32,168,568 700 MB CD’s. That’s a lot of data! It’s still not enough. The world needs more and more storage daily. It really is mind boggling…

I have just posted pictures from our department “team building” activity at the NC State Fair. You can find them here, or by selecting photos on the left side…they are under “NetApp.”