NetApp - The Intelligent Data Infrastructure

This week marks my 90 days in NetApp. It was truly an eye opener to what thought to be a storage company can do beyond just data storage. NetApp has evolve over the years and with the amount of R&D and investment made to its portfolio that I believe most are not aware just like myself.

In my 90 days, I should address what NetApp offers in a nutshell:

1. The only true hybrid and multicloud solution that allows customer to consume storage solution in any shape and form with the same skillset and knowledge.

NetApp's secret sauce, ONTAP is the underlying software that empowered its storage solution since the very beginning as the King of NAS. Of course as a software, it has been able to support block and object similarly well. ONTAP One is the only soft license that comes in all NetApp unified storage solution at no additional charges.

But the power of ONTAP does not stop there, ONTAP Select, a virtual machine offering allows customer to consume the same ONTAP storage, right off virtualization platform such as VMware and KVM favours. It can also be found in the major CSP market place. This is often very useful in a remote, edge, IOT or even small projects or offerings that some customer build to offer to their customer. Not to mention, it supercharge HCI solution such as VMware vSAN completing it with enterprise like features. Giving customer the full control of the storage solution right to the versioning of their choice.

Similarly, the very same ONTAP can be found offered as the only first party* offerings by the major CSP namely AWS, Azure and Google since 2013. Where they are offered as native services, sold and managed by the respective CSP.

Note: *first party definition means to manage and sold by the CSP as part of their native service offering.

With multiple data sources, NetApp BlueXP allows customer with a centralize single pane of management to operate them all from a single place. Whether to set up data classification, data protection policy or even replication between sources, BlueXP does it all from one single GUI as what it does best, a Modern data estate operations made simple.

2. When we talk about data management, one key area is on data availability and protection. NetApp SnapCenter, a true native data protection in backing up your data supporting a wide range of databases out of the box is where it shines. Together with NetApp Trident, it even covers modern applications running kubernetes and help in provisioning and protection with ease on all NetApp sources. Top key area of critical capabilities on primary storage platform, NetApp come in top as shown below by Gartner.

Reference: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2IUGCBR5&ct=240919&st=sb

On data availability, especially area of Cyber Resilience, Autonomous Ransomware Protection (ARP) is one of NetApp unique feature provided as part of ONTAP. Which makes also NetApp the most secure storage on the planet. As the last line of defence in ransomware protection, NetApp ARP is able to detect and protect from ransomware in seconds (tested by SE labs). There is no solution which is able to do that due to lack of access to data. There are no vendors is able to provide ARP thanks to ONTAP. The secret sauce that makes NetApp unique. 

On top of that, NetApp is the only storage data management that provide Ransomware Recovery Guarantee.

3. In the area of data, NetApp has partner with multiple partners on data warehouse and data lakes such as SnowFlakes, Domino Volumes, DremIO, and many more. One area is also in AI, where during GTC 2025, NetApp has gotten the certified Nvidia SuperPod storage on the AFF A90 storage array.

On top of that, ever wonder a simple query of data from multiple sources in the AI space will need performance to return results and data movement will be everywhere. Not to mention, knowing where your data resides, is already a challenge. 

NetApp as announced during NetApp Insight 2024 with it's whitepaper, with a disaggregation and composable architecture for future ONTAP and as well as any data be it on prem, cloud, STaaS, any ONTAP storages will be able to benefit from ONTAP Data. In short, a purposeful built solution to be able to contain all metadata at one place where data can be from any location and be able to query those metadata without having to access them physically or transferring them across or even knowing where they reside. You will only need the data when you really need them by accessing it. This will be a very exciting solution where it has been an existing challenge where NetApp has just the solution to address it real soon.

While I continue my journey in NetApp, I am looking forward to NetApp Converge 2025 and see what awaits in the coming month. 

NetApp is not just another storage vendor, NetApp is the only Intelligent Data Infrastructure solution priovider.