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Technology Stocks : Network Appliance

NTAP 117.26

+1.1%

3:59 PM EST

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To: mmeggs who wrote (3294)	5/16/2000 3:06:00 PM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) of 10934

I love this question, though it seems I must answer similar ones almost everyday. But that's OK. It's the one answer I do have <g>. NTAP is unique in its approach to NAS/SAN. It's price/performance/reliability are a result of its proprietary OS (ONTAP) and the proprietary method of storing and retrieving data (Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL)). ONTAP is an OS, written from the ground up by NetApp to do one thing--store and retrieve data for clients/servers on a network. Thus all of the overhead and admin complexities of a general purpose OS are simply not there. WAFL is a scheme that stripes data across RAID arrays (which may be attached via SCSI or fibre channel (FC)) in such a way that head movement is almost nil and read/write caching is very efficient. Nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) is in the system for r/w caching and to almost 100% guarantee data integrity even if there is a catastrophic failure. Thrown into the mix is a very unique ability to create "SNAPSHOTs" of the entire data base so that users can retrieve files current as of a previous point in time without asking sys admin to retrieve the file(s) from a backup. SNAPSHOT is also used for other data recovery purposes including remote backup between two or more NetApp filers which may be separated over many miles. NetApp also provides "multiprotocol file interface security" so that the same files may be accessed from UNIX or Windows based clients and servers with complete cross-OS security protection. NetApp has patents for ONTAP, WAFL, SNAPSHOT, and multiprotocol security and you can bet they are aggressively protecting those very broad patents. The barriers to entry include those patents, the thousands of hours invested in their software and the inherent price/performance/reliability that comes with that software. NetApp is really a software company. It packages that software in thoroughly specified and tested commodity hardware, which NetApp does not manufacturer--it assembles and tests. So the price and margins are great. NetApp does have its motherboards manufactured especially for them, but those motherboards are really just stripped down versions of standard DEC-Alpha and Intel motherboards. They are stripped down because all the capabilities of a general purpose computer are not needed and because NVRAM is supported. Here is a document written by the founders of NetApp several years ago: netapp.com

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