Midrange NetApp flash looks to steal Dell EMC's thunder

NetApp has fired a salvo at archrival Dell EMC, launching a midrange NVMe flash system as part of an OnTap OS upgrade.

The 2U NetApp A320 flash building block expands its All-Flash Fabric-Attached Storage (AFF) A-Series lineup, which spans four models available in varying capacities. The multiprotocol fabric-attached storage (FAS) is the NetApp flash flagship, supporting Fibre Channel block and CIFS, NFS and SMB file storage.

NetApp integrated NVMe fabric support in FAS arrays last year, coupled with back-end SAS SSDs for storage. AFF A320 controllers connect to an external shelf of dual-ported NVMe SSDs via remote direct memory access. The system contains no internal storage.

An A320 system provides 734 TB of raw capacity. NetApp claims users can scale to 35 petabytes of effective flash in a maximum 24-node cluster with data reduction.

Most major enterprise storage vendors have introduced NVMe support similar to what NetApp has done across its AFF arrays. The NVMe standard offers substantial latency reductions by sending commands across a PCIe bus. That breaks the logjam of SCSI commands routed through host bus adapters.

The NetApp flash news comes one week after Dell EMC reiterated its plan for a new "midrange.next" array based on Dell Power branding this year. Dell EMC claims its Unity array is NVMe-ready, but it isn't shipping with NVMe flash.

"Our competitor is talking about midrange.next, and we've already delivered it," said Joel Reich, NetApp's executive vice president of products and operations.

Eric Burgener, research vice president at analyst firm IDC, said the AFF A320 is an early indicator of NetApp's flash plans.

"Think of the A320 as a building block. NetApp is introducing a new form factor that it ultimately will use to build the entire AFF line. It's the strategic way they're going to build these systems," Burgener said.