New NetApp Data Center Enables Busine Agility and Forms Backbone of Growing IT and Customer Support Operations

New NetApp Data Center Enables Business Agility and Forms Backbone of Growing IT and Customer Support Operations Company Partners with Digital Realty to Design World-Class, Energy-Efficient Facility in Hillsboro, Ore.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. Nov. 1, 2012 On Friday, November 2, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) will launch a new data center facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, that will play an integral role in the companys aggressive plans to expand the services it provides for its more than 12,000 employees and thousands of customers. The data center will be the hub for all NetApp global customer support monitoring and corporate IT services and will leverage the NetApp agile data infrastructure architecture to deliver nonstop, infinitely scalable operations. At the heart of this agile data infrastructure is NetApp Data ONTAP, the worlds #1 storage operating system. The energy-efficient data center was designed in partnership with Digital Realty, a leading provider of data center solutions.

Like so many of its customers, NetApp is faced with a fast-paced business climate, an explosion in the amount of data that must be stored and managed, and the need for nondisruptive operations. The Hillsboro data center is a major step in an overall strategy to transform NetApps IT infrastructure into an agile data infrastructure that is:

Intelligent. Automatically provisions and optimizes storage resources with efficiency and performance using policy-based management.

Immortal. Maintains 100% accessibility to data despite necessary migrations and upgrades, including complete hardware refreshes.

Infinite. Seamlessly scales storage resources starting very small and growing to support the data needs of the enterprise using a single unified architecture.

Cynthia Stoddard, chief information officer for NetApp, provides insight into how Hillsboros agile data infrastructure will enable business velocity going forward:

With the business and customer landscape changing at a rapid pace, we demand an intelligent storage architecture that can anticipate and respond to the business faster. Characteristics such as zero-touch automation, 100% utilization, end-to-end visibility, and built-in efficiency features provide us with the ability to quickly respond to change and make sure we stay in lockstep with our customers needs.

To achieve the growth objectives we have, we need to enable an environment where the data is essentially immortal; it is always availablenever having to worry about scheduled downtime or gaps in our ability to support our customers.

The environment has to enable infinite scalability based on the exponential growth of data and information that we need to store and manage. Our AutoSupport capability is a prime example as it requires us to analyze a database that includes more than 24 billion records of our customers storage systems. Clustered Data ONTAP, which represents NetApps next generation of innovation, enables the infinite scalability required to make sure our customers storage systems are operating at maximum efficiency and performance.

Hillsboros Agile Data Infrastructure

The Hillsboro data centers agile data infrastructure will be composed of technologies from NetApp and other best-in-class NetApp partners, including:

NetApp FAS6200 storage systems and a joint Cisco and NetApp FlexPod solution will address all of the physical and virtual computing workloads and leverage clustered ONTAP. Approximately 1.5PB of clustered Data ONTAP storage will be deployed in the Hillsboro data center.

Cisco has partnered with NetApp IT to provide the high-speed unified fabric network based on the Cisco Nexus products and FlexPod, a solution leveraging the Cisco Unified Computing System combined with NetApp storage. These two solutions together help form the core of the Hillsboro data center architecture, enabling NetApp IT to achieve its scalability, availability, and utilization objectives.

Fujitsu PRIMERGY and SPARC Enterprise servers provide a complete ecosystem, based on over 40 years of industry experience and intellectual property that help NetApp operate more efficiently and reliably. The servers also excel in energy efficiency, virtualization features, and sophisticated system management functions, which enhance and complement the efficiencies of the new world-class NetApp data center facility.

World-Class Energy Efficiency

While many data centers today struggle with energy waste, the Hillsboro data centers innovative design supports the companys goals for sustainability and data center power reduction. The estimated data center power usage effectiveness (PUE)[1] will be less than 1.3.

Some key features to the data centers outstanding energy efficiency include:

Use of outside air economizers provides free cooling for most of the year.

Pressure-controlled cold-aisle containment reduces fan energy while eliminating hot air intrusion.

Electrical distribution system is optimized using efficient transformers and efficient uninterruptible power supply.

Watch and learn more about NetApps unique data center efficiency design approach found in its Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, facility and the new data center in Hillsboro.

NetApp asked us to deliver an efficient, cost-effective data center in the shortest time feasible. The Hillsboro custom designed data center represents our commitment to meet NetApps specific requirements, utilizing our innovative approach to modular data center engineering, design and construction, said Michael F. Foust, chief executive officer at Digital Realty. We are very pleased this data center will be an important component of NetApps growth strategy and long-term vision to remain one step ahead of growing business demand.

Additional Resources

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LINK:	http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/press-releases/news-rel-20121101...
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