In computer storage, NetApp filer, known also as NetApp Fabric-Attached Storage

(FAS), or NetApp's network attached storage (NAS) device is NetApp's offering in

the area of storage systems. A FAS functions in an enterprise-class storage are
a network (SAN) as well as as a networked storage appliance. It can serve storag
e over a network using file-based protocols such as NFS, SMB, FTP, TFTP, and HTT
P. Filers can also serve data over block-based protocols such as Fibre Channel (
FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI.[1] NetApp Filers implement th
eir physical storage in large disk arrays.
Most other large-storage filers from other vendors tend to use commodity compute
rs with an operating system such as Microsoft Windows Server, VxWorks or tuned L
inux. NetApp filers use highly customized hardware and the proprietary Data ONTA
P operating system, both originally designed by NetApp founders David Hitz and J
ames Lau specifically for storage-serving purposes. Data ONTAP is NetApp's inter
nal operating system, specially optimised for storage functions at high and low
level. It boots from FreeBSD as a stand-alone kernel-space module and uses some
functions of FreeBSD (command interpreter and drivers stack, for example).
All filers have battery-backed NVRAM,[citation needed] which allows them to comm
it writes to stable storage quickly, without waiting on disks. Early filers conn
ected to external disk enclosures via SCSI, while modern models (as of 2009) use
FC and SAS protocol. The disk enclosures (shelves) support FC hard disk drives,
as well as parallel ATA, serial ATA and Serial attached SCSI.
Implementers often organize two filers in a high-availability cluster with a pri
vate high-speed link, either Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, or 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
One can additionally group such clusters together under a single namespace when
running in the "cluster mode" of the Data ONTAP 8 operating system.
Contents
1 Internal architecture
1.1 Hardware
1.1.1 Storage
1.2 WAFL File System
1.3 SnapMirror
1.4 SyncMirror
1.5 SnapLock
1.6 PAM / Flash Cache
1.7 SnapManager Suite
2 Previous limitations
3 Model history
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
Internal architecture
NetApp FAS3240-R5
Most NetApp filers consist of customized computers with Intel or AMD processors
using PCI. Each Filer has a proprietary NVRAM adapter to log all writes for perf
ormance and to play the data log forward in the event of an unplanned shutdown.
One can link two filers together as a cluster, which NetApp (as of 2009) refers
to using the less ambiguous term "Active/Active".
Hardware
Each filer model comes with a set configuration of processor, RAM and NVRAM, whi
ch users cannot expand after purchase. With the exception of some of the entry p
oint storage controllers, the NetApp filers have at least one PCIe-based slot av
ailable for additional network, tape and/or disk connections. In June 2008 NetAp
p announced the Performance Acceleration Module (or PAM) to optimize the perform
ance of workloads which carry out intensive random reads. This optional card goe
s into a PCIe slot and provides additional memory (or cache) between the disk an
d the filer RAM/NVRAM, thus improving performance.
Storage
NetApp supports either SATA, Fibre Channel, or SAS disk drives, which it groups
into RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Redundant Array of Independen
t Disks) groups of up to 28 (26 data disks plus 2 parity disks). Multiple RAID g
roups form an "aggregate"; and within aggregates Data ONTAP operating system set
s up "flexible volumes" to actually store data that users can access. An alterna
tive is "Traditional volumes" where one or more RAID groups form a single static
volume. Flexible volumes offer the advantage that many of them can be created o
n a single aggregate and resized at any time. Smaller volumes can then share all
of the spindles available to the underlying aggregate. Traditional volumes and
aggregates can only be expanded, never contracted. However, Traditional volumes
can (theoretically) handle slightly higher I/O throughput than flexible volumes
(with the same number of spindles), as they do not have to go through an additio
nal virtualisation layer to talk to the underlying disk.
WAFL File System
WAFL, as a robust versioning filesystem, provides snapshots, which allow end-use
rs to see earlier versions of files in the file system. Snapshots appear in a hi
dden directory: ~snapshot for Windows (SMB) or .snapshot for Unix (NFS). Up to 2
55 snapshots can be made of any traditional or flexible volume. Snapshots are re
ad-only, although Data ONTAP 7 provides additional ability to make writable "vir
tual clones", based at "WAFL snapshots" technique, as "FlexClones".
Data ONTAP implements snapshots by tracking changes to disk-blocks between snaps
hot operations. It can set up snapshots in seconds because it only needs to take
a copy of the root inode in the filesystem. This differs from the snapshots pro
vided by some other storage vendors in which every block of storage has to be co
pied, which can take many hours.
SnapMirror
Snapshots form the basis for NetApp disk replication technology SnapMirror, whic
h effectively replicates snapshots between two NetApp filers. Later versions of
Data ONTAP introduced cascading replication, where one volume could replicate to
another and then another etc. NetApp also offers a backup product based around
replicating and storing snapshots, called SnapVault. Open Systems SnapVault allo
ws Windows and UNIX hosts to back up data to a NetApp filer and store any filesy
stem changes in snapshots.
SyncMirror
Data ONTAP also implements an option called "SyncMirror" where all the RAID grou
ps within an aggregate or traditional volume can be duplicated to another set of
hard disks, typically at another site via a Fibre Channel link. NetApp provides
a "MetroCluster" option, that uses "SyncMirror" to provide a geo-cluster or act
ive/active cluster between two sites up to 100 km apart.
SnapLock
Other product options include "SnapLock" which implements a "Write Once Read Man
y" functionality on magnetic disks instead of to optical media, so that data can
not be deleted until its retention period has been reached. SnapLock exists in t
wo modes: compliance and enterprise. The compliance mode was designed to assist
organizations in implementing a comprehensive archival solution that meets stric
t regulatory retention requirements such as dictated by the SEC and several heal
thcare governing bodies. Records and files committed to WORM storage on a SnapLo
ck Compliance volume cannot be altered or deleted before the expiration of their
retention period. Moreover, a SnapLock Compliance volume cannot be destroyed un
til all data have reached the end of their retention period.
SnapLock Enterprise is geared toward assisting organizations that are more self-
regulated and want to have greater flexibility in protecting digital assets with
WORM-type data storage. Data stored as WORM on a SnapLock Enterprise volume are
protected from alteration or modification with one main difference from SnapLoc
k Compliance: as the files being stored are not for strict regulatory compliance
, a SnapLock Enterprise volume can be destroyed by an administrator with root pr
ivileges on the FAS system containing the SnapLock Enterprise volume, even if th
e designed retention period has not yet passed. In both modes, the retention per
iod can be extended, but not shortened, as this is incongruous with the concept
of immutability. In addition, NetApp SnapLock data volumes are equipped with a t
amper-proof compliance clock that is used as a time reference to block forbidden
operations on files, even if the system time is tampered with.
PAM / Flash Cache
NetApp Filer can have PAM ( Performance Accelerate Module ) or Flash Cache (PAM
II) which can reduce read latencies and allows the filer to support more read in
tensive work without adding any further disk to the underlying RAID.
SnapManager Suite
NetApp also offers products for taking application-consistent snapshots by coord
inating the application and the NetApp Storage Array. These products support Mic
rosoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Sharepoint, Oracle, SAP and VMw
are ESX Server data. These products form part of the SnapManager suite.
Previous limitations
Prior to the release of ONTAP 8, individual aggregate sizes were limited to a ma
ximum of 2TB for FAS250 models and 16TB for all other models.
The limitation on aggregate size, coupled with increasing density of disk drives
, served to limit the performance of the overall system. NetApp, like most stora
ge vendors, increases overall system performance by parallelizing disk writes to
many different spindles (disk drives). Large capacity drives, therefore limit t
he number of spindles that can be added to a single aggregate, and therefore lim
it the aggregate performance.
Each aggregate also incurs a storage capacity overhead of approximately 7-11%, d
epending on the disk type. On systems with many aggregates this can result in lo
st storage capacity.
However, the overhead comes about due to additional block-checksumming on the di
sk level as well as usual file system overhead, similar to the overhead in file
systems like NTFS or EXT3. Block checksumming helps to insure that data errors a
t the disk drive level do not result in data loss.
Data ONTAP 8.0 supports a new 64bit aggregate format, which increases the size l
imit of FlexVolume to approximately 100TB (depending on storage platform) and al
so increases the size limit of aggregates to more than 100 TB on newer models (d
epending on storage platform) thus restoring the ability to configure large spin
dle counts to increase performance and storage efficiency. ([1])
Model history
This list may omit some models. Information taken from spec.org, netapp.com and
storageperformance.org
Model Status Released CPU Main memory NVRAM Raw capacity
Benchmark Result
FASServer 400 Discontinued Jan 1993 50 MHz Intel i486 ? MB
4 MB 14 GB ?
FASServer 450 Discontinued Jan 1994 50 MHz Intel i486 ? MB
4 MB 14 GB ?
FASServer 1300 Discontinued Jan 1994 50 MHz Intel i486 ? MB
4 MB 14 GB ?
FASServer 1400 Discontinued Jan 1994 50 MHz Intel i486 ? MB
4 MB 14 GB ?
FASServer Discontinued Jan 1995 50 MHz Intel i486 256 MB
4 MB ? GB 640
F330 Discontinued Sept 1995 90 MHz Intel Pentium 256 MB 8 MB
117 GB 1310
F220 Discontinued Feb 1996 75 MHz Intel Pentium 256 MB 8 MB
? GB 754
F540 Discontinued June 1996 275 MHz DEC Alpha 21064A 256 MB
8 MB ? GB 2230
F210 Discontinued May 1997 75 MHz Intel Pentium 256 MB 8 MB
? GB 1113
F230 Discontinued May 1997 90 MHz Intel Pentium 256 MB 8 MB
? GB 1610
F520 Discontinued May 1997 275 MHz DEC Alpha 21064A 256 MB
8 MB ? GB 2361
F630 Discontinued June 1997 500 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A 512 MB
32 MB 464 GB 4328
F720 Discontinued Aug 1998 400 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A 256 MB
8 MB 464 GB 2691
F740 Discontinued Aug 1998 400 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A 512 MB
32 MB 928 GB 5095
F760 Discontinued Aug 1998 600 MHz DEC Alpha 21164A 1 GB
32 MB 1.39 TB 7750
F85 Discontinued Feb 2001 256 MB 64 MB 648 GB
F87 Discontinued Dec 2001 1.13 GHz Intel P3 256 MB 64 MB
576 GB
F810 Discontinued Dec 2001 733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine 512 MB
128 MB 1.5 TB 4967
F820 Discontinued Dec 2000 733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine 1 GB
128 MB 3 TB 8350
F825 Discontinued Aug 2002 733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine 1 GB
128 MB 3 TB 8062
F840 Discontinued Aug/Dec? 2000 733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine 3 GB
128 MB 6 TB 11873
F880 Discontinued July 2001 Dual 733 MHz Intel P3 Coppermine
3 GB 128 MB 9 TB 17531
FAS920 Discontinued May 2004 2.0 GHz Intel P4 Xeon 2 GB 256 MB
7 TB 13460
FAS940 Discontinued Aug 2002 1.8 GHz Intel P4 Xeon 3 GB 256 MB
14 TB 17419
FAS960 Discontinued Aug 2002 Dual 2.2 GHz Intel P4 Xeon 6 GB
256 MB 28 TB 25135
FAS980 Discontinued Jan 2004 Dual 2.8 GHz Intel P4 Xeon MP 2 MB L3
8 GB 512 MB 50 TB 36036
FAS250 EOA 11/08 Jan 2004 600 MHz Broadcom BCM1250 dual core MIPS
512 MB 64 MB 4 TB
FAS270 EOA 11/08 Jan 2004 650 MHz Broadcom BCM1250 dual core MIPS
1 GB 128 MB 16 TB 13620*
FAS2020 EOA 8/12 June 2007 2.2 GHz Mobile Celeron 1 GB
128 MB 68 TB
FAS2040 EOA 8/12 Sept 2009 1.66 GHz Intel Xeon 4 GB
512 MB 136 TB
FAS2050 EOA 5/11 June 2007 2.2 GHz Mobile Celeron 2 GB
256 MB 104 TB 20027*
FAS2220 EOA 3/15 June 2012 1.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C3
528 6 GB 768 MB 180 TB
FAS2240 EOA 3/15 November 2011 1.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C3
528 6 GB 768 MB 432 TB 38000
FAS2520 June 2014 1.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C3528
36 GB 4 GB 840 TB
FAS2552 June 2014 1.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C3528
36 GB 4 GB 1243 TB
FAS2554 June 2014 1.73 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon C3528
36 GB 4 GB 1440 TB
FAS2620 Nov 2016 2 x 6 core 64 GB 8 GB 1440 TB
FAS2650 Nov 2016 2 x 6 core 64 GB 8 GB 1243 TB
FAS3020 EOA 4/09 May 2005 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon 2 GB
512 MB 84 TB 34089*
FAS3040 EOA 4/09 Feb 2007 Dual 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron 250
4 GB 512 MB 336 TB 60038*
FAS3050 Discontinued May 2005 Dual 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon
4 GB 512 MB 168 TB 47927*
FAS3070 EOA 4/09 Nov 2006 Dual 1.8 GHz AMD dual core Opter
on 8 GB 512 MB 504 TB 85615*
FAS3140 EOA 2/12 June 2008 Single 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron Dual
Core 2216 4 GB 512 MB 420 TB SFS2008 40109*
FAS3160 EOA 2/12 Dual 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron Dual Core 2218
8 GB 2 GB 672 TB SFS2008 60409*
FAS3170 EOA 2/12 June 2008 Dual 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron Dual Co
re 2218 16 GB 2 GB 840 TB SFS97_R1 137306*
FAS3210 EOA 11/13 Nov 2010 Single 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Pr
ocessor (E5220) 8 GB 2 GB 480 TB SFS2008 64292
FAS3220 EOA 12/14 Nov 2012 Single 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Qu
ad Processor (L5410) 12 GB 3.2GB 1.44 PB ?? ??
FAS3240 EOA 11/13 Nov 2010 Dual 2.33 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Qua
d Processor (L5410) 16 GB 2 GB 1.20 PB ?? ??
FAS3250 EOA 12/14 Nov 2012 Dual 2.33 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Qua
d Processor (L5410) 40 GB 4 GB 2.16 PB SFS2008 100922
FAS3270 EOA 11/13 Nov 2010 Dual 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Proc
essor (E5240) 40 GB 4 GB 1.92 PB SFS2008 101183
FAS6030 EOA 6/09 Mar 2006 Dual 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron
32 GB 512 MB 840 TB SFS97_R1 100295*
FAS6040 EOA 3/12 Dec 2007 2.6 GHz AMD dual core Opteron
16 GB 512 MB 840 TB
FAS6070 EOA 6/09 Mar 2006 Quad 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron
64 GB 2 GB 1.008 PB 136048*
FAS6080 EOA 3/12 Dec 2007 4 to 8 2.6 GHz AMD dual core Opt
eron 64 GB 4 GB 1.176 PB SFS2008 120011*
FAS6080 SFS97_R1
164408*
FAS6210 EOA 11/13 Nov 2010 2x 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Proce
ssor E5520 48 GB 8 GB 2.40 PB
FAS6220 EOA 3/15 Feb 2013 2x 64-bit 4-core Intel(R) Xeon(R
) Processor E5520 96 GB 8 GB 4.80 PB
FAS6240 EOA 11/13 Nov 2010 2x 2.53 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Proce
ssor E5540 96 GB 8 GB 2.88 PB SFS2008 190675
FAS6240 SFS2008
1512784*
FAS6240 SPC-1 IOPS
250,039.67*
FAS6250 EOA 3/15 Feb 2013 2x 64-bit 4-core 144 GB
8 GB 5.76 PB
FAS6280 EOA 11/13 Nov 2010 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon(tm) Proce
ssor X5670 192 GB 8 GB 2.88 PB
FAS6290 EOA 3/15 Feb 2013 2x 64-bit 6-core 192 GB
8 GB 5.76 PB
FAS8020 Mar 2014 1 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2620 @ 2.00GHz
24 GB 8 GB 1.92 PB SFS2008 110281
FAS8040 Mar 2014 1 x 64-bit 8-core 2.10 GHz 64 GB
16 GB 2.88 PB
FAS8060 Mar 2014 2 x 64-bit 8-core 2.10 GHz E5-2658
128 GB 16 GB 4.80 PB
FAS8200 Nov 2016 2 x 16 core 256 GB 16 GB 4.80 PB
FAS8080EX Jun 2014 2 x 64-bit 10-core 2.80 GHz 256 GB
32 GB 8.64 PB SPC-1 IOPS 685,281.71*
FAS9000 Nov 2016 2 x 2 x 18-core 1024 GB
64 GB 14.4 PB
Model Status Released CPU Main memory NVRAM Raw capacity
Benchmark Result
EOA = End of Availability
SPECsfs with "*" is clustered result. SPECsfs performed include SPECsfs93, SPECs
fs97, SPECsfs97_R1 and SPECsfs2008. Results of different benchmark versions are
not comparable.
See also
Network attached storage
NetApp
Write Anywhere File Layout
References
Nabrzyski, Jarek; Schopf, Jennifer M.; Weglarz, Jan (2004). Grid Resource Ma
nagement: State of the Art and Future Trends. Springer. p. 342. ISBN 978-1-4020-
7575-9. Retrieved 11 June 2012.
External links
Storage Filer (definitions)
SnapLock Technical Report
NetApp training videos
NETWORK-APPLIANCE (Mib file)
NetApp end of availability information
Categories:
Server applianceNetwork-attached storage
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This page was last modified on 7 February 2017, at 02:43.