Recently, NetApp has started to publicly display storage efficiency ratios on AFF systems on the product pages. You can see for yourself here.
The initial results look pretty good:
That’s over 4:1 average capacity savings on our AFF systems, which is possible due to storage efficiency features that are currently only available on NetApp AFF platforms. It also falls in line with NetApp’s All-Flash Guarantee program.
Storage efficiencies add great value to AFF systems by way of allowing more data to be stored in ONTAP systems, which reduces the $/GB cost of the storage system. So even though you may pay more for SSD drives, you get that money back as you add data to the storage because you need less of a footprint to store it, less power and cooling and better overall performance.
I like to think of storage efficiency value in comparison to this guy:
Where does that ratio come from?
The numbers publicly shown on the NetApp site aren’t pulled out of thin air; they’re updated regularly from real-world data captures of capacity savings from NetApp’s Active IQ back end. The ratio factors in the same standard values most of NetApp’s competitors use (provided they have those features):
- Deduplication
- Compression
- Compaction
- Clones
They left out snapshots from the main calculation, but do include what that ratio looks like on the same page (spoiler alert: it’s an insane 22:1).
For more info on Active IQ, check out the following podcast:
NetApp is using data mining, machine learning and analytics more and more to enhance how we deliver information.
Check the NetApp site periodically and see how the numbers adjust based on real data!
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Justin,
Can you characterize how “Clones” are factored into the ratio?
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Scott, I’m not 100% how they are factored in. I imagine they’d count 2:1 possibly, as they’re exact copies of the data with no storage space loss until you start writing new data to the clone.
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