Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Andy Watson, VP for Strategic Technology, Network Appliance: Page 4 of 13

  • Byte and Switch: One of the limitations of Network Appliance's network-attached storage is that it doesn’t support block data, limiting its use for heavyweight storage applications like databases.

    There are lots of startups making this happen – Lefthand Networks, for example, is already shipping a unit that supports both block and file access from the same device. EMC says it also supports both. Is there any reason why NetApp can’t?

    Watson: No. And it’s coming this summer in the next major release of the software. We’ve taken a bit longer to engineer this so that the system will support both block and file access simultaneously. With EMC, you have to physically tinker with the hardware each time you want to switch between block or file.

    Byte and Switch: Does this mean the NetApp device will support Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Exchange? We know Microsoft has been making things difficult for you on that front lately [see NetApp on Red Alert].

    Watson: It will be a more generally acceptable block solution... a vanilla solution rather the proprietary iSCSI method we are using now. It will support CIFS [Common Internet File System] and NFS [Network File System] on the file side and Fibre Channel/SCSI for block-based storage.