The NetApp-Sun suit is over ?



Just the other day, someone asked me about the legal action NetApp took against Sun Microsystem's ZFS technology. It has been 2 years since that news came out. I didn't give it much of a thought, so I told my friend that it is still there, at the courts.

Well, not any more. An update from StorageMojo here revealed that the NetApp suit is gone (for now). Obviously NetApp doesn't want to upset Oracle, who is one of their biggest customers and also global partner. This latest action allows NetApp to exit graciously and still look like a winner.

I had the privilege to experience both ONTAP's WAFL and Sun's ZFS and I must admit there are a lot of similarities. I cannot deny that some of the concepts behind the technology looked very similar from a 10,000 feet platform but there are some very significant differences as well. Here are a few that comes to mind :-


  • Hybrid Storage Pools

  • RAIDZ2, RAIDZ3

  • Volume Management, although it looks very similar to ONTAP's aggregate

  • ZFS as 128-bit filesystem



While we are on the subject of ZFS, I am also rather concerned about the future of ZFS, and more so, Nexenta. Nexenta is one of the first commercial implementation of ZFS wrapped around an Ubuntu like interface. The cool thing about Nexenta was it was hardware agnostic, so customers will not be subject to those ridiculous hardware prices of most storage vendors today. In my previous venture at next-IQ Solutions, I quickly signed up as the Nexenta reseller in Malaysia and I am proud of it. I had the opportunity to test the technology and I thought it was one of the best out there.

However, with the leaked Oracle instructions to its engineering folks (detailed here), the future of ZFS through the OpenSolaris route appears to be iffy. Hence, the future of companies like Nexenta and Greenbytes is looking cloudy at this moment. There is a new project, a fork from the OpenSolaris called Illumos (see here), but without the support of Oracle, it will be difficult.

But the news of NetApp withdrawing the suit sound good so far. NetApp is been flooring the gas pedal for the past 3-4 years, blowing away the competition and taking market share. I have been away from NetApp for almost 5 years. In 2005, NetApp was probably placed 5th or 6th on the IDC findings. I just got the latest IDC figures and NetApp has leapfrogged several prominent storage vendors into the 3rd spot. Well done, NetApp!

Real Data Matrix has a long history with NetApp and we are back, with a vengeance! More to come ...

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