NetApp E2800 Storage System – Product Brief

Overview

The NetApp E2800 Storage System comes from the Engenio group at NetApp as part of the E-Series and is a successor to the E2700.  It consists of a dual controller system up to 180 HDDs or SSDs (with a limit of 120 SSDs) with performance and features to meet the block storage requirements for open systems. The E2800 is also offered as an OEM product for NetApp and as part of integrated solutions.  The E-Series provides advanced features that have evolved over time to provide high-value capabilities to customers. The E2800, like the E2700, is capable of scaling to mid-range capacity and performance but is targeted at entry-level pricing.

Models of the E2800 include:

• E2860 with a 4U form factor and 60 devices of either 2.5” or 3.5” – 1.8PB with expansion shelves
• E2824 with a 2U form factor and 24 2.5” devices – 1.4PB with expansion shelves
• E2812 with a 2U form factor and 12 3.5” devices – 1.4PB with expansion shelves

Usage

The E2800 system is offered for many usage areas including as SAN attached and direct attached storage in high performance computing and big data analytics environments as well as in traditional SAN environments offered through a number of OEMs.  The performance of the E2800 exceeds the demands in most environments, which enables an economical solution for a broad set of workloads.

• Characteristics
  • Performance – The E2800 has up to 300,000 IOPs according to NetApp information. Caching data in SSDs also accelerates performance.
  • Availability – The E2800 is a dual controller design, which allows pathing software to fail over from one controller to another and then fail back as needed.
  • Replication for BC/DR – Remote replication uses the SANtricity software from NetApp with Remote Volume Mirror for synchronous and asynchronous mirroring as an optional feature.
  • VAAI support and thin provisioning
  • Up to 5TB of SSD cache
• Applications
  • The E2800 is a block storage system that is used in a wide variety of applications because of the price and performance.
• System environments
  • Typically used with storage network connectivity, the E-Series systems connect almost all servers and operating systems.
• Deployment and Administration
  • The management and embedded software is call SANtricity and can manage single or multiple systems. All configuration and control is done through the SANtricity element manager including snapshot, volume copy and remote mirror.
  • The E-Series is a modular system and may be expanded with additional disk shelves of different drive numbers and types. SSDs are supported as a drive option.

Evaluator Group EvaluScale™: NetApp E2800 – SAN Storage

Evaluator Group product review methodology “EvaluScale” assesses each product within a specific technology area.  The definitions of the criteria and explanations of how products are reviewed can be found in the  Evaluator Series Evaluation Guide. Download the product brief now to view the EvaluScale for this product.

Evaluator Group Opinion: Differentiating elements for NetApp E2800

The NetApp E2800, like the midrange E5700, comes from the long line of dual controllers developed by Engenio / LSI and now NetApp with an evolution of design.  The E2800 is a block storage system that has been provided to a number of other vendors for inclusion into their environments as well as an independent product.

Basic block storage with necessary advanced features for data protection such as snapshot, async and sync remote replication is offered with the E2800, which is applicable to a very large part of the market.  The E2800 does not support scale-out so the performance is fixed based on the configuration and adding capacity (scale up) will affect the access density.  Other features such as tiering, data reduction, stretched clusters are not offered, which defines where the E2800 will likely be applied.  File access would not be expected with this system as customers are expecting block access with high performance at a particular price point.

Evaluator Group believes that the E-series systems from NetApp have specific targeted usages and will be very effective in those environments.  Other products have additional capabilities that may not be needed in the places where the E2800 is successful.