NetApp E5700 – Product Brief

Overview

The NetApp E5700 Storage System comes from the Engenio group at NetApp and consist of a dual controller system with multiple models and up to 480 drives with performance and features to meet the block storage requirements for open systems. The E5700 is a logical update of the E5600 and earlier E-Series models with the latest in host interfaces.  The E5700 is an OEM product for NetApp and offered as part of integrated solutions.  The systems provides advanced features that have evolved over time to provide high-value capabilities to customers.  As a system that combines high performance with advanced features, the E Series meets a wide-range of demands in the market.  As a high performance system, the E5700 supports Fibre Channel, SAS, iSCSI, and InfiniBand connectivity. Introduced with the E5700 is support for NVMe protocol over 100 Gb/s InfiniBand or Ethernet interface.

Models of the E5700 include:

• E5760 with a 4U form factor and 60 devices of either 2.5” or 3.5” – 5.7 PB with expansion shelves
• E5724 with a 2U form factor and 24 2.5” devices – 345.6TB with expansion shelves

Usage

The NetApp E5700 is a high performance storage systems implemented with the traditional dual controller architecture.  Used in performance demanding environments with need for high availability, the E5700 provide connectivity to hosts using Fibre Channel or InfiniBand and with NVMe protocol over InfiniBand.   The system is seen 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.

• Characteristics
  • Performance – The bandwidth is rated at 21GB/s for read and 14 GB/s write with up to 1M
  • Availability – The E5700 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
• Applications
  • The E5700 is a block storage system that is used in a wide variety of applications because of the performance and interface connectivity.
• System environments
  • Typically used with storage network connectivity, the E5700 connects 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 E5700 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 E5700 – 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 E5700

The NetApp E5700 comes from the long line of dual controllers developed by Engenio / LSI and now NetApp with an evolution of design.  The E-Series are block storage systems that have 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 E-Series, which is applicable to a very large part of the market.  The E-Series 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 E5700 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 E5700 is successful.