Network Appliance, Inc. (Nasdaq:NTAP), a provider of enterprise network storage solutions, has announced the industry's first DAFS (Direct Access File System) storage product. DAFS Database Accelerator 1.0 is a high-performance extension to the Network Appliance database storage solutions portfolio for IBM DB2, Oracle 8i and 9i, and Sybase environments. Coupling DAFS technology with NetApp filers, which deliver high levels of data availability and reliability, significantly enhances database performance and improves database administrator productivity in the most demanding mission- and business-critical application workloads.

NetApp DAFS Database Accelerator uses virtual interface (VI) technology over a Gigabit Ethernet interconnect, enabling enterprise customers to support larger workloads on existing hardware in high-performance database deployments. The DAFS Database Accelerator and NetApp enterprise storage systems significantly improve performance and offer a truly scalable infrastructure. This architecture also allows customers to utilize Network Appliance software solutions for improved management functionality and increased data availability.

"DAFS Database Accelerator represents the first DAFS-based storage solution, and a breakthrough in database performance," said Ray Villeneuve, vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. "Network Appliance has a long history of innovation in enterprise storage solutions. DAFS represents one of many ways we contribute significantly to our customers' IT infrastructures, helping them achieve new levels of performance and business success."

"With over 4.8 million subscribers, EarthLink continues to enhance the scalability of its environment to improve the EarthLink user experience," said Tim Bosserman, research and development engineer at EarthLink. "As an early test site of DAFS technology, we've experienced the benefits first hand and have confirmed it is well-suited to handle intense transaction processing workloads."

Recent Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC-C) results demonstrate the performance benefits of using DAFS technology in database environments. The benchmark results, conforming to the TPC-C guidelines, delivered the best price/performance for a UNIX -based system and the best per-processor performance for a SPARC -based system. The TPC-C performance test yielded 112,286.46 transactions per minute (tpmC) at a cost of US $13.44 per tpmC. Full details are available at www.tpc.org.

"Using DDA 1.0 with our NetApp filer was our first experience testing filers in database environment. Even with a less powerful database server in our testbed, DDA 1.0 came very close to the performance of the same database on a production server, and even better in particular cases. Our operation may benefit from the simplicity and features that NetApp brings to database environments." Renault S.A., DTSI, Technology Labs.

"DAFS technology promises new levels of performance for enterprise database applications. With enterprises continuing to migrate from local attached disk to network storage, DAFS technology ensures high performance for mission-critical database applications. As the first company to ship a DAFS-enabled solution, Network Appliance is leading the way for advanced technologies in today's and tomorrow's enterprises," said Steve Duplessie, Enterprise Storage Group.

The DAFS Database Accelerator, currently in customer beta test sites in the United States and Europe, is expected to be generally available within 30 days.

DAFS (Direct Access File System) is a file-access protocol that utilizes standard RDMA transports such as the Virtual Interface (VI) and InfiniBand for high performance storage access in data center environments. The DAFS protocol was created by the 87-member DAFS Collaborative and submitted to the IETF for standardization. The DAFS protocol is supported by the Network Appliance Data ONTAP operating system (version 6.2) on all NetApp F800 series filers.