NetApp
More info
- Creator
- David Hitz, James Lau, Michael Malcolm
- Released
- 1992
- Type
- Storage company
The storage company that sold a file server incapable of anything else, and made that a selling point.
Founded in 1992 as Network Appliance by David Hitz, James Lau and Michael Malcolm. The idea was the "filer": a box that only served files over NFS and later SMB, with no general-purpose operating system to babysit. At its heart sat the WAFL file system, which never overwrites data in place. That made snapshots nearly free, and gave many admins their first chance to restore a deleted file without a tape library.
The operating system is called ONTAP. In 2007 NetApp sued Sun Microsystems, claiming ZFS infringed its WAFL patents; Sun countersued, and the fight was settled in 2010 with nobody winning much. The company renamed itself NetApp in 2008.