NetApp rechristened Engenio storage as the NetApp E-Series aimed at organizations with large data sets and high performance block data needs. It launched the E5400 midrange system for OEMs as well as a Hadoop storage system for analytics and a full-motion video system for battlefield intelligence.

NetApp also said it has commitments from two of Engenio’s largest OEM customers – IBM and Terradata Corp. – to transfer those OEM relationships to NetApp.

The E5400 is a 4u 60-drive dual controller system that supports 120 TB raw capacity and 6 GBps of sustained throughput. It uses 3.-5-inch 2 TB nearline SAS drives. The E5400 is part of the family that IBM sells as its DS5000 through an OEM deal it had with LSI.

NetApp’s E-Series consists of the E2600 entry level storage, the E5400 midrange platform and the E7900 for high performance computing (HPC).

NetApp’s Hadoop system is aimed at the big analytics segment of the Big Data that vendors talk about so much today but can still confuse their customers. NetApp divides Big Data into Big Content and Big Analytics. The analytics segment deals with making complex queries on data, much of it in structured data warehouses. The Hadoop storage system is built on the NetApp E2600, which Engenio was selling before the NetApp acquisition. The E2600 has a base configuration of 16 nodes to 32 nodes in a shelf.

Hadoop is a free, Java-based programming framework that supports the processing of large distributed data sets. The E2600 is designed to help customers build Hadoop systems quickly to ingest large data blocks. “Hadoop tends to be the Grand Central Station of enterprise data warhehousing these days,” said Val Bercovici of NetApp’s CTO office.

Bercovici said NetApp chose the Engenio platform rather than NetApp’s FAS series because the Engenio systems are block-based and designed more for streaming I/O to low-cost SATA drives, making them a better fit for Hadoop use cases.

NetApp’s Hadoop launch comes on the same day that NetApp rival EMC rolled out its GreenplumHD Data Computing Appliance with Hadoop at EMC World.

The NetApp full motion video system is designed for government intelligence agencies that need to store data images from unnamed drones and satellites on the battlefield.

NetApp welcomes most Engenio employees, but not Permabit dedupe

NetApp VP of product and solutions marketing Chris Cummings said most of Engenio’s 1,100 employees will join NetApp but didn’t have an exact number.

It doesn’t appear that NetApp will carry over Engenio’s fledgling OEM deal with Permabit for primary data deduplication. Cummings said that deal was struck when LSI was looking to make its systems more focused for general IT use but NetApp intends to focus Engenio storage on customers with large bandwidth needs. He said NetApp will likely leave it to OEM partners to add data reduction and sell Engenio as part of solutions behind NetApp’s V-Series, which already provide primary dedupe.