Optimizing Storage Performance and Cost with Intelligent Caching

NetApp is a pioneer in the development of innovative intelligent caching technologies to decouple storage performance from the number of disks in the underlying disk array to substantially improve cost. This white paper describes the NetApp® implementation of write caching using NVRAM as a journal, as well as a three-level approach to read caching that includes the system buffer cache, Flash Cache, and FlexCache®. These technologies yield significant performance and cost improvements for a wide range of real-world environments and applications.