Snap is mainly known for volume NAS appliances in the workgroup market, said Steve Rogers, director of technical marketing at the San Jose, Calif.-based vendor. However, he said, Snap introduced a new appliance line that scales from 5 Tbytes up to 29 Tbytes.
In the enterprise, Snap typically competes with either NetApp, Sunnyvale, Calif., or with vendors producing iSCSI products, Rogers said. In the workgroup and small-business space, it is common to sell against Microsoft. "They're moving up," he said.
Thanks to recent licensing deals with Microsoft, NetApp now offers full compatibility with Windows-based NAS appliances despite the use of its own proprietary operating system for building appliances, said Rod Mathews, senior director of marketing at NetApp.
More specifically, NetApp licensed several tasks from Microsoft, including file serving using Microsoft's Common Internet File System protocol as well as compatibility with Microsoft's Active Directory and security, Mathews said. "If you choose, you can create a non-Windows device that fully [interoperates] with Windows," he said.
NetApp offers simplicity, as its operating system was designed specifically for NAS applications, and not from modifying a general-purpose OS, Mathews said. "Windows Storage Server 2003 was changed from Windows Server 2003 for the initial setup only. But once it's installed, it's no different from any other Windows server," he said.
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