We have recently added detection of Network Appliance’s Netcache devices to uptime.netcraft.com and the Web Server Survey.
Netcaches are reasonably expensive devices, and internet-wide we find only around a thousand in use as reverse proxies. However, one of these devices is at GoDaddy and serves content for in the region of 1.4 million template sites and redirects for domains registered by GoDaddy.
Many of the NetApp installations are well known and prestigious sites, including Nokia, Motorola, and Sony. Apple’s mac.com and the US 8th Army in Korea are also users as is The Gap, where the Netcache is itself fronted by a Redline Network Accelerator.
Having the GoDaddy deployment become widely known may help Network Appliance bring their Netcaches to the attention of other hosting companies who will note that GoDaddy have one of the smallest gross margins in the industry - $3 per annum on a domain name sale - but still perceive the value in the Netcache over and above the conventionally favoured Linux on Intel hardware.
One attribute of the Netcache community that is already noticeable is that sites who use Netcache devices often use more than one of them. Reviewing the time since reboot returned for the following sites indicates at least two at nokia.com and sonypictures.com, and four at motorola.com and Nikkei, and the possibility of many more at each of these sites.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||