Case Study: NetApp achieves greater performance and lower latency with Perforce Helix

NetApp Delivers Greater Performance at Lower Latency with Perforce Helix

NetApp, a leader in storage hardware and software, needed a scalable way to support 4,000+ developers across multiple offices working on ONTAP and other applications. The company manages a massive codebase (570 GB) and a 1 TB database with 120 GB developer workspaces, handling roughly 500,000 changes per day and 1.7 million Helix transactions. The challenge was to enable fast continuous integration, distributed low-latency access, consistent workspace creation across sites, and storage-level file management rather than relying on a database.

NetApp implemented Perforce Helix VCS and integrated it with tools like Jenkins, ReviewBoard, OpenGrok, HP ALM, and an internal bug tracker, while leveraging NetApp features such as FlexClone and Snapshot for storage-level replication. The single-branch model and the Helix platform delivered dramatic workflow improvements: faster time to market, consistent workspace provisioning across sites, no network latency with true clones that don’t consume extra storage, and continuous, integrity-preserving builds and testing — yielding higher performance and lower latency for NetApp’s development pipeline.

NetApp

Kumaraswamy (Kumar) Namburu

Manager of Build Release Engineering, NetApp