RE: NetAps vs EMC

["Allen, Pat" <pat@mbari.org>]

I suppose I could be considered a long-time Network Appliance customer -
I've been using them for the past 6 years! We started off with one of their
old 1400 series boxes and have just upgraded and gone from there. Right now
we have a F740 with around 450GB of disk storage and an older F330 with only
28GB of disk. By the end of this week we'll have another F740 delivered with
an additional 252GB of disk that we'll cluster with the first one and two of
Net App's NetCache boxes.

I can't comment on the reliability of EMC but it can't be any better than
Net App! In the past 6 years I think I've had one disk go bad and some RAM
became flakey. I found out about the RAM because the filer sent a
notification message to the Net App support group. I received a phone call
telling me that they were aware of a problem with my filer and that new RAM
was on its way to me. How's that for support!!!! When you consider the lack
of problems I've experienced with their boxes, you have to understand the
environment I'm in as well. We're an oceanographic research institute and
one of the filers (the F330) was installed on one of our ships. Needless to
say that's not one of the most computer friendly environments. But the filer
ran like a charm.

I've noticed in this thread that there are some comments regarding the user
interface. One of the benefits behind the network appliance is its light
operating system which is optimized for being a file server. It's not loaded
down with a heavy GUI or lots of unnecessary operating system layers. It's
GREAT at what it does. But as one person said, this is getting into the
realm of personal opinion.

I'd like to mention another couple of things I love about the Net App
filers. The first is that occasionally they do need to be rebooted in order
to update the OS, add a new disk shelf or a tape changer or ..... (Note -
they don't need to be shut down to add a new disk.) When you power up the
system, it takes a whopping 1.25 minutes to boot our F740 with 450GB of
disk. I'd like to see any Unix server match that. (And I've been a Unix
fan/developer/admin/jack-of-all-trades for the past 20 years!) And talk
about upgrading the OS - it's a 5 minute process that is fool-proof.

The other thing that I like about the filer is their multi-protocol support.
Right now they natively support NFS, CIFS, and HTTP. The only other protocol
I could ask for is Appletalk - not because I like it but because my users
need it. I'm sure that will come down the line.

Needless to say, I'm a happy customer. There's no way that we would ever get
rid of the Network Appliance boxes we have. Go for it - you can't go wrong!

---
Pat Allen (pat@mbari.org)
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) 
PO Box 628, 7700 Sandholdt Rd, Moss Landing, CA 95039 
(voice) 831-775-1724; (fax) 831-775-1620

-----Original Message-----
From: Yves Dorfsman [mailto:dorfsmay@cuug.ab.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 9:58 AM
To: sage-members@usenix.org
Subject: NetAps vs EMC



Does anybody have any hard number on the reliability of NetAps vs EMC ?

Anybody's been running NetAps filer for a long time, could you comment on
their reliability ?

Anybody with a horror story ??


Thanks,


Yves.
----
Yves Dorfsman                                        dorfsmay@cuug.ab.ca
                                         http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~dorfsmay