I've been moving around some of our applications to make better use of our
netapps and storage, and as part of this shuffle, some things just gotta
be said...
(I will preface this by saying that I really like my filers, both of them
work very well in terms of reliability, it is just the nature of the beast
to criticize when something doesn't work like you want it to, and be
silent when it's doing its job. :)
o The lack of *good* automated, filer-sufficient backup and management
tools. NDMP is fine, but the *filer* needs to truly be an appliance, and
needs to be able to do this on its own. No rsh monkeying around, just
nice consistent, in-the-background, web-managed backup. Follow a
schedule, run some "scripted" jobs, SMTP/SNMP trap the results. Not
rocket science.
o The lack of widespread tape changer support, or at least tweakable
changer support. For various reaons, one of my filers will have 2 ADIC
DLT tape changer systems on it, which doesn't do me a speck of good from
the filer side, as I still have to issue the commands to swap tapes
around. Gag.
o CIFS support has got some big holes.
- The inability to belong to multiple domains.
Not all my domains trust each other. Oops, now the filer
is essentially unusable for some of them.
- For me, at least, CIFS management with no PDC is non-intuitive at all.
I would pay real money for somebody to explain to me how to use
autoexnt, a filer with no PDC and no WINS access, and permanently
affix a share that is usable by more than one person.
I can mount the share in autoexnt, but it's not accessible to
anybody. (I use autoexnt with the interactive option, and the
connection is successful, yet I always get "access denied" when
trying to access it. However, if I attach it with the same login
account as the autoexnt service, with the same username/password
pair, it's fine.
The CIFS tracer thingie on the Netapp tells me that both accesses
are being mapped to the same Unix user account, but one works, the
other doesn't...
I have mailed support this one, but nary a response...
- Even the ability to have a different network interface belong to a
different domain would be useful. Not a panacea, but at least
useful.
o The general suckiness of NFS now being insufficient to backup the filer
with CIFS. Probably not a solveable problem, but it still sucks.
o The apparent lack of CIDR support in routing tables. I realize that
routing requirements for a filer are probably not super
significant, but something better than /24 would be nice.
o NOW is better, but quicker navigation tools would help. I also do not
understand why documentation requires a NOW login.
o I would give a body part for a small filer, with 3 18 or 36GB drives,
self contained, no shelves. Medium performance, medium capacity, hot
swappable, 1 100MBit ethernet port, just plug and go. 8MB NVRAM, 256MB
RAM. I hate adding file servers for that niche where even a small 720 is
physically too much hassle, and the price-point is out the roof. Make the
drives user-supplied, off a netapp recommended list, and kaching, give me
an even dozen. Maybe leave in a slot for a 5 1/4" Tape drive.
Heck, I saw some very scary numbers from consensys for their IDE raid
product, use IDE drives instead of scsi in this bad boy, and cut them
costs down. WD makes 7200 RPM drives now, at 18GB's a pop, and 5 of 'em
fit in a 3 high bay.
(And no, I'm not interested in the philosophical war of IDE vs SCSI.
Fact: IDE is currently cheaper than SCSI. Fact: I want this box to be
cheap. Check and mate. :))
o It would be cool if config information, perhaps even the OS was on a
optional PCMCIA card, that was formatted in a fashion readable on a
notebook. Nothing like not having the right serial cable wired up, and
having to type all those stupid commands by hand when you make a booboo,
and plus the grief of having to boot off two floppies.
o Or add an option to read rc from disk 3 on a DOS formatted floppy.
o Fine, you don't want to use something like PCMCIA cards, then since
Netapp only allows its network cards, allow tftp of the rc file from
one of the interfaces.
I guess the CIFS stuff is what's torquing me off right now the most, I
don't want to have to slap a bunch of storage on some NT boxes when I have
this filer sitting there perfectly suited (in theory) to do the job...,
and I refuse to purchase 1 filer per domain.