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FW: Replacing OUR NetApp
by Ken Nishikawa 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Hi Luther I can speak with experience on working with Pillar Data. Back in May 05 I started looking into a SAN/NAS solution for my company. Having worked with both EMC and NetApp's in prior lives I had a pretty good idea on what each of them could bring to the table, but since I currently work for a small startup, big expenditures like disk arrays HAVE to be methodically laid out. So, I had to start my search from the ground up. For starters I spent the week down at the Storage world conf down in Long Beach and talked to about 75 different vendors. looking into both SATA and FC disk arrays, iSCSI, NAS, traditional FC SAN, etc. The sum of that foray was I was able to narrow the pack down to about 5 "interesting" vendors. after a few post conference meetings, the list was quickly narrowed down to 3 vendors. EMC, NetApp and Pillar Data. BTW non negotiable requirements were: System must be able to do: NAS and SAN Easily expandable Easily managed World class support Cost effective I won't bore you with the details but. in a nut shell, objectively ALL three were excellent candidates (email me if you want to discuss my objective opinions of all three choices, as each one of the vendors were good) Bottom line when it came to putting my John Hancock on a sales PO I went with NetApp. REASONS:. 1. Interestingly this was the first time that both EMC and NetApp had gone head to head with a customer that was seriously considering Pillar Data. (something I'm sure that is more common today). In any event, because of this, its my opinion that both of them were "pulling out all the stops" as far as pricing was concerned. Naturally this worked out good for me =:-) and as expected Pillar kept throwing more and more into the pot. so much that I was ready to sign a PO with Pillar. But. literally at the 11 hour (and 59th minutes) NetApp "made me an offer I couldn't refuse" 2. Irrespective of the dollar sacrifice all three vendors were making I have to admit that Pillars offerings were VERY interesting. Pillar has an interesting advantage of starting from scratch in designing their disk arrays with "today's technology" where as most "established vendors are using years, almost decades old technology. that has been "upgraded over the years" so here I say advantage Pillar Data for being innovative. This is not to say that EMC or NetApp are not innovative. its just a different perspective if you get what I mean. but with newness comes uncertainty and that concerned me. 3. Which leads me to my number one concern with Pillar: Newness of the product. I believe I would have been one of the first "real sales" they made..sure they touted all the "big shops" that had gazillions of terabytes of data sitting on Pillar Axioms. but I'd bet a dollar that these were test boxes that folks were "kicking the tires" on. Bottom line, I didn't feel 100% comfortable putting my job on the line with a product that was that "wet" Now, 7 months later. if I was going to buy another disk array #2 and #3 might not be as big a deterrent, and I might end up with a Pillar system. maybe. Bottom line. I think EMC and NetApp have the first "real contender" to their domains EMC with SAN and NetApp with NAS. but what the real test will be is how eagerly the rest of the industry accepts. yet another disk mfg. Just my .02 KEN Ken Nishikawa Director of IT/Operations KeepMedia, Inc. 275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 650 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 (650) 587-7031 Voice (650) 587-7001 Fax knishikawa(a)keepmedia.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Luther Allin Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 6:10 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Replacing OUR NetApp I'm liking the thread that John Stewart started about his filer replacement, so I decided to start my own. We too are faced with replacing our NetApp filers this year. We have and F720 (cifs file shares) and an F810 (cifs and iscsi). Both of these filers are maxed out both in disk space and processor. We had NetApp come up with a solution for us to replace these and the proposal is attractive. They put together a 3020 system for us that should meet both of our storage and processing needs for at least the next 2 years. So we budgeted for the replacement. Then the unthinkable happened... My boss received a postcard from a company called Pillar Data. He brought the postcard to me and said, "we should look at what these guys have." The rest is history. For those of you not familiar with Pillar Data, it's a startup of Larry Ellison's (the ORACLE Larry Ellison.) They have a really neat product, and their QOS is quite impressive. But I don't think that their product is mature enough yet for prime time. After spending some time with their engineers and traveling to the Enterprise Technology Center in Atlanta to demo one of these solutions, I found some chinks in their armor. I won't go into the details here, but if anyone wants to know what I've learned about them, I'll be happy to share that information. So this leads me to my question. Has anyone heard of Pillar Data and if so I was wondering if you shared my opinion (or not) of their product? I want to stick with the NetApp solution that was proposed, so I'm looking for ammunition to back up my argument. Cheers. Luther L. Allin IV, MCSE, ICSA Network Systems Engineer Miller <http://www.millermartin.com/> & Martin PLLC 832 Georgia Avenue, Suite 1000 Chattanooga, TN 37402 lallin(a)millermartin.com (423) 785-8381 (Direct) (423) 321-1678 (Fax) Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville - CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE - The information contained in this e-mail message is legally privileged and confidential, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, please be aware that any dissemination, distribution or copy of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify us by reply e-mail and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you. Please also advise us immediately if you or your employer does not consent to receipt of Internet email for confidential messages of this kind.

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RE: Replacing our NetApp
by Glenn Walker 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

To clarify this a bit further (it was a favored question of the interview teams at NetApp): It's all about how the data is moved more than it is where it lives. SAN is BLOCK LEVEL data transfer. NAS is FILE LEVEL transfer. In other words, SAN - iSCSI and FCP - both transfer data via blocks of information. NAS - NFS and CIFS - both transfer data via a file with a handle of some sort. -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Kevin H. Schoener Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 3:01 AM To: 'Michael Bergman'; toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: Replacing our NetApp Michael - here's my 2¢. iSCSI and FCP are specifically SAN technologies and NFS is specifically not. The difference is not the fabric or packeting so much as it is where the file system lives. NFS is NAS, so the file system is owned and controlled by the NAS device. In an iSCSI or FCP SAN, the file system is owned and controlled by the Server(s) to which the SAN is attached... Another way to think of it is that SAN technologies utilize device-type commands, whereas NAS technologies simply say "give me data or take the data" and it's up to the NAS device to decide where to put it... I believe the point is that the NFS deployment on a NetApp filer takes FULL advantage of Data OnTap features and performance. ..okay, maybe I went longer than 2¢ worth... sorry Kevin H. Schoener Lynx Technologies Inc. KHSchoener(a)LynxTechnologies.NET http://www.LynxTechnologies.NET/ 1576 Sweet Home Rd Suite 230C Amherst, NY 14228 716.636.5470 866.316.8599 fax 716.998.6065 cell -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Michael Bergman Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 2:15 AM To: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: Replacing our NetApp >What's wrong with SAN? iSCSI is most certainly SAN and has proven >itself very well in the marketplace as well as being technically very Fair point -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with SAN (= Storage Area Network, remember). I could argue, and keep that argument going, that if iSCSI is "SAN" (which I can agree that it can be) then so is NFS. Depending on how you build the infrastructure for the NFS server(s) and client(s). But anyway, just to make things a bit clearer then on my part, stay away from non-encapsulated FC. iSCSI over Ethernet is fine :-) No one will care about FC anymore when iSCSI over 10 GbE is a commodity. It wont take *that* long before it is. Cheers, /M > >>Is there any reason you kept talking about SANs? SAN has its place, >>especially if you need high end performance. But for a lot of >>applications NAS works just fine. > >I agree. >Use NFS. Configure it well. >Build a "storage network" if you like, put in dedicated GbE switch(ws) >(10 GbE?) with the Oracle server(s) and the NAS Filer(s) in it, make >sure everything is Jumbo frames of course, tweak if for optimum >performance as best possible, make sure traffic flows the way it should >a.s.o. >No client traffic on that net. > >Use ONTAP 7.x (aggregates) and have enough spindles. Go for the smaller >drives probably, not the 144G's, but the 72's > >Most likely this will be Good Enough(TM) so you can stay away from >complicated bug-ridden SAN setups that always are a nightmare to change >config-wise. Especially if you need to change the config quite often in >some way (= more than once a year...) > >Just my 0.10 SEK worth > >/M

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Your February Account Details
by Delia Montes 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Mindy Joseph, Enclosed you will find your Summary Account. http://it.geocities.com/reglazed62810 This is confidential data. If you are not Mindy Joseph and have received this message in error, please do not access Mindy Joseph's account. Delia Montes, Account Rep. akv6176581

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RE: Replacing our NetApp
by Michael Bergman 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

>What's wrong with SAN? iSCSI is most certainly SAN and has proven >itself very well in the marketplace as well as being technically very Fair point -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with SAN (= Storage Area Network, remember). I could argue, and keep that argument going, that if iSCSI is "SAN" (which I can agree that it can be) then so is NFS. Depending on how you build the infrastructure for the NFS server(s) and client(s). But anyway, just to make things a bit clearer then on my part, stay away from non-encapsulated FC. iSCSI over Ethernet is fine :-) No one will care about FC anymore when iSCSI over 10 GbE is a commodity. It wont take *that* long before it is. Cheers, /M > >>Is there any reason you kept talking about SANs? SAN has its place, >>especially if you need high end performance. But for a lot of >>applications NAS works just fine. > >I agree. >Use NFS. Configure it well. >Build a "storage network" if you like, put in dedicated GbE switch(ws) >(10 GbE?) with the Oracle server(s) and the NAS Filer(s) in it, make >sure everything is Jumbo frames of course, tweak if for optimum >performance as best possible, make sure traffic flows the way it should >a.s.o. >No client traffic on that net. > >Use ONTAP 7.x (aggregates) and have enough spindles. Go for the smaller >drives probably, not the 144G's, but the 72's > >Most likely this will be Good Enough(TM) so you can stay away from >complicated bug-ridden SAN setups that always are a nightmare to change >config-wise. Especially if you need to change the config quite often in >some way (= more than once a year...) > >Just my 0.10 SEK worth > >/M

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RE: Replacing OUR NetApp
by Glenn Walker 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Hmm... NetApp :) -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Skottie Miller Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 12:57 PM To: Luther Allin Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: Re: Replacing OUR NetApp Ask Oracle what storage they use internally: NetApp or Pillar? then decide. -skottie Luther Allin wrote: > > I'm liking the thread that John Stewart started about his filer > replacement, so I decided to start my own. > > We too are faced with replacing our NetApp filers this year. We have > and F720 (cifs file shares) and an F810 (cifs and iscsi). Both of these > filers are maxed out both in disk space and processor. We had NetApp > come up with a solution for us to replace these and the proposal is > attractive. They put together a 3020 system for us that should meet > both of our storage and processing needs for at least the next 2 years. > So we budgeted for the replacement. Then the unthinkable happened... > > My boss received a postcard from a company called Pillar Data. He > brought the postcard to me and said, "we should look at what these guys > have." The rest is history. For those of you not familiar with Pillar > Data, it's a startup of Larry Ellison's (the ORACLE Larry Ellison.) > They have a really neat product, and their QOS is quite impressive. But > I don't think that their product is mature enough yet for prime time. > After spending some time with their engineers and traveling to the > Enterprise Technology Center in Atlanta to demo one of these solutions, > I found some chinks in their armor. I won't go into the details here, > but if anyone wants to know what I've learned about them, I'll be happy > to share that information. > > So this leads me to my question. Has anyone heard of Pillar Data and if > so I was wondering if you shared my opinion (or not) of their product? > I want to stick with the NetApp solution that was proposed, so I'm > looking for ammunition to back up my argument. > > Cheers. > > > Luther L. Allin IV, MCSE, ICSA > Network Systems Engineer > Miller & Martin PLLC > <http://www.millermartin.com/>832 Georgia Avenue, Suite 1000 > Chattanooga, TN 37402 > lallin(a)millermartin.com <mailto:lallin@millermartin.com> > (423) 785-8381 (Direct) > (423) 321-1678 (Fax) > Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville > > - CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE - > > The information contained in this e-mail message is legally > privileged and confidential, and is intended only for the use > of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, > please be aware that any dissemination, distribution or copy > of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail > in error, please immediately notify us by reply e-mail and > delete this message and any attachments. Thank you. > > Please also advise us immediately if you or your employer does > not consent to receipt of Internet email for confidential > messages of this kind. -- Scott Miller skottie(a)anim.DreamWorks.com

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RE: Replacing our NetApp
by Glenn Walker 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Oracle is dropping support for CIFS (good thing) but will still support NFS. What's wrong with SAN? iSCSI is most certainly SAN and has proven itself very well in the marketplace as well as being technically very solid. Similar performance to FCP, fraction of the cost - what's not to love? Glenn -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Michael Bergman Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 2:11 PM To: johns(a)artesyncp.com Cc: toasters(a)mathworks.com Subject: RE: Replacing our NetApp Derek Lai wrote: >Is there any reason you kept talking about SANs? SAN has its place, >especially if you need high end performance. But for a lot of >applications NAS works just fine. I agree. Use NFS. Configure it well. Build a "storage network" if you like, put in dedicated GbE switch(ws) (10 GbE?) with the Oracle server(s) and the NAS Filer(s) in it, make sure everything is Jumbo frames of course, tweak if for optimum performance as best possible, make sure traffic flows the way it should a.s.o. No client traffic on that net. Use ONTAP 7.x (aggregates) and have enough spindles. Go for the smaller drives probably, not the 144G's, but the 72's Most likely this will be Good Enough(TM) so you can stay away from complicated bug-ridden SAN setups that always are a nightmare to change config-wise. Especially if you need to change the config quite often in some way (= more than once a year...) Just my 0.10 SEK worth /M -- Michael Bergman Email: Michael.Bergman(a)ericsson.com Sr Systems Analyst EAB/OET/R, R&D IT Stockholm Phone: +46 8 7275709 R&D IT Management Armborstv 14, S-125 25 Alvsjo, Sweden -- "Qui vicit non est victor nisi victus fatetur." - Ennius

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Replacing OUR NetApp
by Luther Allin 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

I'm liking the thread that John Stewart started about his filer replacement, so I decided to start my own. We too are faced with replacing our NetApp filers this year. We have and F720 (cifs file shares) and an F810 (cifs and iscsi). Both of these filers are maxed out both in disk space and processor. We had NetApp come up with a solution for us to replace these and the proposal is attractive. They put together a 3020 system for us that should meet both of our storage and processing needs for at least the next 2 years. So we budgeted for the replacement. Then the unthinkable happened... My boss received a postcard from a company called Pillar Data. He brought the postcard to me and said, "we should look at what these guys have." The rest is history. For those of you not familiar with Pillar Data, it's a startup of Larry Ellison's (the ORACLE Larry Ellison.) They have a really neat product, and their QOS is quite impressive. But I don't think that their product is mature enough yet for prime time. After spending some time with their engineers and traveling to the Enterprise Technology Center in Atlanta to demo one of these solutions, I found some chinks in their armor. I won't go into the details here, but if anyone wants to know what I've learned about them, I'll be happy to share that information. So this leads me to my question. Has anyone heard of Pillar Data and if so I was wondering if you shared my opinion (or not) of their product? I want to stick with the NetApp solution that was proposed, so I'm looking for ammunition to back up my argument. Cheers. Luther L. Allin IV, MCSE, ICSA Network Systems Engineer Miller & Martin PLLC <http://www.millermartin.com/> 832 Georgia Avenue, Suite 1000 Chattanooga, TN 37402 lallin(a)millermartin.com (423) 785-8381 (Direct) (423) 321-1678 (Fax) Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville - CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE - The information contained in this e-mail message is legally privileged and confidential, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient, please be aware that any dissemination, distribution or copy of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify us by reply e-mail and delete this message and any attachments. Thank you. Please also advise us immediately if you or your employer does not consent to receipt of Internet email for confidential messages of this kind.

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RE: Replacing our NetApp
by Michael Bergman 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

Derek Lai wrote: >Is there any reason you kept talking about SANs? SAN has its place, >especially if you need high end performance. But for a lot of >applications NAS works just fine. I agree. Use NFS. Configure it well. Build a "storage network" if you like, put in dedicated GbE switch(ws) (10 GbE?) with the Oracle server(s) and the NAS Filer(s) in it, make sure everything is Jumbo frames of course, tweak if for optimum performance as best possible, make sure traffic flows the way it should a.s.o. No client traffic on that net. Use ONTAP 7.x (aggregates) and have enough spindles. Go for the smaller drives probably, not the 144G's, but the 72's Most likely this will be Good Enough(TM) so you can stay away from complicated bug-ridden SAN setups that always are a nightmare to change config-wise. Especially if you need to change the config quite often in some way (= more than once a year...) Just my 0.10 SEK worth /M -- Michael Bergman Email: Michael.Bergman(a)ericsson.com Sr Systems Analyst EAB/OET/R, R&D IT Stockholm Phone: +46 8 7275709 R&D IT Management Armborstv 14, S-125 25 Alvsjo, Sweden -- "Qui vicit non est victor nisi victus fatetur." - Ennius

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Re: Replacing OUR NetApp
by Michael Bergman 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

>Ask Oracle what storage they use internally: NetApp or Pillar? >then decide. A good idea. Might work very well if they'll give a good 'n straight answer. My guess is they use both to some extent at least. >> My boss received a postcard from a company called Pillar Data. He >> brought the postcard to me and said, "we should look at what these guys >> have." Sounds good and fair enough -- to look at what those guys have. >> I don't think that their product is mature enough yet for prime time. >> After spending some time with their engineers and traveling to the >> Enterprise Technology Center in Atlanta to demo one of these solutions, >> I found some chinks in their armor. I won't go into the details here, So you've looked at them (I know about them as well, but have in no way looked closer), and you've made your conclusions. It sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me; they're not mature enough yet for prime time whatever the definition of that might be in your case. God knows, NetApp Filer's weren't ready for that in the beginning, nor when they first started with FC backends (i.e. when they left SCSI for good) either! Just ask YahooMail about what it was like back in those days, jan-may 1999... >> I want to stick with the NetApp solution that was proposed, so I'm >> looking for ammunition to back up my argument. Well, you have all the ammo you need IMO. All the ammo that *should* be needed. You looked properly at Pillar, have concluded that they're not mature enough yet for prime time. Are you saying that your boss knows more than you or does he have such a good business case to make him a hero that it is "OK" with these systems not having as good, or much worse, availability, flexibility, ease of admin and performance? If so, then you have my pity. If your boss doesn't trust you (assuming he's not a better Subject Matter Expert himself than you are) your situation is certainly not good. Best of luck - in this situation I'd do exactly whay you want to do, i.e. stick with the NetApp solution. Do *not* go out on the bleeding edge, unless you must for a very good reason, for "prime time" stuff as you put it. It hurts. /M -- Michael Bergman Email: Michael.Bergman(a)ericsson.com Sr Systems Analyst EAB/OET/R, R&D IT Stockholm Phone: +46 8 7275709 R&D IT Management Armborstv 14, S-125 25 Alvsjo, Sweden -- "Utinam tam facile vera invenire possem quam falsa convincere!" - Cicero

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RE: Replacing our NetApp
by Lai, Derek 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

Is there any reason you kept talking about SANs? SAN has its place, especially if you need high end performance. But for a lot of applications NAS works just fine. We have a big Oracle running on NetApp 940 Cluster and it's been working great. Most of the time it is the spindle count that matters, not NAS vs. SAN. Derek -----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Stewart, John Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 3:11 PM To: Stewart, John; 'toasters(a)mathworks.com' Subject: RE: Replacing our NetApp Hey all; thanks for the many great responses. We have our NetApp vendor coming in tomorrow, and we'll discuss their SAN solutions then. thanks! johnS

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