| Were we to provide distinct separate RAID volumes, made up of one or | more RAID groups, would people want:
...
How hard would it be to do all of the above?
How hard to implement? Not very.
However, offering multiple choices carries other costs. How much complexity would we add to the user interface? How many new pages to the documentation set? How many new fields for the FilerView GUI? How many phone calls from customers whose filesystems weren't protected because they chose the wrong option?
So our philosophy is to stick with the simplest and most general solution until legitimate customer requirements drive us to more complexity. "When in doubt, leave it out." And even in the case of legitimate requirements, we must balance the benefit to the customers who need it, against the complexity to those who don't. If few people have the need, it may not be worth the complexity for the rest.
This is, of course, a very difficult line to walk. Many of our most spirited internal debates revolve around exactly these issues. And since it's SO hard to remove complexity, once added, I fight for the side of simplicity whenever we're not sure.
Dave