Chris,
Another point that came up in our testing had to do with the volumes on the IP4700. The box comes configured with 2 volumes across the drives on the shelf. Each drive is split in half (an A side and a B side) and a RAID5 is created across the halves of the drives. One RAID5 is all of the A sides and the other the B sides. I tried to delete both of the volumes using the GUI, but it refused. I wanted to do this so that I could create a single large volume. As far as I could tell I couldn't add additional singles drives to a volume to increase its size. Also, I found the lack of a command line interface annoying. In our application we plan on many hundreds of devices in the field. With a command line I can script changes. With a web browser-based interface that isn't an option.
All in all, I would second Bruce's suggestion of getting an IP4700 and either an F85 or F8xx and play with the boxes for a week or two. I think that you'll find fairly quickly which of the systems works best. You don't need to have a formal testing environment to do the playing. You can do simple throughput tests with a single client box.
barry
P.S. As to FUD, we got hit with a whole lot of it from the EMC side. I think that FUD can't be isolated to either side. Take a look at the toasters archives and see the email that I quoted from the EMC sales person.
Chris_Van_Genderen@NexFlash.com wrote:
Bruce,
One of the items that I did not mention was that we are a start up company that is using the back-end infrastructure of our parent company. I have been given the task of not only buying a NAS device for company wide storage, but also to build the entire network infrastructure and server infrastructure for our new location. So, what ever we purchase will need to go online immediately and support the company in a new location. I don't have the "test-bed" to test anything.
As you can also guess, via my title, I am not a MIS person either. So, I've been going through a fairly steep learning curve in many areas. I am weary about compatibility issues with NFS and our engineering/CAD Sun machines. In this area, I feel because of their industry experience, NetApp has the edge. I've talked with EMC on this issue, and they re-assure me that the IP4700 will not have compatibility problems. However, this is much different than having users of the product claim that their are no compatibility problems.
My gut feeling is to go with the F740 because of the existing installation base, and the maturity of the product. I'm just a little miffed that NetApp has been trying to use my inexperience and limited knowledgebase against me during the sales process; it doesn't give me the feeling that I can trust them.
Chris Van Genderen Software Engineer & Applications Manager NexFlash Technologies, Inc. chris_van_genderen@nexflash.com
"Bruce Sterling To: <toasters@mathworks.com>, <Chris_Van_Genderen@NexFlash.com> Woodcock" cc: (bcc: Chris Van Genderen/Santa Clara/ISSIHQ) <sirbruce@ix.n Subject: Re: EMC IP4700 vs NetApp F740 etcom.com> 05/09/01 03:45 PMMost of what you seem to be weighing are nebulous issues of who says what. Why don't you just find out for yourself?
Ask Netapp for an F760 to try out for 2 weeks.
Ask EMC for an IP4700 *at the equivalent price and disk capacity, with RAID* to try out for 2 weeks.
See which has better performance for your users and which you can administer easier. Build large RAID groups, test simultaneous file sharing from NFS and CIFS, fail drives, do rebuilds, etc.
Bruce