Pretty much as you think.  V-Series work exactly like a FAS system except there are other disks on the back-end.   The only difference you will notice is that aggregates created on 3^rd party disks will not have any RAID turned on from the filer side as we will rely on the back-end array to handle disk failures.  In theory, the V-Series should never see a drive go away.

The LUNs provisioned to the V-Series look like disks to the controller.  Starting in 7.3, you can also hook up NetApp shelves at the same time.

But all of the software features work just like a FAS.  Once you create the aggregates, it looks, feels, and acts just like a FAS.

-- Adam Fox

Systems Engineer

adamfox@netapp.com

From: Page, Jeremy [mailto:jeremy.page@gilbarco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2010 3:59 PM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: vseries pros and cons?

What do I loose if I put a NetApp 3140 gateway infront of an old DS4500 instead of getting a nice shiney 2040? (other than the hardware differences in the controllers that is). Are there limitations on what you can do with a v series box? Do you just zone LUNs to the v system and it formats them with WAFL?

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