Hi James,

I've worked with simulators. A simulator is an excellent tool to see how the features of ONTAP work, however, there is no hardware substructure to provide performance and to secure data. The sims aren't really stripping across disks; the disks are really directories, so there isn't really RAID4 or RAID-DP or RAID Scrub protection... Performance is bound by the limitations of the sim's host RAM and CPU and the host's OS and other applications possibly running on the host. Sims also lack the real filer's NVRAM.

But the sim can give you a really good idea of how the filer will work.

Deborah Rousseau

Network Appliance

From: Johnson, James A [mailto:James_A_Johnson@homedepot.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 7:02 AM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: NetApp Simulator Limitations

Does anyone know what limitations the NetApp simulator has? I know it looks and feels like a real filer, but there has to be some limitation, right?

Thanks,

James