On Fri 14 Jul, 2000, Jay Orr orrjl@stl.nexen.com wrote:
For my griping - everything BUT the motherboard is designed for easy swap-out. Why can't they make the motherboard just as easy? Let's face it, if best-case is 15 minutes on a mission critical system, that's not right. ever taken apart a Sparc or HPUX system? They're designed to be modular so it's just pop-out, pop-in, back in service. A design idea Netapp should follow...
Well, the nearest comparable component in the Suns etc. I think you're talking about would be the back-planes or centre-planes, and they take a very long time to replace indeed.
If you're talking about more NetApp-scale machines like E420R's, rather than Exy00's, I think you'll find the motherboard's are real pains requiring a second torque-adjusted screwdriver (you need one for the CPU modules).
Suns etc. are very variable IMHO - ever tried to put a heatsink back on one of the ASICS or UltraSPARC modules on an Exy00 CPU-board when you catch it accidently sliding it into the chassis? Not easy to do, and often a cause for further FRU shipments.
SGI's are tricky to pull apart in the field too, but they, at least, were intending to lever off the node/module design.
Starfires, IBM S80's and other big boxes, well sometimes they can be serviced online, sometimes they need a day's downtime.
A really rapid mobo swap can be accomplished (in a NetApp, Netra, etc.) by doing a full head-swap if it's *that* important to you.
I have to say that compared to the old 1400's the F540, F630 etc. generation was a substantial improvement in Serviceability, and it looked like the designers had spent some time as field engineers taking notes about how things can be done.
But otherwise, sounds like fun ;)
Aye. I do think points should be awarded for style as well as the final time. Calm, unflapped, neatly executed work by one or two guys may take a hair longer than a biff-bang-bosh job slapped together by three or four adrenaline addicts but I know which I'd rather have serving my data afterward.
-- End of excerpt from Jay Orr