On 02/25/99 08:34:50 you wrote:
Dave Hitz hitz@netapp.com 02/24 9:32 AM >>>
To open a real can-of-worms, what would people on this list like to see in a low-end product offering? (Sub-$10k chassis).
This hypothetical discussion would be of great interest to me. :-)
I'll take a crack at it:
PC-ish Mini-tower not to exceed 19" high (so it could be rack mounted on its side) Lower-end Alpha or medium Intel processor (whatever's cheaper for NetApp) 256 MB RAM 4-8MB NVRAM Single 10/100 Ethernet Single SCSI Bus Up to 7 9GB (or larger?) disks A couple of PCI slots for other types of network interfaces, and/or SCSI Tape.
Make it one box, disks and all.
I thought they already did this. It was called the F210. :)
My personal experience with those admins who are "cheap" either by nature or by force is that such a small box doesn't appeal to them for a variety of reasons. They don't need high-performance at that end of the scale, so they can cobble together a server with cheaper ethernet cards and disks that work "just as well". They may not get RAID, but they rarely need it.
Then the inevitable happens... they want to add more disk that it can take. They feel resentful that they can't add more disk, even though they think the CPU can handle it. The have no qualms about stringing 21 drives off an old Pentium with an ISA ethernet card if they can get away with it. And of course they want to use *their* cheap disk, not what Netapp wants for the performance. And then when the load gets too great or it crashes, they want to blame the vendor(s) and netapp. And then they get resentful if you tell them they have to upgrade the whole server to handle the increased load of the increased disk and users... they want to just put in more memory, or swap the CPU, and be done with it!
I'm not saying Netapp can't make some more inroads into the low-end. I think they can and will, eventually. But there's a large contigent out there who always think they can get away with doing it cheaper by putting together their own linux box with a bunch of disks. Sometimes they can get away with it; sometimes they can't. If netapp can design a low-end box that uses cheaper components and perhaps has optional RAID but still at reasonable (not great) performance, they might be able to make some headway. But the margin will be small.
Bruce