On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Chris Thompson wrote:
I don't imagine that Network Appliance will want to talk about the actual frequency of filesystem failures publicly (and this mailing list is public).
No, but I figure I'd ask anyway. ;-) A few folks have replied privately with some of their numbers, which indicate that I'm heading in the right direction, at least. Given a stable of 15 filers and a duty cycle of 5 years, a filesystem failure rate of at most once per 100 filer-years is my comfort level. I suspect that the actual observed failure rate is much lower than that, even if you consider Netapp's optimistic MTTDL calculations at http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3027.html (12000 years worst case!). The downside of these numbers is that it makes justifying an off-site mirror much more difficult. ;-)