I've been moving around some of our applications to make better use of our netapps and storage, and as part of this shuffle, some things just gotta be said...
(I will preface this by saying that I really like my filers, both of them work very well in terms of reliability, it is just the nature of the beast to criticize when something doesn't work like you want it to, and be silent when it's doing its job. :)
o The lack of *good* automated, filer-sufficient backup and management tools. NDMP is fine, but the *filer* needs to truly be an appliance, and needs to be able to do this on its own. No rsh monkeying around, just nice consistent, in-the-background, web-managed backup. Follow a schedule, run some "scripted" jobs, SMTP/SNMP trap the results. Not rocket science.
o The lack of widespread tape changer support, or at least tweakable changer support. For various reaons, one of my filers will have 2 ADIC DLT tape changer systems on it, which doesn't do me a speck of good from the filer side, as I still have to issue the commands to swap tapes around. Gag.
o CIFS support has got some big holes.
- The inability to belong to multiple domains. Not all my domains trust each other. Oops, now the filer is essentially unusable for some of them.
- For me, at least, CIFS management with no PDC is non-intuitive at all. I would pay real money for somebody to explain to me how to use autoexnt, a filer with no PDC and no WINS access, and permanently affix a share that is usable by more than one person.
I can mount the share in autoexnt, but it's not accessible to anybody. (I use autoexnt with the interactive option, and the connection is successful, yet I always get "access denied" when trying to access it. However, if I attach it with the same login account as the autoexnt service, with the same username/password pair, it's fine.
The CIFS tracer thingie on the Netapp tells me that both accesses are being mapped to the same Unix user account, but one works, the other doesn't...
I have mailed support this one, but nary a response...
- Even the ability to have a different network interface belong to a different domain would be useful. Not a panacea, but at least useful.
o The general suckiness of NFS now being insufficient to backup the filer with CIFS. Probably not a solveable problem, but it still sucks.
o The apparent lack of CIDR support in routing tables. I realize that routing requirements for a filer are probably not super significant, but something better than /24 would be nice.
o NOW is better, but quicker navigation tools would help. I also do not understand why documentation requires a NOW login.
o I would give a body part for a small filer, with 3 18 or 36GB drives, self contained, no shelves. Medium performance, medium capacity, hot swappable, 1 100MBit ethernet port, just plug and go. 8MB NVRAM, 256MB RAM. I hate adding file servers for that niche where even a small 720 is physically too much hassle, and the price-point is out the roof. Make the drives user-supplied, off a netapp recommended list, and kaching, give me an even dozen. Maybe leave in a slot for a 5 1/4" Tape drive.
Heck, I saw some very scary numbers from consensys for their IDE raid product, use IDE drives instead of scsi in this bad boy, and cut them costs down. WD makes 7200 RPM drives now, at 18GB's a pop, and 5 of 'em fit in a 3 high bay.
(And no, I'm not interested in the philosophical war of IDE vs SCSI. Fact: IDE is currently cheaper than SCSI. Fact: I want this box to be cheap. Check and mate. :))
o It would be cool if config information, perhaps even the OS was on a optional PCMCIA card, that was formatted in a fashion readable on a notebook. Nothing like not having the right serial cable wired up, and having to type all those stupid commands by hand when you make a booboo, and plus the grief of having to boot off two floppies.
o Or add an option to read rc from disk 3 on a DOS formatted floppy.
o Fine, you don't want to use something like PCMCIA cards, then since Netapp only allows its network cards, allow tftp of the rc file from one of the interfaces.
I guess the CIFS stuff is what's torquing me off right now the most, I don't want to have to slap a bunch of storage on some NT boxes when I have this filer sitting there perfectly suited (in theory) to do the job..., and I refuse to purchase 1 filer per domain.