Look at it this way.
The F85 is a replacement for the F720. The F820 is a replacement for the F760.
What's the replacement for the F740? I don't see one yet. So my guess is NetApp plans to keep the F740 around for a while.
I'd go for it. It's a better box in a lot of ways than the F85 (NetApp-designed hardware compared to COTS hardware, clusterable, a tad more scalable, FC drives instead of SCSI drives, etc).
Tom
-----Original Message----- From: Steve Losen [mailto:scl@sasha.acc.virginia.edu] Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 11:05 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: F85 Vs 740
The 740 is an older model and the F85 is brand new. Since the end of availability dates have already been announced for the 720 and 760, I would want to have some idea how much longer Netapp will support the 740 as compared to the F85. Bear in mind that the 700 series uses a DEC Alpha processor and the new 800 series and F85 are Intel. Soon the 740 will be the only Alpha based filer that Netapp still sells.
On the other hand, if you need something fast, and it's not clear how soon you can get a F85, then a 740 might look more attractive, especially if you are getting a nice discount because of the F85 unavailability.
I'm a NetApp newbie looking for feedback from experience users of these boxes.
I just ordered a F85, but because of non availability of F85's was offered
a
740 instead. I'm not as concerned w/ scalability as I am w/ performance. The data that it will host is under a 100GB now and should grow much
beyond
200GB. The F85 that I ordered has 12 36GB drives which I figure will leave me w/ ~280GB of usable space.
There are 120 NT 4 workstations and a handful of UNIX boxes on this
network.
The majority of the data will be CIFS, some NFS and HTTP. I plan on
moving
all of the users home folders and shared data to the filer. The connectivity of the servers and filer will be at 100Mb and the workstations are at 10Mb.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Mark
Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 804-924-0640
University of Virginia ITC Unix Support