I agree with Bruce.
The author is a " a 20 year veteran", yet hasn't figured out that more hardware doesn't necessarily mean more performance.
How many times have I seen this!
Talk to anyone who has moved from Novell to NT, It takes more hardware to get the same speed.
Test Linux and NT on the same hardware, heck load up dos and run some test. You need a lot less hardware if the OS is tighter.
Move from a simple database to a relational one.
Netapp has Ontap - one real-time OS. IP4700 has Crosstor, Vxworks and the Clariion disk management.
Correct me if I'm wrong but one of it's processors is doing raid and I/O and the other is doing file system, protocols, and IP.
This isn't a bad thing, just that it's going to take a little more hardware to match up.
This article didn't talk at all about software, features or the implementation of NFS / CIFS, backup, card support, etc. just that more hardware should make a system faster.
--- Bruce Sterling Woodcock sirbruce@ix.netcom.com wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Todd C. Merrill" tmerrill@mathworks.com To: toasters@mathworks.com; emcnas@mathworks.com Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 3:01 PM Subject: NAS Wars
A recent article in Server/Workstation Expert,
entitled "NAS Wars,"
might be of interest here:
http://swexpert.com/CB/SE.C11.MAR.01.pdf
I applaud Alan's efforts at applying a bit of math
and a lot of common
sense to such a sticky issue.
I just finished reading it. Not a bad article, really. But I must say it sounds like Alan had a pro-EMC bias. He admits to all the noted discrepancies between the EMC and the NTAP configurations, but he make no attempt to analyze them quantitatively; i.e. doubling the amount of EMC hardware to more realistically compare RAID-0 with RAID-4. He goes so far as to cast unfounded suspicions on Netapp; i.e. "Who knows (I am a suspicious sort), perhaps a scaling problem is why NetApps chose not to use more disks." He then launches into some dubious assumptions and calculations about disk ops to make the IP4700 look better than it performed on the Spec benchmarks, and ends with a completely unfounded "I would expect the IP4700 to have a significant advantage over the NetApps F840 due to what would seem a richer hardware architecture." Well, heck Alan, you would expect that, but you'd be wrong! He only begrudgingly admits that WAFL "may" have something to do with this!
He basically starts off by trying to question the validity of the Paine Webber report, finds difficulty in doing so, and winds up declaring that it's all the fault of lack of further information. (Alan probably thinks, "If I could just get more information, I'm sure I could show that the IP4700 beats the F840 in at least one juryrigged configuration!")
Bruce
PS - And he doesn't even mention cost. What if the F840 is half the price of the IP4700???
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