"barry" == Barry Lustig barry@lustig.com writes:
Here's what my response would typically look like:
barry> - The F85 is a stripped down, single CPU, low end device with barry> multiple points of failure and a very poor data protection.
Plese provide examples. Are you getting this information from spec sheets, white papers and analysis of the hardware or from another vendor's propaganda machine ?
barry> NetApps service is rated very low by industry experts and they barry> offer next day shipment of parts that the user must install barry> themselves.
Personal experience has shown that EMC's "service and support" can be just as bad, if not worse, than NetApps. I have had case where both dropped the ball in a serious way. Neither really made up for it.
barry> - The IP4700 is fully redundant, multi-CPU, mid-range device barry> with no single point of failure and hardware based RAID 5 data barry> protection.
I have yet to see detailed information regarding the depth of their fully redudant design. Granted, my gripe is with the all-important cache of the Symms that no one at EMC will talk about other than to say "it's fully redundant." The info I've seen on the IP4700 look good, though. But so do clustered NetApps.
barry> EMC's world class customer service center has ranked #1 for 6 barry> consecutive years by Gartner Group.
Personal experience has shown that EMC's "world class customer service center" still sucks. "Gosh, you mean the reason you haven't been able to fix my problem is because your engineers AREN'T EVENING RUNNING THE SAME CODE (ie, timefinder) ON THEIR TEST MACHINE?"
barry> Standard 2 year warranty guarantees 4 hours ON SITE w/Parts barry> service by EMC technicians.
NetApp offers comparable service.
barry> Plus, our 'call home' proactive maintenance system monitors barry> trends within the system and reports them automatically to our barry> customer service center. Often, EMC technicians will repair a barry> system BEFORE the component actually fails.
I can't actually rate this one, because we never got the system into a working state before I moved on. They may very well hold up to this one.
barry> The 4700 will be configured with 8 drives usable, plus 1 drive barry> for RAID 5 parity and 1 drive for hot swap redundancy. It is barry> scalable all the way to 7000GB (7TB) vs. only 648GB for the barry> F85. The 4700 as configured above is 8RU.
Are you actually going to ever put more than 650GB on it? Is that *really* an issue?
barry> In general, the F85 does not scale sufficiently for growth, has
Perhaps. That depends on what your expected growth is. It might very well be that the F85 is not the right choice. How about an 820 or maybe even an 840c?
barry> poor customer service behind it, has no redundancy, has barry> multiple points of failure, and utilizes a sub-par RAID 0 data barry> protection scheme.
The F85's use RAID0 ? Not having seen one, I suppose that's true, but why the break from RAID4 ? If it is RAID0, how is that "very poor data protection" as stated above ? EMC told me once that RAID0 was better than RAID5.
Anyways... lest people think I'm *completely* on NetApp's side, they both like to sling mud at each other and make up numbers and generally turn into a bunch of children. They both screw the pooch on service and then fail to take responsibilty for it. At least for the most part, NetApp is cheaper. ;-)
K.