Hello fellow toaster,
We are contemplating an upgrade from our existing FAS3140 to a new FAS3220. The 3140 has served us very well and been unbelievably reliable, but is now 5 years old. We would like to move to a newer filer and more storage. What do to with the old filer and it's three associated shelves (DS14Mk4)?
Could it be used as some sort of snapvault device? Currently we back up to LTO-4 tapes via NDMP, which is a bit painful, but we deal with it. I like the idea of having a set of backups on disk, ready to go, and easily accessible.
We only use NFS and iSCSI functionality of the filer and have no extra licenses so I'm not very familiar with the day-to-day use of snapvault. Is it feasible to use the retired FAS3140 as a snapvault "container" without having it under an annual service contract? If we pay for a snapvault license on our new FAS3220 does that allow us to use an older filer as the actual storage space?
I guess the other option is to mothball the FAS3140, but I hate to put down a good piece of equipment.
Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Scott