I suggested to my wife that we could save a lot of money on power by turning off the filer and getting some cheap SATA drives.
She asked me if she'd still have snapshots.
The filer is still running. :-)
Graham
-----Original Message----- From: Chris Lamb [mailto:skeezics@selectmetrics.com] Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 12:24 PM To: Toasters Subject: RE: NetApp Home Lab
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Leeds, Daniel wrote:
when i ran one at home my power increased by over $475
Ouch. Power prices in CA must be through the roof. In OR I'm paying about 8-9 cents/KWh - and that's opting for the expensive "green power" to assuage my guilt about running three full racks of equipment in my basement.
I've run toasters at home for a long time. For years an F330 and a single shelf of 4GB drives was plenty of space for me, supporting a small home network of a dozen various Unix boxes. For the last three years I've run an F720 with a single shelf of 36GB drives, supporting a pile of Suns (half a dozen 2- and 4-way 220/420/280R class) and a couple of Dells (2-way 2450s), plus network kit and a DLT library. At the peak this winter my bill hit $325, but it typically runs around $250-280/mo - about $9/day. The server room is about 75% of that, and the NetApp is no more power-hungry than any of the other machines. If I could afford it, I'd probably buy a Sun T2000 and consolidate the servers before I'd worry about the cost of the NetApp!
Obviously if you need a huge amount of storage and many shelves of drives, then of course an older box like the F700- or F800-series will be more expensive. But for sensible home use, a single DS-9 of 72GB disks is plenty of space, and you get the benefits of running a real NetApp. Every time someone says "you could replace that with a cheap linux box and some 500GB drives!" I just smile and nod. I've run toasters since 1995 and NEVER ONCE lost data. Can't say that about _any_ other storage I've ever used. That's worth a few extra dollars on the power bill, in my judgement. You'll have to do your own cost/benefit analysis, of course.
So, yes, it's "more expensive." But I find it a small price for peace of mind.
Just another data point,
-- Chris