Since they change that, we tend to not place too much value on "GD" either anymore.
Right now to me it means "The latest release of a well-tested base", whereas it used to mean "This release has been running for a while and has been found stable, we corrected the stuff we found when it was GA"
Personally, I prefer the latter approach, since I can then more easily assume a GD release will have the most serious bugs fixed and always recommend customers to run GD releases, whereas now, installing a new ONTAP for the first time is a bit more of a surprise, and I cannot as easily make the assumption that a GD release is generally a good one as I could before.
Greets,
Nils
On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Darragh, Stephen J (US SSA) stephen.j.darragh@baesystems.com wrote:
Hello,
You mention you believe it was GA at one point, and I don't believe that is correct. It used to be the case, but at some point, they determined that if the base release was GD, then subsiqent released are auto-majically placed into GD status.
This has caused us problems and I hope others chime in to see if NetApp will go back to the old release cycle of every version being GA before going to GD.
Stephen Darragh BAE Systems IT Merrimack NH