Apologies if this is off the charter -- let me know (gently, please!) and I'll desist -- but I'm evaluating dedicated NFS servers and have narrowed things down to Network Appliance (F220, qty 2) versus Falcon Systems (FastfilePro 7000, qty 1). I must admit that I'm leaning toward the 7000 due to its superior expandability and greater administrative flexibility (multiple filesystems and RAID sets, ability to run old drives via JBOD on the SCSI port). Also, the 7000 tests about even with the F540 in various magazine reviews, and NetApp's own LADDIS testing shows the F220 to be only half as fast as the F540 (is this true in the real world?).
On the other hand, NetApp tells me that the highly random nature of my traffic -- typical ISP work including email, USENET news, and webservers -- should point me toward multiple servers to maximize main memory cache hits. They say that the main memory cache on the 7000 will become worthless as I expand storage and that performance will drop off. I don't have a good feel for the importance of main memory cache here -- the 7000 uses hardware RAID controllers with onboard cache, so it seems like it would be less important to the Falcon product than it is to the NetApp line. But I must admit that NetApp's larger installed base -- 1000's versus 100's of systems -- makes it a safer choice on the surface.
Anyone care to share his/her thoughts on this topic?
-- Marc Rouleau
VP and Chief Technology Officer Voice: (812) 479-1700 Fax: (812) 479-3439 World Connection Services, LLC http://www.evansville.net