Homestead.com has 8 F760 filers. We have just installed a Celerra with 7 datamovers attached to a Symmetrix 3930 (3 raw terabytes, 1 TB effective). While both are NAS solutions, the approaches are very different. How they are evaluated must be done from the perspective of the specific environment they are used in. In ours, both perform the same duty - we have roughly 70 HTTP servers (MS IIS 4.0) on Compaq Proliant servers (NT 4.0 SP6a), a few Linux and FreeBSD servers and some non-HTTP servers using either CIFS or NFS. The mix is about 65-70% CIFS and the rest NFS. Each "client" server uses UNC pathing to find the specific volume\directory\file, or to create the same.
Performance - too early to compare, but initial results show parity of response. I have no hard data other than the individual read/write tests we have done that show little significant variance.
Administration - big difference. The netapp is very easy to setup and install and monitor. the combined Celerra/Symmetrix environment is not. Let's just say that I am not the most technical guy in the world and I setup 2 F760's, cross-connected for Snapmirror, with all the RAID definitions, etc., by myself in one afternoon. I would not even know where to begin doing this in the EMC environment. On the other had, for the price difference, I expect EMC to get that done and get it done correctly.
Support - here again the 2 approaches differ greatly. The EMC platform comes with premium service - you get no choice, you only get top-of-line, phone-home, on site in 2 hours. netapp, even though we have premium support, does not have the same level of system-to-support automatic ties (autosupport really is not the same). being located very close to netapp has mitigated any issue this might cause and we have nothing but great support from them.
Why did Homestead.com choose to buy EMC at this point? The main reason is that Network Appliance's next generation is not yet ready, so the ability to scale based on current products was not optimal for us. Also, we wanted a RAID 1+ solution - WAFL is RAID 4 (and very good, just not as tolerant of disk failures). Lastly, I could use parts of the Symmetrix for direct attach (SAN) while having the other for NAS.
Sam Schorr Homestead.com ph: (650) 549-3152 fax: (650) 364-7329 sschorr@homestead-inc.com
Homestead: It's a new world. Make your place.
-----Original Message----- From: Gilles TOURPE [mailto:gilles@bnpcn.com] Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 5:28 AM To: toasters@mathworks. com Subject: EMC Celerra vs NetApp Filer
Hello,
Did anybody get in the same site,
an EMC Celerra system and a NETAPP F7xx ( at least 740 ) Filer ?
I would be interrested in Performances, administration, supports issues ...
I'm very curious about the Celerra solution. On the paper it looks smart and really really NAS-oriented ( quite funny for SAN-guys :-) ). Some tests we did we pretty concluant also ( and complex also ... ).
Any thinking, remarks ????
Thanx
Gilles
------------------------------------------------------------ Gilles TOURPE - System and Network Administrator APS BNP ARBITRAGE - Salle des marches ACTIONS - PARIS - France Phone : (33)-1-40-14-24-03 e-mail : gilles@bnpcn.com