sorry if this looks like flogging a dead horse; i've been a bit busy and this has been sitting in a composition window for two weeks. also, i'm pretty annoyed about this, and i didn't want to be writing email when i was flat-out livid.
On Thu, 22 May 1997, Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
Do you know if the mixed-shelf config has been announced? The person you spoke with may have just been speculating, rather than actually promising anything...
i asked what i could refer to in open media before i got on my high horse. i was asked not to mention that ONTAP version or the projected release date, but was told that it was OK to mention the existence of the feature.
i can see that keeping RAID reconstruct time low is a win, but arbitrary lines drawn in the sand do tend to look like marketing somewhat more than they look like engineering. particularly, i'd been told some time back that i'd be able to use 9s provided i kept a shelf free for them, which i've done; now i find i can only half-fill that shelf. i can buy another shelf of 4s, but this is essentially lost investment if i migrate up to a bigger system, whereas 9s aren't (if i understand correctly).
i don't feel that i'm trying to go beyond the edge, here; i'm not trying to fit a fifth shelf of discs, or go FWDifferential and use more than seven in a shelf. i'm observing that i have a toaster which is capacity-limited (not performance-limited), that i can fit a fourth shelf to it, that it can take 9Gb discs, and then asking why i can't fill the shelf up, given that my RAID reconstruct times are currently in the 20-minute range. that's all.
I have the same sort of issue at times... there are cases where I need a lot of online storage, but I don't really need a 500 MHz alpha CPU to handle the load. This type of storage may almost be archival in nature, and thus perhaps a nearline or HSM solution would be more appropriate for the data.
possibly; however, the question isn't "what else could i buy to do this", but "how can i get the best value out of my toasters".
my perception of netapp has not, historically, been of a company who will dictate what i'll buy and how i'll use it, but i'm open to being told that it should be otherwise.
Tom Yates - Unix Chap - The Mathworks, Inc. - +1 (508) 647 7561 MAG#65061 DoD#0135 AMA#461546 1024/CFDFDE39 0C E7 46 60 BB 96 87 05 04 BD FB F8 BB 20 C1 8C "Microsoft (tm) is a single-sofa supplier"