+--- In a previous state of mind, kls@netapp.com (Karl Swartz) wrote: | | FDDI (or requires extra GbE NICs). If we told a FDDI customer that | we'd be able to give them failover today but we won't because we've | not finished a driver for a GbE NIC that can handle multiple MAC | addresses, they'd probably be a bit peeved.
Well, I am a FDDI customer and I would rather have the GbE driver. I am migrating from FDDI to GbE now. So, for clustering, you have just increased my costs by 50%. How? Well:
sofware for filers & interconnect cards: $30k
additional gigabit cards: $6k additional ports on GbE switch: $8k additional cabling $1k
So, do I want you to complete the drivers for a single card? Damn right.
| (a) use GbE but not have failover | (b) use failover but not GbE
I wish I had known about the delay of GbE and failover *before* I bought it.
| (c) buy a second GbE NIC and have both failover and and GbE
See the above financials fo the reason not to do this.
| (d) wait until we have a GbE NIC and driver which will allow you | to have failover with a single GbE
When will this be?
| You'll be able to have your cake and eat it, too, but you'll just | have to wait a bit.
As long as the windows folks had to wait for acls? I certainly hope not..
| slot. On the other hand, if you've taken over for a failed partner, | you'll have degraded performance anyway.
It depends. If my load is spread such that neither filer is foing more than 50%, then I should not be in degraded mode, right?
Alexei