Hi,
I am looking for a comparison between an F720 and the new FAS250 in a software-development environment (or similar), i.e. lots of small files: currently we have ~6.5 million files in ~220 GB on our old but well-tried F720 (average file size ~35k).
The problem: speed, typically with large build operations.
The filer used to be more than fast enough, but today, with some NFS clients running at >2 GHz0, the filer has become a problem (we also see this at backup time - pulling all those small files in large directory trees takes ages).
We are looking at the FAS250, mostly for price reasons. The idea is to put the most-demanding projects/users onto that, and grow there. But I have not been able to find any performance comparisons for a F720 vs. FAS250.
NetApp provided me with one F810 vs. FAS250 where the FAS250 comes out the better - but not by a comfortable margin, IMHO. But we have zero experience with F810 (and also no "numbers" for a F720 vs. F810).
So, anyone having experience in this kind of setup and/or upgrade situation? I would appreciate any input, even if you think we are heading the wrong way (may be early enough to turn :)
Some more numbers: ~80 NFS clients total, mix of Solaris and Linux with ~30 on modern/fast Pentium hardware, the rest on everything between Sun Ultra 1 upto a V880, but mostly Ultra 10. We also have ~30 CIFS clients, mostly laptops, but hardly used for development.
Regards,
Sten Gunterberg