I know that in our environment, a small low-cost filer would not be terribly interesting. The F540 was the first NetApp that looked really useful to us.
I believe that there is more to it than the issues of resellers and dealing with mass market. On a small network, it is typically more cost-effective to simply add a disk or two to an existing machine. Filers, like routers, are specialized. In a small environment, it is typically more cost-effective to combine network services on a small number of less specialized servers. In a larger environment, a small low-cost filer would not be particularly interesting - you need performance.
David Ritch
Dave Hitz wrote:
Our very first product was a $10-$15K box, designed to be sold through resellers.
It just about killed the company.