Stephen,
Actually, that is not quite true even in the case of the filer, unless I have not understood some things about how Network Appliance builds their devices. The ethernet, fddi, gigabit, etc network interfaces are not made by NetApp. It does not seem farfetched to expect Network Appliance to use the same model that has led to open sourcing in other areas. If they have chosen to integrate the drivers directly into ONTap instead of calling the drivers as needed, and if they have not adhered to whatever standards exist for those interfaces, then NetApp has self-created a monopoly. It will go the way of all monopolies - competition will force them out of business or into supporting more flexible configurations.
-----Original Message----- From: Stephen C. Losen [mailto:scl@sasha.acc.virginia.edu] Sent: Monday, November 09, 1998 2:53 PM To: Sam Schorr Cc: toasters@magic.metawire.com Subject: Re: Potential user has questions
I think the reasoning here is not quite thorough enough. If I buy a
Compaq
server and then I install a 3-Com ethernet card, I still expect, and get, full support from Compaq. This has been the case in the clone, or Intel world for quite awhile. I know that it is less true the more proprietary you get, but still is essentially the case, even in the IBM mainframe
world
and in the UNIX world. I am now in the middle of an issue between Network Appliance and Microsoft and I would NEVER buy another filer if NetApp
tried
to deflect response to the fact that I use Microsoft products and
therefore
I should debug the Microsoft side first. Whether I like it or not, and whether NetApp likes it or not, multi-vendor environments MUST be
supported
- there is no option.
There is one BIG difference as far as interface cards go. Any driver code is part of ONTap. If ONTap does not have code to support a particular card, there's absolutely no way the card will work in a filer (unless it is a perfect clone of a card that netapp does support). And there is no way for a card vendor to supply you with a "driver" that will work on a netapp filer. They would have to provide you with a custom version of ONTap.
Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu phone: 804-924-0640
University of Virginia ITC Unix Support
+--- In a previous state of mind, Sam Schorr sschorr@homestead.com wrote: | | the same model that has led to open sourcing in other areas. If they have | chosen to integrate the drivers directly into ONTap instead of calling the | drivers as needed, and if they have not adhered to whatever standards exist | for those interfaces, then NetApp has self-created a monopoly. It will go
I don't think you really understand how in tune the OS has to be with the hardware. The systems are geared for performance. Thus, NetApp has to qualify the specific parts that will get the performance, features and reliability that the users expect with this product.
You could put some cheesse-ball 10/100 ethernet card in your filer. But do you really expect to be able to get decent performance out of it? Tell me there is no difference between a $30 Netgear 10/100 card and the $200 Zynx that NetApp uses (or used to use).
The same goes for SCSI controllers (fcal now) as well as all other components.
Saying that NetApp should "call the drivers as needed" is dandy. What drivers are those they should call? The ones for Netware? NT? Unix? This is why NetApp writes drivers to the specs the vendors supply (or whatever vendor meets their needs).
If you put 3rd party stuff in yout filer, you do so at your own risk. Sun, et all will support you if you are putting in certified hardware. No reason NetApp should be different.
Alexei
Sam Schorr writes:
It does not seem farfetched to expect Network Appliance to use the same model that has led to open sourcing in other areas. If they have chosen to integrate the drivers directly into ONTap instead of calling the drivers as needed, and if they have not adhered to whatever standards exist for those interfaces, then NetApp has self-created a monopoly. It will go the way of all monopolies - competition will force them out of business or into supporting more flexible configurations.
You might have a point if NetApp was in a commodity market, like PC clones, rather than a niche, high availability market.
By ignoring how all the commodity makers create mass-market cheap junk and concentrating on characterizing specific hardware for a specific task, that of reliably delivering NFS and CIFS packets come hell or high water, they inhabit a world where concerns about catering to the person who moans because he can't add his favourite $80 ethernet card to an $80,000 piece of industrial equipment are simply irrelevant.
My company has chosen to value uptime highly, so highly in fact that they are willing to pay the price for this kind of equipment that can deliver it. The resulting complete lack of concern about how the server is doing frees me to think about other things, like helping to migrate people off of Windows NT for example.
It also boils down to where you, as systems guy, want to spend your time. I, for example, could have simply bought a Windows NT Back Office setup to do mail, DNS, DHCP, etc. serving, but instead I chose to build my own net-services server with a solid PC and NetBSD. I believed, and time has shown me to be right, that I would get better reliability and ROI from doing that. I could have also tried to roll-my-own NFS server with NetBSD--after all, it supports striping, and RAID can't be all that hard can it? As it happens, it *is* that hard, so I chose to convince the CEO that NetApp is the right box for that area. Three years later, he's a happy guy, and I have a secure job.
-bmw
-
alexei＠cimedia.com -
Bruce Walker -
Sam Schorr