Hey Will Harper -

The discussion of SAN - or ESN as EMC likes to call it - IMO should address the issues of management. The EMC offerings do include both NAS and direct SCSI connections, but more importantly there is software bundled with the Fibrechannel switches and with the disk arrays which support such functions as dynamic reallocation of drives and bandwidth. The intention of all this additional technology is to give you choices on how you deploy and re-deploy your storage rather than enforcing a traditional static model. And just in case you missed the recent EMC announcement, the file server product supports the Alteon Gigabit Ethernet NIC.

But I do agree with you that the term SAN is being used freely without much precision.

/Christian Adams EMC

-----Original Message----- From: Will Harper [SMTP:willh@infi.net] Sent: Friday, March 26, 1999 6:47 AM To: NetApp Toasters (E-mail) Cc: Tri N. Barsell [Barsellt@Infi.Net] (E-mail) Subject: NAC SAN

Tom's statement below (to a NAC SAN when we build one) brings up a familiar argument between myself and my boss. My boss contends that NetApp is NOT capable of migrating to a "real SAN."

He bases this statement on his definition of SAN as "direct-attached storage (as in a direct SCSI connection) via a network of FiberChannel switches - but with the capability of also supporting NFS, CIFS, and HTTP mounts."

For instance, in a capability matrix of several vendors, which we recently

compiled, he responds "yes" to the question of future SAN migration to an EMC, and to an EMC lookalike, Network Computers. To the same question, he

responds "no" to the question of future SAN migration to a NetApp 740 cluster.

My position is -- when I see a SAN, I'll tell you what it is, but right now it's just an acronym for "Still Ain't None." I also contend that ALL of the storage vendors will implement SAN technology, if and when the technology gets fully defined and if and when the market demands it. In the meantime, I believe that NetApp is closer to being able to implement a

SAN, than EMC and all of it's clones.

I also contend that SAN does NOT NECESSARILY imply FiberChannel. In fact,

I see near-time SAN technology taking the route of 1000BaseT, because studies indicate that more (normal, read "small") data I/O's can be moved,

much more cheaply, over Gigabit than over 100-base FiberChannel.

I expect in the future (when and if FiberChannel prices come down, and 1000-base, or 10,000-base FiberChannel is standard), it may become the defacto standard, but, for now, SCSI is the limiting factor on moving data, not the media speed.

Are there any experts out there who can shed some light on the subject?

Will Harper, MCSE

-----Original Message----- From: tkaczma@gryf.net [SMTP:tkaczma@gryf.net] Sent: Friday, March 26, 1999 1:30 AM To: NetApp Toasters (E-mail) Subject: Re: NDMP backup speeds

On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Jason D. Kelleher wrote:

...

That sounds slow.  We're readying an F740 for production and our
tests show ~3MB/s (~11GB/hr) over a 110mb full-duplex connection to
a Sun "backup server" with a DLT4000 jukebox.

Wow, I'm glad we back up to a locally attached tape library. I'd be even more glad to attach a bigger library to a NAC SAN when we build one.

Tom