Greetings everyone.

We are very seriously considering the purchase of either 1 F520 or 2-3 F230's to serve as customer FTP/web/mail storage. We are an ISP with approximately 2000+ customers and we expect that to grow significantly in the coming year. There are a couple of things we would like to toss out there and see what people with experience with the boxes have to say. First, and this just came up, let's say you have a F520 with redundant power per shelf. Does that mean that you only have a total of 28 bays for drives? Second, what would you all say the pros and cons of using a single F520 over several F230's would be, and vice-versa, and are the boxes really as reliable as the hype? Third, is anyone aware of any plans to develop multiple file system support into the Filers? Lastly, are there any development plans to incorporate fail-over support like that in the F630 into the F520?

-- Marc Powell Systems Administrator