Guys,
Let's stop vendor bashing in public. It is not good form and detracts from the spirit of the board. Everyone have a nice day.
Mike
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Eric Kimminau Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 8:14 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: VFM and DFS
VFM or NuView StorageX (they are the exact same product) is an enhanced management GUI for Microsoft DFS with some additional hooks for automating failover in a NetApp (and other?) environment.
I have had a number of conversations with the Microsoft DFS project manager. If there is anything Microsoft hates more than anything else, it is telling a customer that they need to purchase a third party product to manage a Microsoft service. This means that either A) Microsoft is going to purchase technology so that they can give it to you for free or B) they are going to develop technology so that they can give it to you for free. Either way a commercial third party product for managing DFS has a relatively short shelf life with a fairly steep price tag if you have significant amount of storage.
NuView knows this and has started bundling additional "modules" with their StorageX/VFM product to make it a more attractive solution.
All I can say is that you need to take a close look at where it has been installed and ask to talk to customers that have implemented the add-on modules to see what level of success they have seen.
If you are considering a 3rd party tool to configure and manage your DFS environment you should understand a couple of things.
1) You MUST be running MS Server 2003 for your DFS root. Win200 is missing some key functionality and stability enhancements which will create a less than stable and less than scaleable DFS environment. Even VFM/StorageX require a Windows 2003 Server./ Their GUI is just that, a "better" GUI for administering DFS. It still requires MS Windows DFS.
2) Your DFS root will either need a Active Directory Domain Controller(s) or a dedicated DFS root server (cluster) depending upon the size and complexity of your environment and the level of authority you want to assign to your DFS administrators.
3) If you want to delegate the administration of DFS to less than domain administrators, you cannot install your DFS root on your AD domain controllers. You will be implementing distributed domain DFS. This means you need one or more clusters of DFS root servers to insure the availability of your DFS resources.
4) If you install DFS on your domain controllers, you must create a domain administrator account to administer DFS.
5) DFS R2 is currently in beta. Patches have been released in December and again in 2005 (March?) which have significantly improved the Microsoft tools for configuring and managing DFS. If you are seriously looking gat DFS, contact Microsoft and ask them to come in and show you what they have currently available for free before you spend any significant time or $$ or a tool you will have to pay for.
If what you are really looking for is a tool to transparently monitor, manage and optimize your storage environment, both CIFS and NFS and support multiple vendors without having to install software on your filers or clients, without having to install Windows servers and 3rd party software to manage your heterogeneous environment, there are significantly more robust solutions which integrate into industry standard global name spaces and which ELIMINATE downtime, not just reduce it.
YMMV. My $1.25.
E.
Coming from an EMC guy I can see your point.
Internet Fahey_Michael@emc.com To: ekimminau, toasters cc: Sent by: bcc: owner-toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: VFM and DFS
05/03/2005 01:16 PM
Guys,
Let's stop vendor bashing in public. It is not good form and detracts from the spirit of the board. Everyone have a nice day.
Mike
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Eric Kimminau Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 8:14 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: VFM and DFS
VFM or NuView StorageX (they are the exact same product) is an enhanced management GUI for Microsoft DFS with some additional hooks for automating failover in a NetApp (and other?) environment.
I have had a number of conversations with the Microsoft DFS project manager. If there is anything Microsoft hates more than anything else, it is telling a customer that they need to purchase a third party product to manage a Microsoft service. This means that either A) Microsoft is going to purchase technology so that they can give it to you for free or B) they are going to develop technology so that they can give it to you for free. Either way a commercial third party product for managing DFS has a relatively short shelf life with a fairly steep price tag if you have significant amount of storage.
NuView knows this and has started bundling additional "modules" with their StorageX/VFM product to make it a more attractive solution.
All I can say is that you need to take a close look at where it has been installed and ask to talk to customers that have implemented the add-on modules to see what level of success they have seen.
If you are considering a 3rd party tool to configure and manage your DFS environment you should understand a couple of things.
1) You MUST be running MS Server 2003 for your DFS root. Win200 is missing some key functionality and stability enhancements which will create a less than stable and less than scaleable DFS environment. Even VFM/StorageX require a Windows 2003 Server./ Their GUI is just that, a "better" GUI for administering DFS. It still requires MS Windows DFS.
2) Your DFS root will either need a Active Directory Domain Controller(s) or a dedicated DFS root server (cluster) depending upon the size and complexity of your environment and the level of authority you want to assign to your DFS administrators.
3) If you want to delegate the administration of DFS to less than domain administrators, you cannot install your DFS root on your AD domain controllers. You will be implementing distributed domain DFS. This means you need one or more clusters of DFS root servers to insure the availability of your DFS resources.
4) If you install DFS on your domain controllers, you must create a domain administrator account to administer DFS.
5) DFS R2 is currently in beta. Patches have been released in December and again in 2005 (March?) which have significantly improved the Microsoft tools for configuring and managing DFS. If you are seriously looking gat DFS, contact Microsoft and ask them to come in and show you what they have currently available for free before you spend any significant time or $$ or a tool you will have to pay for.
If what you are really looking for is a tool to transparently monitor, manage and optimize your storage environment, both CIFS and NFS and support multiple vendors without having to install software on your filers or clients, without having to install Windows servers and 3rd party software to manage your heterogeneous environment, there are significantly more robust solutions which integrate into industry standard global name spaces and which ELIMINATE downtime, not just reduce it.
YMMV. My $1.25.
E.
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Fahey_Michael@emc.com writes:
Guys,
Let's stop vendor bashing in public. It is not good form and detracts from the spirit of the board. Everyone have a nice day.
That's pretty much a prescription for never saying anything useful at all. Eric's message seemed to have plenty of good technical content to me: it wasn't, shall we say, _gratuitous_ vendor bashing.
-
Chris Thompson -
drew.odonnell＠americas.bnpparibas.com -
Fahey_Michael＠emc.com