On 06/03/99 13:44:32 you wrote:

Hi Ya'll,

This is probably one of those questions for which there's no true correct answer, but I'm interested in peoples opinion.

Okay. Just for the record, my opinion is based on a balance of administrative ease and flexibility with the need for high performance.

1. In setting up a NetApp, is it better to use one big/wide

connection (say gigabit ethernet) as opposed to a bunch of narrow connections (say, 4 100mbps ethernet in a etherchannel). (Note that for this discussion I'm ignoring the redundancy in a etherchannel.)

One big connection, say Gigabit, is ideal for your primary data backbone. You can still use other, smaller connections for other smaller networks.

2. On a Unix system that will be doing heavy NFS work to a NetApp,

is it better to use separate mounts on separate but smaller ethernet connections (100mbps ethernet), or, run all mounts through one wide ethernet connection (gigabit ethernet)?

Again I would recommend running all the mounts from a particular machine to one filer through one particular large network connection. This is going to be administratively advantageous in the long run. Even on a network with lots of networks for data access with lots of different purposes (and I have no objection with such a configuration), I'd still recommend keeping all of the mounts from a given dataless client over the same network to the filer(s), unless there is some very specific reason not to (like dedicated remote backup networks).

Bruce