On 11/07/98 22:07:04 you wrote:

I agree with Sir Bruce. If you buy a netapp, only use approved add-on products, i.e. their ethernet controllers, disks, scsi controllers, etc. This is expensive, and a legitimate reason not to by a netapp. If you are on a tight budget or can tolerate living without netapp's features (performance, reliability, snapshots, etc.) then build a file server out of a linux box. If you need the advantages, poney up the money.

And this neatly transitions to another topic - the Dell OEM agreement. While at first they are just going to be selling Netapp's servers, my understanding is that eventually Dell would be using Netapp's software on servers with it's own hardware label. Now, I presume that Netapp will continue to sell it's own servers, so the two will be dividing up the market segments in some way. Will Dell be attacking that low-end (i.e. $10,000) price point? Presumably accomplishing this will mean cheaper components, which means they will have to work together to ensure the software supports it, the performance is acceptable, and so on.

If Netapp is still going to make the hardware and Dell just puts their name on it, that's fine, but that still begs the question of whether or not this will be the vehicle in which Netapp can provide servers for the low-end of the market.

Another question: Would it make sense for Netapp to invest in the design and development of a RAID-4 hardware controller?

Bruce