Hello Frank

I have a client who is considering the NS 600 over a 940 Cluster ...

I know multiple clients that also tested both systems. Let them try it themselve and they will be more concerned in the end. :-)

Or to fasten the decision: Take a look at http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/sfs97r1.html and the included links explaining the HW-Structure and response times of the NAS-Servers.

Network Appliance, Inc. FAS940c Failover Cluster 2 TCP 33340 1.03 HTML http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2002q4/sfs97r1-20020916-00102.html Text http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2002q4/sfs97r1-20020916-00102.asc PS http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2002q4/sfs97r1-20020916-00102.ps

EMC Corp. Celerra NS600 Failover Cluster (1FS, primary/sec 2 TCP 25656 2.05 HTML http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2003q2/sfs97r1-20030415-00145.html Text http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2003q2/sfs97r1-20030415-00145.asc PS http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2003q2/sfs97r1-20030415-00145.ps EMC Corp. Celerra NS600 cluster (2FS, primary/primary, 4GB 4 TCP 38459 3.94 HTML http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2003q1/sfs97r1-20030203-00125.html Text http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2003q1/sfs97r1-20030203-00125.asc PS http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/res2003q1/sfs97r1-20030203-00125.ps

FAS640c with an overall 1.03 msec response time :-) against 2.05 or 3.94 msec at the almost same rate of io-operations per second on the NS600 ... :-(

Smile & Regards Dirk

Frank, If you remove all the religious issues there is stark difference between these two products.

I assume everyone is completely aware of their own NetApp filers and the appliance approach.

With any Celerra based product you have two distinct and separate component products the user has to integrate, tune and manage.

The first component is the PC or PC's, refereed to as Datamovers (DM) that are slotted into the Celerra chassis. This is what makes up the Celerra, 1-16 DM's). Each DM is configured independently of the others with the exception of file ownership, file access and standby fail over. Any single DM has sole exclusive read and write ownership of a file system. Other DM's can be readers but only one can be a read/writer. If you want fail over you can dedicate one DM to act as an idle standby for any other DM that fails. I would recommend reading the EMC white paper on Celerra high availability environments. It's pretty good and reasonably written. It's also completely non trivial.

The second component is/are the disks array(s) that are attached via SCSI or Fibre channel direct or through switches. The disk arrays can be either Symetrix or CLARiiON. The NS-600 uses CLARiiON because of the price difference of the Symetrix. Both disk arrays have totally different software for management and set up. All the LUN management (lots of LUNs are required to achieve performance), RAID set-up (SPEC-FS benchmarks are run with RAID-0), fail over pathing, and disk layout (critical when EMC runs a benchmark because they generally only use the outside edges of the disk) is left as a user proof.

Think about the resources your company will spend on getting reasonable performance and set up. Now add the time you will have to invest changing the environment when its time to grow. You want Mirroring or remote replication - more time, effort and different software.

I've been involved with numerous bake offs against Celerra's versus F840s, F880's and F960s. The customer used a watch that started when the machines were ready to rack and timed them until they ran some very straight forward tests. With EMC's best Celerra guy on site it took 45 days to get the first test run and another 21 days to tune it. The first 45 days was done in two shifts per day. The filers completed the installation and tests in 8 hours including a customer delay of 3 hours.

So do you want a - lots of assembly required file server disk array kit or a plug it in - no proof required solution? All of these solutions are cheap to buy, but some are very expensive to own.

In presenting this to management I would go with the additional FTE's required over a filer based solution. Lay out the high level tasks over the life of the project and cost each alternative out.

Like that IBM TV ad says, "...as the IT manager hands a shirt to his boss - "Sir we are in the shirt business!" Put your money where it makes money - not in overhead.

Hunter M. Wylie 21193 French Prairie Rd Suite 100 St. Paul, Oregon 97137-9722 Bus: 866-367-8900 FAX: 503-633-8901 Cell: 503-880-1947

http://www.itmls.com/

-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of frank marxs Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2003 12:08 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: f940c alternative from EMC ?

Sorry if this is slightly off topic.

Anyone have any experience with an EMC NS 600 [I'm told it's a rather new EMC NAS solution]?

I have a client who is considering the NS 600 over a 940 Cluster ... and I don't think the EMC solution is the right one ... but without having any

first hand knowledge or having heard much about the NS 600 I can't provide any good arguments why they should avoid it... and I don't want to be called on to pick up the mess afterwards.

Any experience or advice [or even simply reasons why you didn't buy it] is much appreciated.

Cheers, RHCE, CCNP, CCDP, CNA,

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein

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