Interesting point. IF DFM actually can do the things I can not (disk trending, failure prediction, etc) the tool may be worth something after all, especially if it has a Solaris version avalible. (I don't run any Win boxes).

Perhaps I'll look into this further. Any tool I write probly would not go the extent to do things like trending, focusing almost solely on failure detection. As for failure prediction, I could only do a very very basic scetch, and it'd be highly in-accurate probly doing the famous "You have accumulated X number of errors on Disk x.x in the last X hours. Failure is likely" trick.

I'll dig around netapp.com and NOW to learn what I can about DFM, maybe I can find manuals.

Thanx Brian.

Ben Rockwood

-----Original Message----- From: Brian Long [mailto:brilong@cisco.com] Sent: Mon 4/15/2002 7:18 AM To: Ben Rockwood Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Monitoring Tools for Failure Detection Ben,

Ask your Netapp sales rep for a demo installation of DFM (Data Fabric Manager) 2.0. Once you've seen it, you'll find a way to buy it.

DFM 2.0 runs on Win2K or Solaris and can scale to monitor hundreds of filers. It has a CLI interface which can be used to manipulate filers, but it also provides nice-looking graphics for you to show to management (i.e. disk space trending, etc).

/Brian/