Hi Al,

There's a simplified description of SnapShots (with pretty pictures) in my NT backup paper: http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3052.html

A more detailed take on SnapShots as well as SnapRestore and SnapMirror can be found here: http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3043.html

As for comparing a filer to brands X and Y (assuming you can get eval units from X and Y), I would suggest doing some performance tests as well as manageability tests using standard NT tools. Set file permissions, create user groups on the filer, create shares etc.. If you install the SecureShare Access utility, try setting UNIX permissions from NT (really cool).

If your intent is to use the multiprotocol (CIFS and NFS) functionality, I'd also recommend that you test file locking between CIFS and NFS clients.

Regards,

Paul Benn

-----Original Message----- From: Alan R. White [mailto:arw@tipper.demon.co.uk] Sent: Friday, November 12, 1999 3:16 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Considering filers for major deployment....

Hi All,

I've got a toaster onsite ready to start evaluating. If everything works out OK there's terabytes of business for NetApp at our shop.

I'm hoping the collective experience on the group can help us get up to speed with filers - the sales guys are really good about answering the questions but I suspect you're going to be a tad more impartial ;-)

Hope you don't mind the newbie questions below - if you prefer mail me directly and I can summarise back to the list.

The claims of simplicity, reliability, minimal downtime, performance for filing (compared to NT) and snapshots are what attracted me to look at the boxes - I haven't seen any horror stories in the archives - is this too good to be true? The FC-AL stuff recently looked a bit dodgey.

How many folks actualy cluster their filers? Claims of 99.997% uptime without clustering sound, once again, too good.

Is the clustering simple primary-failover or can we do n-way clusters with load sharing etc?

Is the cluster setup really a one-command 15 minute job?

User restore on their NT clients by mapping the snapshots looks a good idea. Is it usable in the real world? It would save us heaps of hassle with classic 'ask IT to do it' restores.

Any good rule of thumb sizing advice for the amount of space to reserve for snapshots?

Similarly for automated snapshot schemes, does anyone do multiple snapshots intra-day and maybe keep one for a longer period, e.g. keep a midnight snapshot for x days.

Is SnapMirror up to the job of keeping an almost real-time remote replica, i.e. snap every minute if the networks up to it? Are there any operational issues around this stuff?

Is anyone prepare to comment privately or otherwise on any recent comparisons they've done with Celera and Auspex? I understand the cost thing with EMC but loads of people seem to buy them still. This is not intended as flame bait for all the NetApp advocates.

Any advice on what we should really include in our eval to really test the box out?

...or indeed comments in general that would be useful for us.

TIA, Al