Ask Oracle what storage they use internally: NetApp or Pillar? then decide.

A good idea. Might work very well if they'll give a good 'n straight answer. My guess is they use both to some extent at least.

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My boss received a postcard from a company called Pillar Data. He brought the postcard to me and said, "we should look at what these guys have."

Sounds good and fair enough -- to look at what those guys have.

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I don't think that their product is mature enough yet for prime time. After spending some time with their engineers and traveling to the Enterprise Technology Center in Atlanta to demo one of these solutions, I found some chinks in their armor. I won't go into the details here,

So you've looked at them (I know about them as well, but have in no way looked closer), and you've made your conclusions. It sounds like a reasonable conclusion to me; they're not mature enough yet for prime time whatever the definition of that might be in your case. God knows, NetApp Filer's weren't ready for that in the beginning, nor when they first started with FC backends (i.e. when they left SCSI for good) either! Just ask YahooMail about what it was like back in those days, jan-may 1999...

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I want to stick with the NetApp solution that was proposed, so I'm looking for ammunition to back up my argument.

Well, you have all the ammo you need IMO. All the ammo that *should* be needed.

You looked properly at Pillar, have concluded that they're not mature enough yet for prime time. Are you saying that your boss knows more than you or does he have such a good business case to make him a hero that it is "OK" with these systems not having as good, or much worse, availability, flexibility, ease of admin and performance? If so, then you have my pity. If your boss doesn't trust you (assuming he's not a better Subject Matter Expert himself than you are) your situation is certainly not good.

Best of luck - in this situation I'd do exactly whay you want to do, i.e. stick with the NetApp solution. Do *not* go out on the bleeding edge, unless you must for a very good reason, for "prime time" stuff as you put it. It hurts.

/M