Has anyone used the XRP 1000? It's Nitech's "answer" to the Netapp (the even mention Network Appliance specifically as the market leader in network-attached storage, and that they compete with Netapp).
http://www.nitech.com/online/Company/Storage/XRP_1000/body_xrp_1000.html
On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Brian Tao wrote:
Has anyone used the XRP 1000? It's Nitech's "answer" to theNetapp (the even mention Network Appliance specifically as the market leader in network-attached storage, and that they compete with Netapp).
http://www.nitech.com/online/Company/Storage/XRP_1000/body_xrp_1000.html
There are a couple of other boxen out there entering this arena too.
One example that springs to mind is Procom's NetForce range:
http://www.procom.com/homepage/products/netforce100.html
I also hear a rumor that netSTOR are about to announce a nifty box in the sub US$10k price bracket. ;-)
-marc
On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Marc Nicholas wrote:
There are a couple of other boxen out there entering this arena too.
OSS has one as well, but the eval unit they sent us sure isn't making our Netapps jealous. ;-)
One example that springs to mind is Procom's NetForce range:
They seem to be going after the workstation market with the NetFORCE 100. The NetFORCE 1000 looks like might fill the low-end server market that Netapp has conveniently vacated. ;-) Not much information is available on their website though.
I also hear a rumor that netSTOR are about to announce a nifty box in the sub US$10k price bracket. ;-)
Well, if anything, I hope that this will force Netapp to lower their prices to become more competitive. ;-)
Mr NetworkAppliance,
The NetFORCE 1000 looks like might fill the low-end server market that Netapp has conveniently vacated. ;-)
Did you hear this??? This is the same stuff I was preaching for the last 3+ years to any at your company who is willing to listen.
-- Begin original message --
From: Brian Tao taob@risc.org Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 00:37:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Nitech XRP1000 filer To: Marc Nicholas marc@hippocampus.net Cc: toasters@mathworks.com
On Mon, 22 Feb 1999, Marc Nicholas wrote:
There are a couple of other boxen out there entering this arena too.
OSS has one as well, but the eval unit they sent us sure isn'tmaking our Netapps jealous. ;-)
One example that springs to mind is Procom's NetForce range:
They seem to be going after the workstation market with theNetFORCE 100. The NetFORCE 1000 looks like might fill the low-end server market that Netapp has conveniently vacated. ;-) Not much information is available on their website though.
I also hear a rumor that netSTOR are about to announce a nifty box in the sub US$10k price bracket. ;-)
Well, if anything, I hope that this will force Netapp to lowertheir prices to become more competitive. ;-)
Brian Tao (BT300, taob@risc.org) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"
-- End original message --
---philip thomas
Philip:
On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Philip Thomas wrote:
The NetFORCE 1000 looks like might fill the low-end server market that Netapp has conveniently vacated. ;-)
Did you hear this??? This is the same stuff I was preaching for the last 3+ years to any at your company who is willing to listen.
I share your sentiments...but I can see the lack of interest on NetApp's part when their core product line will probably generate US$300m in the coming year.
To open a real can-of-worms, what would people on this list like to see in a low-end product offering? (Sub-$10k chassis).
-marc
Marc Nicholas wrote:
Philip Thomas wrote:
The NetFORCE 1000 looks like might fill the low-end server market that Netapp has conveniently vacated. ;-)
Did you hear this??? This is the same stuff I was preaching for the last 3+ years to any at your company who is willing to listen.
I share your sentiments...but I can see the lack of interest on NetApp's part when their core product line will probably generate US$300m in the coming year.
Our very first product was a $10-$15K box, designed to be sold through resellers.
It just about killed the company.
About the only way to sell low-end products is through resellers, and resellers -- for the most part -- just aren't very good at evangelizing new technologies, like WAFL, snapshots, and appliances.
Business and marketing types have a whole discipline called "channel marketing" that focuses on this area. The theory is that it's very difficult to sell low end products until there is "market pull", which means that people already know about the product and know that they want it. (Don't ask me how Apple survived. Maybe the rules are different for end-user products than for servers?)
I'm a big fan of the low-end space, and even when we were forced to abandon it, I believed that it was only a matter of time until we'd be back. I still don't think NAS and NetApp are house-hold terms to every system administrator, but we're certainly getting closer.
To open a real can-of-worms, what would people on this list like to see in a low-end product offering? (Sub-$10k chassis).
This hypothetical discussion would be of great interest to me. :-)
Dave
On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Dave Hitz wrote:
About the only way to sell low-end products is through resellers, and resellers -- for the most part -- just aren't very good at evangelizing new technologies, like WAFL, snapshots, and appliances.
Agreed. It's hard enough to sell direct customers on technology...
Business and marketing types have a whole discipline called "channel marketing" that focuses on this area. The theory is that it's very difficult to sell low end products until there is "market pull", which means that people already know about the product and know that they want it. (Don't ask me how Apple survived. Maybe the rules are different for end-user products than for servers?)
Did Apple really survive? I think it's only now that Apple are "surviving" in the main market arena with the consumer pull on the iMac. The biggest USPs are the looks, the price and the all-in-one packaging. These are traditional channel forces.
To open a real can-of-worms, what would people on this list like to see in a low-end product offering? (Sub-$10k chassis).
This hypothetical discussion would be of great interest to me. :-)
~US$5k for a "lite" NetApp style unit...either something about the size of a Cisco 2501 (i.e. 1U high) or something big enough to hold hot-swap disks internally. Traditional NetApp features like WAFL and snapshots. Must share CIFs and NFS. Must have a keypad and LCD on the front for setup and troubleshooting. Unit need not be expandable. :-)
-marc -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Hippocampus OSD, Inc. "Industrial Strength Internet Solutions" vox://416.979.9000 fax://416.979.8223 http://www.hippocampus.net =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Host your business website for only $29/month! 1.877.GO.HIPPO
Quoth Dave Hitz:
To open a real can-of-worms, what would people on this list like to see in a low-end product offering? (Sub-$10k chassis).
This hypothetical discussion would be of great interest to me. :-)
Commodity hardware.
Regards,
David K. Drum david@more.net
I know that in our environment, a small low-cost filer would not be terribly interesting. The F540 was the first NetApp that looked really useful to us.
I believe that there is more to it than the issues of resellers and dealing with mass market. On a small network, it is typically more cost-effective to simply add a disk or two to an existing machine. Filers, like routers, are specialized. In a small environment, it is typically more cost-effective to combine network services on a small number of less specialized servers. In a larger environment, a small low-cost filer would not be particularly interesting - you need performance.
David Ritch
Dave Hitz wrote:
Our very first product was a $10-$15K box, designed to be sold through resellers.
It just about killed the company.
David B. Ritch writes:
I know that in our environment, a small low-cost filer would not be terribly interesting. The F540 was the first NetApp that looked really useful to us.
From my point of view, I need (1) reliable (2) remotely admin'able (3) performance (4) capacity; in that order.
My company is not that big: 30 users when I installed our F330 in 1995, about 200 users now. But it is geographically diverse: I tend machines in Toronto (3 separate sites), Oakville, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Paris (and I've never left Toronto :-).
Even with only 30 users, the F330 made sense because we need 100% uptime.
I only have two NetApps in two locations in Toronto, and only because I couldn't justify the cost of more NetApps. If available, lower-cost entry-level NetApps would go into all my other sites.
I believe that there is more to it than the issues of resellers and dealing with mass market. On a small network, it is typically more cost-effective to simply add a disk or two to an existing machine.
Yeah, we used to do that (before the F330). It killed our productivity. We had weekly server hangs and crashes. I had to drive back downtown after hours to reset so-called servers (workstations with SCSI disks hanging off of them).
Even now I have to talk somebody in Paris through restarting their BSD NFS server every once in a while. When I have to add a disk to that box, I'll have to send somebody over there from Toronto. On the other hand, if it was a NetApp...
Filers, like routers, are specialized. In a small environment, it is typically more cost-effective to combine network services on a small number of less specialized servers.
My favourite number of servers for a site is one. I settle for two because NetApps don't do SMTP, DNS, DHCP, etc. :-) I pair a NetBSD box with a NetApp to create a tiny perfect server environment. That handles all my UNIX, PC and Mac users.
In a larger environment, a small low-cost filer would not be particularly interesting
- you need performance.
I agree with that, but in a larger environment (eg ISP) *all* the rules change don't they?
-bmw | Double helix in the sky tonight | Throw out the hardware | Let's do it right -- Steely Dan; Aja
1999-02-24-17:32:31 Dave Hitz:
Marc Nicholas:
To open a real can-of-worms, what would people on this list like to see in a low-end product offering? (Sub-$10k chassis).
This hypothetical discussion would be of great interest to me. :-)
Well, I think it'd be reasonable to hope that a sub-10k chassis could have a reasonably quick CPU --- e.g. K6-2/300 or so; say 128MB RAM, perhaps in one 128MB PC-100 SDRAM with 3 more slots available so you could take it up to 512MB cheaply; an OS that can be booted from some reasonably conventional media like some technology floppy, zip, jazz, cd-rom, tape, PCMCIA FLASH, or whatever; and a short-but-nonzero list of supported controller types you could shop from to slot in controllers which you would then attach to your drives. Have the base box come with one 10/100baseT port, and document what card[s] are supported for the user to buy more. Maybe offer a range in this line with steps up from the fast-pentia into alphas, but for a low-end offering you could let the customer provide their own SCSI gear. By this point lots of people have settled on drive types and enclosures that they swear by, and of which they've accumulated a lot of inventory. I betcha it wouldn't be hard to sell a breathtakingly fast, stable, reliable NFS server that could be hooked up to these drives.
-Bennett
<rambling>
I had asked Dan Warmenhoven about this as well at the product launch for the 700-series, and his reasoning made a fair amount of sense.. IIRC, the argument was that penetrating the lower-end market can be very expensive to move into, compared to the 'lower-high' end they're targeting now..
There's obviously a nicer margin in this area, and the lower volume sales keeps their post-sales costs down and allows them to keep a smaller pool of customers much happier. I would also imagine this market is much more stable, compared to the companies that come and go in any low-end market. They're still a small company, and I would imagine that if an offering in the low-end flopped, it could bring them down with it...
In any case, as Dan had put it, they want to establish themselves unquestionably with what they're doing now (like it or not, there's still alot of people who think you're talking about Larry Ellison's lastest rant when you refer to getting a 'network appliance box'). Once they've done this, and have enough money in the bank to cover the move, we'll see it for sure.
They have proven themselves in trying to do this right the first time (how long did you wait on 18gb disks, or 700 clustering?), and I would image the <$20k filer will be a potent, strong offering once they're ready, but certainly won't rush it.
..kg..
On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Philip Thomas wrote:
Mr NetworkAppliance,
The NetFORCE 1000 looks like might fill the low-end server market that Netapp has conveniently vacated. ;-)
Did you hear this??? This is the same stuff I was preaching for the last 3+ years to any at your company who is willing to listen.
...on the same subject. LSI Logic did a presentation on their MetaStore line. http://www.lsilogic.com/products/metaprod.htm#application The box looks great on paper. On the surface, feature vice, it looks like a NetApp and supports more protocols, NT, NFS, AppleTalk and even has their version of "snapshot"! But I waiting to see the performance numbers on http://www.specbench.org/
-- Begin original message --
From: Brian Tao taob@risc.org Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 18:41:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: Nitech XRP1000 filer To: toasters@mathworks.com
Has anyone used the XRP 1000? It's Nitech's "answer" to theNetapp (the even mention Network Appliance specifically as the market leader in network-attached storage, and that they compete with Netapp).
http://www.nitech.com/online/Company/Storage/XRP_1000/body_xrp_1000.html
-- Brian Tao (BT300, taob@risc.org) "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"
-- End original message --
---philip thomas
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Brian Tao -
Bruce Walker -
Dave Hitz -
David B. Ritch -
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kg -
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Philip Thomas