RE: NetApp/Auspex killer? - toasters

20 Mar 1999


      Hey Toasters -
How about:
1.  Dual redundant design to allow for online servicing and upgrading of all
components incurring no down time
    A.  dual redundant Fast/Wide/Differential SCSI channels with
software based load balancing
    B.  dual redundant battery for both cache and disks (enough to spin
down all disks)
    C.  dual redundant power inputs
    D.  redundant "head"s
2.  In box failover design to reduce the price of such ideas as clustered
filer heads with 2 minute or less failover
3.  Fast packet switching based protocol "head" with 256MB for read cache
4.  Pentium/PCI hardware architecture "head" design
5.  16GB shared write cache and 750MByte/second internal bus design in front
of JBOD
6.  All RAID and disk management handled in the "disk shelf" architecture
6.  World wide customer service with 2 hour response time based on soft
errors phone'ed home automatically
7.  Metadata logging design such that locks are maintained in the event of a
failover
8.  Metadata logging design such that file system integrity is maintained
allowing for fast boot/reboot time of 2 minutes
9.  Multi protocol support (NFS, CIFS, FTP, etc.) provided as part of the
protocol layer in the "head"
10.  Full support of NT and UNIX network based locking
11.  Freedom to direct connect hosts via SCSI or FibreChannel to "disk
shelf" architecture with dymanic disk management
Please excuse the plug, but I couldn't resist.
/Christian Adams
Systems Engineer
South San Francisco, CA
EMC Corporation
P.S.  As Andy Watson and other ex-Auspexians at NetApp may tell you, I am an
ex-Auspexian also.
...
-----Original Message-----
From:	Weeks, Thomas [SMTP:Thomas.Weeks@mirage.brooks.af.mil]
Sent:	Monday, March 15, 1999 1:48 PM
To:	'askaquestion@iname.com'; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject:	RE: NetApp/Auspex killer?
I would probably go with a multi-x86 box (low cost) running
Linux (kernel 2.2), SAMBA, hardware RAID, etc.
I have seen some very good comparative SMB numbers on these boxes.  And
now
that
the processor archetecture is scalable with Linux's kernel, the sky's
the limit and the cost is VERY low!
Tom Weeks
-----Original Message-----
From: askaquestion@iname.com [mailto:askaquestion@iname.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 1999 4:36 PM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: NetApp/Auspex killer?
Yes, NetApps are fine boxes but...
If you started a company to build a NAS box, what
would you build that would be better than what
NetApp, Auspex, etc. has?
I'm looking for serious responses here - to improve
the market with competition!
I don't view the kind of very-low $ suggestions on
this list recently as the kind of thing that most
of us are interested in.
Don't let my anonymous query lead you into thinking
that I'm not 100% serious.  If anything it should
illustrate just how serious I am.

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