+----- On Thu, 03 Jun 1999 13:44:32, "Richard L. Rhodes" writes: | Hi Ya'll, | | This is probably one of those questions for which there's no | true correct answer, but I'm interested in peoples opinion. | | 1) In setting up a NetApp, is it better to use one big/wide | connection (say gigabit ethernet) as opposed to a bunch of | narrow connections (say, 4 100mbps ethernet in a etherchannel). | (Note that for this discussion I'm ignoring the redundancy in | a etherchannel.) | | 2) On a Unix system that will be doing heavy NFS work to a NetApp, | is it better to use separate mounts on separate but smaller ethernet | connections (100mbps ethernet), or, run all mounts through one wide | ethernet connection (gigabit ethernet)? | | Specifically, I'm going to be setting up an Oracle DB on a NetApp. | I'm looking at whether I would be better off using multiple 100mbps | ethernets or one gigabit ethernet connection.

In my experience using a single big whatever is best unless you know precisely what your are going to be doing with it. A single big whatever is much more flexible. Having said that though I am not sure that a single gigabit connection is going to give you more throughput that an ether-channel, your really comparing 2 sorts of big. The same thing applies on the Unix side, I would probably be more inclined towards ether-channel on both. One thing that I have found is that having large differences in the speed of your server and client nearly always causes problems.

/Michael