Wow, this seems like an emotive issue.

Just to make my position clear:

1) I like netapps (we have 2 filers and 3 caches). 2) I would not even be looking at other brands if the netapp solutions was not so expensive.

Note 1: it is not just a few dollars, it is over double the price for the same storage and performance or the same price using older filers (F740's) at 1/4 the performance. This is significant money. Oh, and the procom solution is upgradable just by swapping the drives. The netapp solution REQUIRES a new head and of course that means new (expensive) software licenses. Note 2: some things about netapp p*ss me off. The software licensing scheme, the small number of configurations that they support etc. I know there are reasons for all these things but they still p*ss me off. Note 3: I still think the netapp solution will have the best reliability and support. But maybe I can live with a bit less reliability to save ~$150K. And thanks for all the people who replied with comments.

The general consensus was that netapp is the rolls royce of filers, the veritas solution is interesting but very new and that procom is ok (although 1 person reported that they had seen problems with procom filers under load).

Regards, pdg

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