* Posts by 4bitsNnibbles

4 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Mar 2012

Send Bitcoin or we'll hate-spam you on Yelp, say crims

4bitsNnibbles

Re: Unforeseen consequences

ummm...transfers of large amounts of cash is still the preferred way of doing criminal bidness. Not sure I got your point...

NetApp, tuck yourself in – your mid-range is showing: New FAS8000 on sale, ONTAP updated

4bitsNnibbles

Re: how different is the design?

No, previous models had dedicated network ports for c-mode cluster interconnect as well. Maybe you're referring to the CF ports in a failover-pair?

4bitsNnibbles

Re: how different is the design?

Most <insert storage vendor here> arrays *are* x86-64 servers with ran, nvram, pci, interconnects, etc. Back in the day, Netapp filers used to run the gamut of CPUs (MIPS, SPARC, Alpha, etc.), but this hasn't been the case in quite a quile. As far as I've seen (experienced with EMC, Netapp, Hitachi, Nimble arrays only), all arrays are x86 boxes interconnected, 'clustered' somehow, speaking open storage protocols as everyone else. On the SAN side maybe the differentiator is the cache card design, and fault tolerance design of FA boards, but I doubt there's much original engineering there at the chip level; most of the originality is in hardware design, and most of the magic is in software.

I believe Netapp is talking about their Clustered ONTAP mode of operation (24 nodes speaking to each other in one cluster) as opposed to 7 mode (2 nodes in a cluster-failover pair). As far as I know, C-mode was already available in 8.2 and maybe earlier, so not sure what sets this release apart.

IDC Storage Tracker: NetApp is losing market share

4bitsNnibbles

Re: NetApp, Run away, Run away fast

I've managed large storage frames (primarily in UNIX shops) from Hitachi, Sun, EMC and NetApp over the last 10 years. I currently manage about 50 NetApp filers of all sizes for critical NAS/SAN needs. I would say NetApp boxes have been by far the most stable, alongside Sun in that regard. EMC's DMX boxes were stable, but their support was horrible (you ever get a call from a support tech in India asking to dial into your storage frame for a dial-home that was already reported and 3 days old?).

I've had much better experiences with NetApp's support than with EMC's. Perhaps we shouldn't tell folks to run away quite yet without surveying the rest of the storage admins on here.

As for your 3240s "crashing" and taking down most of your production servers; are you sure they have been configured correctly, and perhaps more importantly, cabled up correctly for HA? I ask because I've never seen those boxes not fail over to their partner head gracefully in case of a panic. That's what always made them nice; 2 controllers in a single chassis.