>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Feenberg <[email protected]> writes:
Daniel> We have Netapp equipment, and it has done well for us, but the Daniel> Netapp fan club on this list is seriously underestimating the Daniel> relative cost of home-brew to Netapp equipment, and they Daniel> should not be ridiculing the OP for considering a home-brew Daniel> store. I'm a fan of Netapp equipment and the OS, but even I see it's short comings and weaknesses. We justify the cost because they're rock solid and they save us a ton of money by NOT going down on us. We have engineers designing products for customers and the cost of downtime is really quite high. We've also been using Netapps for years and years and are comfortable with what they provided. But we did look at Sun's ZFS 7000 series boxes back in 2008 when we last did a refresh of Netapp hardware. It was *very* tempting to go the Sun route back then, but a couple of things stopped us: 1. lack of quotas and reporting on disk usage on a per-user basis, so we could lay the blame at the proper engineer/manager's feet when we needed to force disk space cleanup. 2. The hardware/software was quite new, and the migration from existing Netapps to ZFS would not be as transparent or as easy as a Netapp to Netapp transition. On the other hand, Netapp sucks big time because of their assinine limits on Aggregate size, which limits the size of volumes you can have, etc. OnTap 8 does raise the limits, but in the usual vendor way of tiering the limits by the hardware you buy, which is stupid since the hardware is mostly the same between models. Grrr... They also do shaft you with licenses for every little thing adding a whole bunch of cost. Not fun. Daniel> A simple Linux or FreeBSD box with 12 2TB drives can be Daniel> assembled for $3,000. I wouldn't put a RAID 5 on it (because Daniel> Linux and FreeBSD don't do a good job of reconstruction after Daniel> a drive failure - see Daniel> http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/linux-nas-raid.html ) but a RAID Daniel> 1 will provide reliable, but not fast storage. Suppose that Daniel> the formatted storage capacity is a third the total drive Daniel> capacity - that makes the cost about $375 per TB. So what happens when two disks fail? How do you get notified and can you rebuild your parity/redundancy without *any* downtime or even real notice by your users? I only ask because this is a hard thing to get right, and takes time and effort to test properly. 90% of all scripting and coding seems to be bounds and errror checking, not to mention check pointing state and rolling back or committing changes when you know you can. Computers are lousy at handing exceptions well, while humans are great at it. Humans are bad a repetitive tasks which have to be done quickly and accurately all the time. Daniel> I have a recent quote from Netapp, including a discount of Daniel> undetermined size (the list prices were not available) for Daniel> three FAS2040 SATA based systems with 12, 24 and 48 GB of Daniel> disk. With RAID 4 the Netapp is a little more space efficient Daniel> and probably half the raw capacity is usable, The cost per TB Daniel> ranges from $7,500 down to $3,500 and includes 3 years of Daniel> maintainance, but only NFS software - no CIFS. That is about Daniel> 10 to 20 times the price of home-brew. Of course the Netapp is Daniel> much faster, but as "features" go, FreeBSD is quite Daniel> competitive, indeed it can do many things the Netapp can't, Daniel> such as run rsync, or can't do without paying extra, such as Daniel> run CIFS. Sure, Netapp is not cheap. And if I was in a University or lab environment, I'd just all over ZFS and use it at the drop of a hat. But there are differences in tolerance for downtime and the costs associated with it. Esp when you throw in leasing vs. capital expenditures. In non-profits, leasing seems to be non-existant, capital is hard but not impossible to get, and people costs are lower. So if you buy something, you tend to keep it forever. Daniel> The most discouraging aspect of the Netapp is what happens Daniel> when the original 3 year service contract runs out. On our 4 Daniel> year old FAS3040 with about 3TB of storage, the maintainance Daniel> is $7,000/year and is not on-site. The high price is intended Daniel> to prevent users from keeping old Netapp's, and it largely Daniel> succeeds at that objective. There is rarely any point in Daniel> adding shelves to an existing Netapp head - the maintainance Daniel> on the head will make the shelves totally uneconomic long Daniel> before they are obsolete. We have not decided yet what we will Daniel> do, but we will not renew maintainance! Heh, for that cost, I'd probably just buy some disks for the netapp and let maint lapse and live with it. Since they are quite solid, I think it's a gamble worth taking. Daniel> It is important not to take the view that if A is better than Daniel> B, then B is no good, or to make decisions based on rules of Daniel> thumb appropriate for situations far different from your own, Daniel> or to assert that allowing price to trump quality is Daniel> unprofessional. All of those are errors of thought that tend Daniel> to result in systems that are gold-plated, but of insufficient Daniel> capacity. It is common in university settings to offer faculty Daniel> and students totally inadaquate storage quantity, on totally Daniel> over-engineered storage systems. A typical research project Daniel> can withstand a storage outage once a year (but not lost data) Daniel> far more easily than it can withstand bumping against a tiny Daniel> storage quota every day. Like the poster originally said, they're limited to $10k in hardware costs (and obviously they can spend more in person costs) so they want to maximize the bang for the buck. So, in conclusion it all depends on your own needs and requirements for what you buy. Do I like Netapp? Yes! Would I move to another vendor who overed a better deal and fit my needs? Sure! John _______________________________________________ bblisa mailing list [email protected] http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
