On Tue, February 2, 2010 14:21, Tim Cook wrote: > On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 2:14 PM, David Dyer-Bennet <d...@dd-b.net> wrote: > >> >> On Tue, February 2, 2010 11:26, Richard Elling wrote: >> > On Feb 2, 2010, at 8:49 AM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote: >> >> On Tue, February 2, 2010 10:21, Marc Nicholas wrote: >> >>> I agree wholeheartedly....you're paying to make the problem "go >> away" >> >>> in >> >>> an >> >>> expedient manner. That said, I see how much we spend on NetApp >> storage >> >>> at >> >>> work and it makes me shudder ;) >> >> >> >> Yes, exactly. Pricing must be about right, people wince but pay it >> :-). >> >> If they don't wince it's too low. >> > >> > Business 101. >> > The price will be what the market will bear. If the price seems out of >> > line with your market, then perhaps you aren't in the same market. >> >> Yes, perhaps. Quite clearly, in this case; I'm not buying enterprise >> storage myself. If the market bears it for long, then there's >> definitely >> an actual market there; otherwise it might have been a mistake by the >> company. >> >> I want the disk companies to come up with a set of specs for an >> enterprise-grade drive that can be used in stock form in relatively >> simple >> hardware to give good results. This concept that their enterprise-grade >> drives need tweaking in the firmware and price to be useful is annoying. >> Fair enough for people pushing the edges of the envelope, but most >> people >> don't, there should be a good solid mainstream solution available. >> >> A Solaris-based ZFS box using SAS controllers with 5, 8, 24, and 48 >> drive >> bay options might just about do it, if it could take a range of stock >> drives officially. Kill off a big chunk of people who get forced into >> enterprise storage against their will. >> > > How exactly do you suggest the drive manufacturers make their drives "just > work" with every SAS/SATA controller on the market, and all of the quirks > they have? You're essentially saying you want the drive manufacturers to > do > what the storage vendors are doing today (all of the integration work), > only not charge you for it. > > You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I'm suggesting that the standard for the interface ought to be sufficiently standardized and well-enough documented that things meeting it just work, in the way that desktop motherboards and disk drives "just work", i.e. well enough for nearly everybody. I understand why people pushing the limits would need custom-tuned hardware, but I don't think the middle of the market should need it. The controllers shouldn't be full of quirks; companies that routinely make them that way need to clean up their act or be driven out of the market. Same for the drives. >> Yes, my Camry is good for commuting and running across town through >> unfortunately frequent stop-and-go traffic, and running down to see my >> mother (about an hour) a lot more than I used to need to. It can carry >> 4 >> very comfortably, which we only use every month or so, and it can carry >> the 3-head studio lighting kit in the trunk very comfortably. >> >> Probably still somewhat marginal on your ranch, though better than a >> Ferrari. The ground clearance is medium, and it's not mainly a >> cargo-hauler. >> >> > And how well does your Camry run when you try to replace the Toyota > transmission with one manufactured by Ford? A mechanic who knows what > he's > doing and has fabrication skills could probably get it to work, and pretty > darn well, but it isn't ever going to be the same as buying an integrated > product directly from Toyota... When I was first in the industry, in 1969, it was fairly normal to only be able to connect DEC disks to a PDP-11; but even then there were third-party manufacturers making products and customers buying them. Now, forty years down the road, computers are constructed from mostly generic components. The disk drive is one of the ones that went generic first. It's absurd that we can't handle small enterprise storage on standards-compliant drives at this point. -- David Dyer-Bennet, d...@dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
