On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Ian Levesque <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mar 2, 2010, at 6:09 PM, Paul Beltrani wrote: > >> We're looking for a basic, enterprise class appliance to serve 15TB to >> 30TB of mission critical storage via NFS. We're considering the >> offerings from NetApp and EMC but they're much more than we need. For >> example, we don't need features like mirroring or remote replication. > > Your requirements are a little vague - what does "enterprise class appliance" > mean to you? What features *are* important to you? What's your budget?
The quick and dirty answer: "enterprise class" = Highly available and fault tolerant. Warranty, Service and Technical support are available if desired. "appliance" = A hardware product that does the heavy lifting of providing the service. Basically, all you need to do is install the unit and configure it. It's the opposite of build an NFS cluster from parts. "mission critical" = A company depends on it to run their business. Important features: NFS Budget: We can afford the EMC Celerra or a NetApp. > > Are you sure you need an appliance? Is there a reason that a bunch of disks > in a box couldn't serve NFS to your liking? A bunch of disks in a box does not provide HA/FT service. At the very least we would have to build a cluster. An appliance is a short path to HA/FT and generally has simpler administration than a home grown solution. In short, the Celerra and NetApp meet the requirements. I'm just looking for alternatives to see how the landscape may have changed since I last spec'd one of these. - Paul Beltrani _______________________________________________ bblisa mailing list [email protected] http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa
