Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Yes, but pricing that's so obviously disconnected with cost leads customers to feel they're being ripped off. This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
bf == Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: bf since the dawn of time since the dawn of time Sun has been playing these games with hard drive ``sleds''. I still have sparc32 stuff on the shelf with missing/extra sleds. bf POTS line bf cell phone bf You are free to select products from a different vendor. what? So, this means he *shouldn't* feel like he's being ripped off if he buys from Sun? blinks bf Sun's pricing likely reflects the high cost of product bf development, warranty, service, and quality control. You are talking about cost here, but the pricing reflects ``market forces''. The blog makes it sound like Sun engineers have come up with this sneaky plan to achieve a certain tier of reliability at a tier below in cost, but what they really mean by low cost is, low cost _to Sun_, not to customers. The price you pay is determined by what other vendors charge for the same tier of reliability---knowing this, while reading the blog you would already be thinking, ``oh fantastic, a tiny ~$10 chip and a plastic carrier that's practically free, but has incredible market value. They've come up with a scheme for ripping me off. What smooth and adept capitalists they are! What merit, what admiration I have for their schemes! too bad it helps them, not me.'' If you're a stockholder, get excited about the blogs, but for customers, without Sun's price list and their competitors' price lists in front of you, there's apparently not much point in discussing anything (except maybe, whether we can swap drives out of the tray and have the thing still work or whether there is some ``sled DRM'' in the closed-source LSI Logic SATA driver, and how much we save by not buying a support contract which I assume is pointless after said swapping). pgpvZssYVw8bz.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Will Murnane wrote: If the prices on disks were lower on these, they would be interesting for low-end businesses or even high-end home users. The chassis is within reach of reasonable, but the disk prices look ludicrously high from where I sit. An empty one only costs $3k, sure, but fill it with twelve disks and it's up to $20k. Are there some extra electronics required for larger disks that help explain this steep slope of cost? I can't think of any reasons off the top of my head (other than the understandable profit motive). I guess most large customers only compare storage costs against other storage vendors. Most shops I've worked with only buy fully populated shelves and none of them pay list! Ian ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
The admin user doesn't have any access to customer data; just could kill off sessions, etc. --- World-class email, DNS, web- and app-hosting services, www.concentric.com . On Jul 11, 2008, at 2:05 PM, Ian Collins wrote: Will Murnane wrote: If the prices on disks were lower on these, they would be interesting for low-end businesses or even high-end home users. The chassis is within reach of reasonable, but the disk prices look ludicrously high from where I sit. An empty one only costs $3k, sure, but fill it with twelve disks and it's up to $20k. Are there some extra electronics required for larger disks that help explain this steep slope of cost? I can't think of any reasons off the top of my head (other than the understandable profit motive). I guess most large customers only compare storage costs against other storage vendors. Most shops I've worked with only buy fully populated shelves and none of them pay list! Ian ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Tim wrote: 20k list gets you into a decked out storevault with FCP/iSCSI/NFS... For being just a jbod this thing is ridiculously overpriced, sorry. I'm normally the first one to defend Sun when it come to decisions made due to an enterprise customer base, but this will not be one of those situations. You are not required to purchase a Sun product. Just purchase a similar IBM or Adaptec JBOD product. They will work fine with ZFS. If Sun's product is over-priced, they will find out soon enough and adjust their prices. It may be that Sun initially sets the prices very high so that after they start shipping they can reduce the price and advertise the new bargian. Bob == Bob Friesenhahn [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer,http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Tim wrote: On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Ian Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will Murnane wrote: If the prices on disks were lower on these, they would be interesting for low-end businesses or even high-end home users. The chassis is within reach of reasonable, but the disk prices look ludicrously high from where I sit. An empty one only costs $3k, sure, but fill it with twelve disks and it's up to $20k. Are there some extra electronics required for larger disks that help explain this steep slope of cost? I can't think of any reasons off the top of my head (other than the understandable profit motive). I guess most large customers only compare storage costs against other storage vendors. Most shops I've worked with only buy fully populated shelves and none of them pay list! 20k list gets you into a decked out storevault with FCP/iSCSI/NFS... For being just a jbod this thing is ridiculously overpriced, sorry. I'm normally the first one to defend Sun when it come to decisions made due to an enterprise customer base, but this will not be one of those situations. OK, one client of mine has just installed an IBM DS3200 shelf. Pop over to IBM's site (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds3000/ds3200/browse.html) and compare prices with a J4200. For starters, the IBM sourced 1TB drives are $249 more... Ian ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Heh, I like the way you think Tim. I'm sure Sun hate people like us. The first thing I tested when I had an x4500 on trial was to make sure an off the shelf 1TB disk worked in it :) This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
.. And the answer was yes I hope. we are sriously thinking of buying 48 1 tb disk to replace those in a 1 year old thumper please confirm it again :) 2008/7/10, Ross [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Heh, I like the way you think Tim. I'm sure Sun hate people like us. The first thing I tested when I had an x4500 on trial was to make sure an off the shelf 1TB disk worked in it :) This message posted from opensolaris.org ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss -- Tommaso Boccali INFN Pisa ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Tommaso Boccali wrote: .. And the answer was yes I hope. we are sriously thinking of buying 48 1 tb disk to replace those in a 1 year old thumper please confirm it again :) In my 15 year experience with Sun Products, I've never known one to care about drive brand, model, or firmware. If it was standards compliant for both physical interface, and protocol the machine would use it in my experience. This was mainly with host attached JBOD though (which the x4500 and x4540 are.) In RAID arrays my guess is that it wouldn't care then either, though you'd be opening yourself up to wierd interactions between the array and the drive firmware if you didn't use a tested combination. The drive carriers were a different story though. Some were easy to get. Others extrememly hard. There was one carrier that we couldn't get separately even when I worked at Sun. -kyle ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Kyle McDonald wrote: Tommaso Boccali wrote: .. And the answer was yes I hope. we are sriously thinking of buying 48 1 tb disk to replace those in a 1 year old thumper please confirm it again :) In my 15 year experience with Sun Products, I've never known one to care about drive brand, model, or firmware. If it was standards compliant for both physical interface, and protocol the machine would use it in my experience. This was mainly with host attached JBOD though (which the x4500 and x4540 are.) In RAID arrays my guess is that it wouldn't care then either, though you'd be opening yourself up to wierd interactions between the array and the drive firmware if you didn't use a tested combination. In general, yes, industry standard drives should be industry standard. We do favor the enterprise-class drives, mostly because they are lower cost over time -- it costs real $$ to answer the phone for a field replacement request. Usually, there is a Sun-specific label because though we source from many vendors and products like hardware RAID controllers get upset when the replacement disk reports a different size. The drive carriers were a different story though. Some were easy to get. Others extrememly hard. There was one carrier that we couldn't get separately even when I worked at Sun. Drive carriers are a different ballgame. AFAIK, there is no industry standard carrier that meets our needs. We require service LEDs for many of our modern disk carriers, so there is a little bit of extra electronics there. You will see more electronics for some of the newer products as I explain here: http://blogs.sun.com/relling/entry/this_ain_t_your_daddy I won't get into the support issue... it hurts my brain. -- richard ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Kyle McDonald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my 15 year experience with Sun Products, I've never known one to care about drive brand, model, or firmware. If it was standards compliant for both physical interface, and protocol the machine would use it in my experience. This was mainly with host attached JBOD though (which the x4500 and x4540 are.) In RAID arrays my guess is that it wouldn't care then either, though you'd be opening yourself up to wierd interactions between the array and the drive firmware if you didn't use a tested combination. My experience with RAID arrays (mostly Sun's) has been that they're incredibly picky about the drives they talk to, firmware in particular. You pretty much have to have one of the few supported configurations for it to work. If you're lucky the array will update the firmware for you. I've also seen the intelligent controllers in some of Sun's JBOD units (the S1, and the 3000 series) fail to recognize drives that work perfectly well elsewhere. I'm slightly disappointed that there wasn't a model for 2.5 inch drives in there, though. -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
[zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
Here's the announcement for those new Sun JBOD devices mentioned the other day. http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-07/sunflash.20080709.1.xml ckl ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Chad Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's the announcement for those new Sun JBOD devices mentioned the other day. http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-07/sunflash.20080709.1.xml ckl ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss So are these *tagged* drives/firmware? Do we have to buy them direct from Sun or can we throw anything we want at it? Does it come pre-loaded with real drive trays instead of useless blanks? --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
Re: [zfs-discuss] previously mentioned J4000 released
On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 2:39 PM, Chad Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's the announcement for those new Sun JBOD devices mentioned the other day. http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-07/sunflash.20080709.1.xml ckl ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss Very interesting, I have two questions: Does this require tagged drives? IE: do we *HAVE* to purchase all drives that go into these direct from Sun? Does it ship with real drive trays in the *empty* slots, or those worthless blanks that won't hold a drive? --Tim ___ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
