[rescue] Netapp

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Dowdy [mailto:dowdy at cs.colorado.edu]
> 
> > I user/hobbyist license would be ideal- whether it's worth 
> it or not for
> > NetApp is perhaps debatable. I doubt that there are that 
> many surplused
> > boxes out there that they would care. Would be nice, though.
> 
> I seriously doubt NetApp would have *any* interest in this.  
> They've been
> *MIGHTY* good to us as a edu/research institute, but i doubt the suits
> would see any benefit in a hobbyist deal.

Too bad...  these are nice hobbyist boxes.

> > are a little picky about which drives you put in- 
> Barracudas have always
> > been OK. The NetApp software checks the SCSI ID string of 
> the drive, and
> > will complain if it's "not approved".
> 
> Not only the vendor ID, but the FIRMWARE level as well!  We've binary
> hacked the on-disk system code to get it to accept some of our
> "non-approved" disks in the past.  However, we couldn't hack 
> the floppy
> utilities, since they're in some compressed format we couldn't easily
> manipulate.  The supported disk list is a very small subset 
> of reality.
> (iirc, some fujis, seagates, and an IBM or two, totallying perhaps
> 20 individual drive types and f/w combos).  NetApp would like to make
> some $$$ on selling you the drives in the SBB's (Storageworks Building
> Blocks -- aka canisters)

I can't really see why...  They have got to make a killing on those "head
units".  Educational pricing was way out of the league that we could afford
here, even for a relatively tiny netapp.  We're going with throwing cheap
RAID arrays into some of our servers, just because we can get so much more
storage for the price.  The functionality is nice, but just a bit overpriced
at the moment.
	Greg