[BBLISA] Recommendation for NAS appliance?

[Tom Metro]

Paul Beltrani wrote:
>> 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...

Can you clarify how an EMC or NetApp appliance has more fault tolerance 
than a single server designed to be fault tolerant?

I haven't studied the hardware architecture of modern NetApp appliances, 
but are they really redundant right down to the motherboard?

Without having looked at the details, I'd expect them to have redundant 
power, redundant disk controllers, redundant Ethernet, but a single 
motherboard/CPU/RAM. Similar to what you'd find on a single server 
designed for fault tolerance, but inferior to a full cluster approach.

I know there are some systems that separate the drive racks from the 
controller modules, which then permit redundant controllers, but is that 
the class of system you're talking about?

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/