I wonder what would be the performance like in a scenario where we have a multithreaded workload? I think XFS would perform really well, not sure about others though,

As a guy involved in the NetApp vs EMC vs Compellent decision cycle right now, I found this post amazingly helpful.

NOT because I will take what was posted verbatim, but rather as I believe it is intended, and that is to ask probing questions of *all* vendors about the issues raised here.

Perhaps I am atypical, but as a Director guy who is one step removed from day to day management of these systems, it is this and similar posts that really help me understand what is relevant to my business model. It is this information that helps me work with the team to ask the questions that will get the techs out of the data center in and into the business, where we can make a REAL difference.

Would you mind letting me know what company you work at? You could drop me a private line if you don’t want to share publicly.

I would very much like to know how you calculated the price. But I think I already know.

You see, there have been major changes since the July pricing you are looking at, rendering all the cache boards completely free of charge for the SPEC configuration (each 6240 or 6280 node now gets a no-cost 512GB cache added plus one protocol, in this case NFS).

There have also been other reductions, everything I mentioned combined making the price difference compared to the July pricing over $2.8m. Do the subtraction and compare to the original figure I posted

So our pricing was absolutely list, and nobody’s trying to slip anything past anyone. I didn’t post a link to our pricing since I’m not aware of a current price sheet that’s internet-accessible through our site. But anyone can contact their VAR and have this priced.

A blog such as this is a very public document indeed – my personal and professional reputation are on the line every time I post, so I go beyond the “measure twice, cut once” rule and frequently measure 4-5 times… (which also explains why I don’t post daily like some folks do – solid research takes time plus blogging is not my day job).

Let me know if you’d like more clarification.

Finally, nobody is unbiased. Read this: http://wp.me/p1k3XN-28

D

I read this paper when it was first released and i thought it seemed off but dismissed it since i didn’t have the time. I believe everyone above has brought up most of the technical questions i would ask so for now i’ll leave that out. I would like to mention that we currently have both NetApp and EMC in our environment so i’m as unbiased as can be.

But the question i am going to ask is why are you incorrectly stating the cost of the NetApp configuration. I know the Isilon system is priced correctly since you were kind enough to post the link to the EMC master pricing list, but i found it weird you didn’t post one to yours… So i decided to go and find some prices on the offical NetApp site which i eventually did.

So when using your items list on the SpecFS paper, the price comes to almost 9,000,000 and thats WITHOUT the 8.1 cluster mode license since its not listed on the July 11 contract i was looking at.

I’m curious how your comments about being 50% cheaper then are true. Or were you trying to slip that past us, that EMC was list pricing while yours isn’t.

This is troubling to a purchaser like myself when a company needs to falsify there information to make there company look better.

I’m not sure how you conclude this is misleading anyone.

So please do not mislead the audience by saying NetApp can achieve a higher NFS IOPs count with a lower configuration

Missed that one. I think you are misunderstanding the question.