http://kreaper.blogsome.com/2006/05/19/6070-first-boot/

The question is - who needs a GX ?
(One) Answer: Those who need scalable performance and capacity - mostly performance

If we focus on that answer - I am not sure if GX solves the problem fully. For one has to
add a “filer disk” solution as a unit everytime I need a just performance scaling. I cannot just add a “head” to the environment when I need performance and just a “disk shelf” (on a maxed out system) when I just need capacity, now can I ? It would be interesting to see how the licensing also works out. Dont tell me I have to pay CIFS/NFS/Snap license to each of the nodes.

And they are a year late in its delivery - those few who need GX-style solution have been
looking and asking for it for atleast that long. Those that are in beta now are not really
tasting the goods fully either - they got GX on the slower 3000 series system. The newer ‘excelsior’ heads that are supposed to be the new high-end filers will run GX but who knows how long *they* will take.

If their marketing is nearly half as good as their tech support, then the delays would not matter.

I’m certainly nervous and looking at alternatives more seriously than I have in the past. For NetApp’s sake I really hope the first GX releases are solid, because you only get one chance with stuff like this… First impressions are everything in the storage game.

BTW, if you want to contact me via email I’d love to hear how your BlueArc and Isilon evals are going!

I’d like to elaborate on one part of this posting.

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Of course there’s also some high profile Spinnaker customers that have been left high and dry, so it’s been hard to gauge where NetApp’s commitment has been up until now.
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If I am that high profile customer you’re referring to, NetApp hasn’t quite left us high and dry.

I currently have a Spinnaker in production and recently gave an interview about my experience with NetApp to a trade journalist. When the article came out, I felt it was too sensational and in several ways misrepresented my feeling about Netapp. I don’t blame the reporter. I am frustrated with NetApp, and that is what came across in the article. But there is more to the story.

The title of the article vaguely suggested that I walked away from NetApp as a customer because of my frustrations as a Spinnaker owner. That’s not entirely true. It’s more that NetApp has not been able to offer viable replacement yet. Since we’ve owned the Spinnaker, other vendors have developed filers which are very feature competitive with what Spinnaker offered. Now, even NetApp has nothing shipping that I know of with the feature set of the Spinnaker.

As far as I know, there isn’t a way for us to grow our storage behind the Spinnaker at all since the source for Spinnaker shelves is now gone and NetApp shelves don’t appear to be compatible. Again we’re not too surprised, but this does force us to come up with our next generation filer sooner rather than later. And NetApp isn’t ready with that filer yet. They’re not helping us stay NetApp.

NetApp support is about what you would expect for a dead product that only a handful of customers own. It only makes sense for NetApp to focus their limited resources on the bulk of their customers. That said, their support in the past has not met our expectations in a few limited cases. However, NetApp is currently addressing those problems and I expect we will come to a resolution.

If NetApp finishes merging their own operating environment with that of Spinnaker, we will invite them back. But it may be the case, that they aren’t ready by the time we need a new filer.