[BBLISA] 10+ TB RAID experiences?

[John Stoffel]

>>>>> "Bill" == Bill Rucker <bill at billrucker.com> writes:

Bill> Somewhere around Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 12:36:21PM -0400, a message
Bill> from Scott Ehrlich went like this:
>> Let me clarify -
>> 
>> I'm wondering what companies, other than Network Appliance, also 
>> incorporate snapshot capability?   Maybe they all do, and use different 
>> wording, or some implementations are better/preferred than others?
>> 
>> Thanks again.
>> 
>> Scott

Bill> EMC with their Clariion/Celerra line provides snapshots
Bill> also. 

Are you talking SAN device, or NFS filesystem snapshots here?  There's
a difference.  NetApp does filesystem snapshots (with minimal
overhead) and now block based iSCSI volume snapshots, which have alot
more overhead.

Bill> The benefit they have over Netapp is the snapshots can be saved
Bill> on a separate volume so the production filesystem is not
Bill> cluttered with the snapshots. I can attest to the use of the EMC
Bill> solution as it works very well.

Sure, I can see this being an advantage in some situations, but
couldn't you just make the master volume bigger and not have a
snapshot dedicated volume?  

Or am I correct in assuming that you can put the snapshots on a
seperate EMC frame entirely?  


In general, I think NetApp is top of the heap when it comes to NFS NAS
boxes.  Robust, fast, pricey.  :]  I've heard good things about
BlueArc as well, but haven't touched them at all.

Oh wait, Sun's ZFS also has snapshot capability as well.  And tight
integration into volume/space management.

You might also check out Veritas VxFS as well.  It was a great
filesystem in Suns at one time because it allowed you to grow and
shrink volumes, which neither NetApp nor Sun (UFS) allowed you to do.
Can't remember if it did filesystem level snapshots, I certainly did
block level snapshots so I could backup my ClearCase VOBs (databases)
with minimal disruption to my user base.

John