EMCsq/SAN

[Clifton Royston]

> From: Danny Braniss <danny at cs.huji.ac.il>
> Subject: Re: EMCsq/SAN 
> To: Dan Nelson <dnelson at allantgroup.com>
> Cc: freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org
> 
> > In the last episode (Sep 14), Danny Braniss said:
> > > hi all,
> > > 	Any experiance with EMCsq./SAN? I know FreeBSD is not on their
> > > list, but was wondering if it works even without the 'qualified'
> > > stamp.
> > 
> > I'd be surprised if there were any problems, but if you already have an
> > EMC unit, let them know you'd like to attach a FreeBSD box (give them
> > exact hardware specs) and they'll certify it.  It's in their best
> > interest to support their customers' systems :)
> > 
> that is not what im hearing from them :-(
> we are just begining negotiations to - maybe - get an EMC, do you have any
> FiberChannel experiance?
> 	danny

  I don't know if they have any FreeBSD users of the SAN product, but
they definitely had some major FreeBSD users of their Symmetra NFS
server when we were eval'ing it a few years ago.  They wouldn't give
names, but they gave the impression it might have been Yahoo and eBay. 
Even in that case, they wouldn't say it was certified with FreeBSD
though.

  Their product was extremely expensive, BTW, even with them offering
us huge discounts.  Given the amount you'll be spending, if they don't
say it's certified to work with FreeBSD, you should be able to get them
to accept a conditional purchase with an addendum to the purchase
contract which allows you to void the sale and return it at their
expense, if you find any incompatibilities to your specifications
within a set period of time.

  In the end our testing did turn up some major NFS performance
problems and incompatibilities with the OS of the client machines we
were trying to run on it - not FreeBSD.  These were not at all EMC's
fault, but we were forced to use the escape clause we wrote into the
purchase contract.  We were very glad we had crafted that carefully.

  This is tangentially relevant to your question, but it does point up
that 1) you want to be careful with non-certified clients, and 2)
price/performance was not EMC's strong point at least then.  If you
have money to burn that's another story.  (In which case, you wanna
hire a testing consultant? <g>)

  -- Clifton

-- 
          Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at tikitechnologies.com 
         Tiki Technologies Lead Programmer/Software Architect
Did you ever fly a kite in bed?  Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head?
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If you never did, you should.  These things are fun, and fun is good.
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