DS,
Your points about NTAP support ring true, but large data centers are quite nervous when they first purchase NTAP filers for mission critical data. There are quite often jobs on the line should the filer fail and support is not similar to what EMC would offer. There really aren't enough NTAP support personnel in the field yet to give customers what they are used to from IBM, EMC, Hitachi, Amdahl, etc.
In addition, because NTAP filers have such a significant cost advantage over EMC(especially), the proper redundancy is not always purchased with the initial installation, otherwise the cost differential shrinks somewhat. The common exposure is the motherboard on the filer. There are upgrades coming to take care of this, but the exposure exists today. Dual filers take care of this, but increase the cost.
Just a few points to ponder. I don't think this has an impact on NTAP's ability to place filers, and often displace EMC, but it does leave a lot of nervous storage support and procurement folks hoping like hell there isn't a failure.
Cooters |
