RE: NTAP a Gorilla?
Sir Galahad,
A fair portion of what I know about NTAP, in particular, and NAS, in general, I've learned through your postings and references. It is therefore with a little trepidation that I challenge the classification of NTAP as a Gorilla of NAS (or of storage). This concern is compounded by my rank of GG, j.g. I welcome correction of any errors displayed below.
I thought one of the factors that helped to discern a Gorilla from a King was a Gorilla's products did not have to have superior price/performance to the competition, whereas customers bought from Royalty because of superior price, performance, service etc. In fact, customers are willing to forego using another operating system, application, etc they know to be better in preference for using a standard (Gorilla) product with a strong value chain.
From what I have read, NTAP usually wins the data drag races, which can be attributed to the superiority of WAFL over NFS and CIFS. My question: does any user really care about using WAFL (explicitly or implicitly), and who are the other members of the WAFL value chain?
If NTAP's filers lost their performance lead, would users willingly forego using the EMC Chameleon, SUN T3, or other choices, just because NTAP could do WAFL and the other guys couldn't?
My impression is WAFL is a slick way to skin the cat, but is not a requirement for the storage market. It is a superior implementation today, but NTAP is vulnerable to a slicker skinner. Therefore I consider NTAP a King rather than a Gorilla. I welcome enlightenment from others.
Greg |
