> thanks for posting that reverence to Procom's NAS product. sounds like it could be serious competition to NTAP?
> appreciate other thoughts.
Well, one rule of thumb: if a company doesn't produce SPEC SFS results for
their product, don't consider them a serious threat. Procom has never issued
any SPEC SFS performance results. Neither, by the way, has Compaq on their
new NAS product. Silence is manure, in this case.
Secondly: Procom pulls together a lot of technology and isn't a one-stop-shop
for intellectual property like NTAP. They are technically inferior.
Lastly: the quote in that article said:
"We put our [enterprise resource planning] system on a Network Appliance
server originally," says Cory Lucas, network administrator for Varco. "It took a
long time to install and was complex. We looked at a couple of alternatives, but
they didn't offer us the storage capacity we wanted. The 3100 was a 15-minute
install into our Windows NT environment at one-third the price of the Network
Appliance product." Lucas says.
NTAP's products are pretty simple to install. If these guys thought it
was complex, they were doing something wrong. I suspect, Procom gave
them a sweet deal on pricing to be a reference customer.
This is one reason I like to see SPEC SFS results for the technology,
it is about as objective as things get, modulo the benchmarking hijinks
that some of these companies do. Those hijinks are clearly visible in
the SPEC SFS results if you know what to look for. No one touches
NTAP as of today. |
