Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhg_in_kc who wrote (30276)	8/22/2000 10:36:05 AM
From: kumar	Respond to of 54805

<<example or two of how this works>> check out netapp.com it may help. cheers, kumar

To: jhg_in_kc who wrote (30276)	8/22/2000 3:34:06 PM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

MSFT publishes the Common Internet File System (CIFS) standard for interfacing with the Windows file system. CIFS defines the protocol for file I/O and security. Likewise, UNIX supports the Network File System (NFS) protocol ("invented" by SUNW years ago). Applications on one host interface with file systems on another host via the CIFS or NFS protocols. Heretofore, that meant that the file system on both hosts was the native file system--Windows or Unix running under the Windows or Unix general purpose OS. NTAP enginneered its the ONTAP OS for one purpose--serving data. Its first versions supported NFS only so that the filer "looked" to all other hosts to be another Unix box serving data. Later, NTAP added CIFS so that the filer looked to Windows clients to be a Windows box. Then NTAP built into ONTAP the ability for a single file to be accessed via Unix or Windows hosts, with "cross-protocol" security so that the security rights are enforced regardless of whether the file is being accessed via a Windows or a Unix host. So the host (user, application) has no idea that the data resides under the control of the ONTAP OS on the WAFL file system. WAFL is superior to UNIX and Windows file systems in terms of speed, security, reliability. The fact that NTAP has complete control over the behavior and enhancement of WAFL under ONTAP (OS) means that NTAP can engineer new capabilities into the file access architecture. SNAPSHOT/SNAP RESTORE are examples of unique capabilities which simplify sys admin greatly. Clustered failover is another. DAFS/VI, coming next year, will be a revolutionary way for hosts to communicate directly with one another for I/O operations over GbE, FC, E-Net, and Infiniband with not packetizing overhead and no TCP/IP stack overhead. Also, NTAP files are the ONLY hosts supported by any (all) of the major RDBMS vendors as data stores for "NFS mounted data". That means that on other UNIX configurations, the data must be physically located on the same machine as the RDBMS system and, so, must be directly attached to the UNIX box running the RDBMS code. With NTAP, the data may be on filers seperate from the RDBMS host. Hope this helps.