Does anyone knows Exanet ?

Hello,

For our shared hosting storage (3 to 8 TB of high performance NFS) we've
got 2 solutions now:
- NetApp FAS2050 HA 3,5 TB with SAS 15k
- Exastore 8 TB SATA with 2 heads (IBM Dual-QuadCore 8 GB RAM)

Exastore is, on the paper, the best NAS available:
- it's simple
- it runs on standard hardware (IBM or Supermicro servers with
some FC cards, an UPS and RAID disk arrays or SAN)
- you can grow to many TB by adding nodes and disks
- you can speed up the NAS with bigger servers
- there is 1 licence by node by TB no matter the performance
- you only get 1 big filesystem
- you can do many snapshots which are visibles to users
(.snapshot directory)
- there is no single point of failure, automatic load balancing
- it's based on a modified Red Hat Linux and has an enhanced rsync

This solution is more expensive than an entry level FAS but you can pay
as you grow without changing hardware or licences.

Fr?d?ric VANNI?RE wrote:
Hello,

For our shared hosting storage (3 to 8 TB of high performance NFS) we've
got 2 solutions now:
- NetApp FAS2050 HA 3,5 TB with SAS 15k
- Exastore 8 TB SATA with 2 heads (IBM Dual-QuadCore 8 GB RAM)

If you want high performance, skip the sata stuff.

On Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:37:49 +0100, Frédéric VANNIÈRE
wrote:

Hello,

For our shared hosting storage (3 to 8 TB of high performance NFS) we've
got 2 solutions now:
- NetApp FAS2050 HA 3,5 TB with SAS 15k
- Exastore 8 TB SATA with 2 heads (IBM Dual-QuadCore 8 GB RAM)

Exastore is, on the paper, the best NAS available:
- it's simple
- it runs on standard hardware (IBM or Supermicro servers with
some FC cards, an UPS and RAID disk arrays or SAN)
- you can grow to many TB by adding nodes and disks
- you can speed up the NAS with bigger servers
- there is 1 licence by node by TB no matter the performance
- you only get 1 big filesystem
- you can do many snapshots which are visibles to users
(.snapshot directory)
- there is no single point of failure, automatic load balancing
- it's based on a modified Red Hat Linux and has an enhanced rsync

This solution is more expensive than an entry level FAS but you can pay
as you grow without changing hardware or licences.

I think you contradicted yourself.
It's simple. It's a SAN (paraphrased).

Most everything that claims to run on standard hw or "off the shelf"
has more problems than those that are proprietary and built to run
with the rest of the system. NetApp and Sun (Sparc) are good examples
of the proprietary aspect working quite well.

One thing about Exanet is they really really really want to manage the
storage for you. They want 7x24 remote access so they can provision,
pro-actively fail/replace/identify bad parts, check log and message
files, etc.
The obvious benefit of this is that someone else is doing the work.
The question I have to ask is why? Why do they "need" access all the
time if things just work? Answer: it doesn't. It's a SAN serving
data through multiple SAN hosts over a network protocol.
These SAN hosts require OS and hardware management, the fabric
requires management, and the array requires management. To say it is
simple is to not have any understanding of what is truly being
purchased.

Also, having remote access also means they have access to all the data
through the SAN hosts.

Personally, I was very leary of Exanet and still am. Anyone who wants
to force remote access on me has something to hide.

~F