Ok, now for some info! I’m sure by now most of you have heard that there is a new version of ONTAP, version 7.0. With this new version, NetApp is pushing your 700 series into the history books. It seems that the folks at NetApp think that we have all out grown our 700 series filers and now need to spend lots of hard earned dollars on new equipment from them. Or is it that the old 700 series has made us so much money that we don’t know how to spend it all and now they are helping us with that too. Well either way, I don’t think most of us would agree.
For many of us the “old” 700 series filers are perfect for the job we are asking them to do. We don’t need new feature sets and we certainly don’t need to spend the high dollar amounts to upgrade.
There are alternative solutions out there. For example, Zerowait can and will continue to support your older filers, as well as newer ones, and they will probably do it for less than NetApp ever did. The Older filers were great when they first came out and are often perfect for your needs still today, so why scrap them? Keep them going and maybe even add more. As long as they do the job there is no need to spend big bucks on newer filers that will be out dated when Net App gets ready to sell you the 10,000 series, complete with onboard decaf coffee brewer.
If, however, you find that you do need that new feature set, there is probably one out there with a transferable license just waiting to find you. Do I need to mention that Zerowait can help with that too?