Author Archives: steven

Finally — An answer of sorts from NetApp on the BCS & ZCS issue These answers below give a great perspective on the switch back to 512 sectors, from 520 sectors. And it is worth reading all the way through. … Continue reading →

The ZCS(512) & BCS(520) Saga continues Jon Toigo asked me to respond to a post on his blog . Hi Jon: I find PQ65’s comments very interesting, but I don’t understand the reasoning behind his comments. If BCS (520) is … Continue reading →

Yesterday, we received a call from a customer complaining about how unreliable the Maxtor drives were in his R150. We had a long discussion about the reliability problems of the drives and he could not understand why NetApp uses unreliable … Continue reading →

Do Seagate drives sold by NetApp have some mystical powers? Not according to Hitachi! I have been confused for years about the benefits of 512 (ZCS)Sector drives as compared to 520 (BCS) sector drives. And as one of our clients … Continue reading →

Does NetApp charge so much for its software because customers have incomplete information to make an informed decision? According to an article in the Economist April 15, 2006 edition on page 78 – Physicians and Lawyers wives have much fewer … Continue reading →

History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. B.R. Ambedkar Why does NetApp tax their users more to manage 24TB of data on an R200 than 12TB of data?In short NetApp charges more … Continue reading →

Why does an R200 Nearstore use 512 Sector drives? What is going on? Maybe the reason that Dave Hitz is advocating Dual Parity now is because NetApp is using less reliable drives and drive technology? A few years NetApp swtiched … Continue reading →

MAY 31 & JUNE 1 – Join us in Tampa! Jon Toigo’s group is putting on a Disaster Recovery Conference and we will be there! Although we like to advocate Disaster Prevention techniques, rather then waiting for a problem to … Continue reading →

It has been a very busy couple of days. We have started to get in NetApp FAS960’s and a lot of people want to upgrade from their 800 series units to the FAS960’s, and have been waiting for our stock … Continue reading →

Morphic Resonance Last night I phoned Jon Toigo because of the search storage article and we chatted about it at length. This morning I read his blog. It seems that the press and the competition is now starting to ask … Continue reading →