New versions of S-Family when?

[ehoover99]

Anyone have good info as to when the S-Family wil-----

1. relase 7.3 of Ontap

2. Offer Windows Server 2008 support (Snap drive 6, SME 5 )

3. any news on the phantom 2 port nic card?

Thanks, Eric

[daspmaster]

Same here! got the second s550 in early January. Very disappointed, was waiting for Win2k8 support. Guess we'll be shopping for Sun's on this end of the price spectrum (l still have some FAS series). Wanted to be all Netapp shop, but guess we're force to migrate to other options and learn their system!

[ehoover99]

The problem now for people that want to upgrade to the FAS platform from the Storevault

line is the cost of the different software that may be wanted. Netapp has made some

agressive hardware bundles to replace the Storevault line starting at arount $8K for 3TB

6x500 sata Snaprestore, iSCSI & CIFS. When you add in cloning, snapmirror & NFS

support for 1yr etc.the numbers are rediculous for the market they are in.

Consider that all the above w/2TB SAS drives avail for $9K  from sun.

NetApp did offer me Less than 1K for both of my S550 units and $2K credit for existing software lic. WOW!

I don't work for Sun. I'm just a small business person screwed once again buy the big guys.

[wciminhua]

We were able to get our hands on the dual-port NIC card by going through the regional sales guy at NetApp who tracked the part down and got us in touch with a reseller that could actually resell it to us. The part# is X1040A-R5, it is a rebranded Intel card, I would have taken down more details but it's already in production. I have no tested it for jumbo frames yet, we are primarily using it for failover purposes.

[mark_shelly]

I have a 1 year old S500 and just found this thread.

My organisation and other merged, and now I've been forced onto a native 2008 domain.  Am I understanding correctly by reading this, that my 1year old $15,000 storage array is now useless?  Am I able to adleast run iSCSI on a 2008 server with local storevault authentication?

[ehoover99]

To answer your question, yes you can use the S500 as iSCSI array. If the server(s) that will use the S500 as an iSCSI target are

Windows 2008 servers, you cannot use the "Snapdrive software" because version 5.0 which is the latest and last for Storevault does not

support Windows 2008. You cannot join native Windows 2008 domains.

You are now the proud owner (along with the rest of us!) of an overpriced iSCSI Disk Array.

I thought NetApp started out selling their products as "Unified Storage Appliances?"

If your interested, NetApp would be more than happy to provide you with a quote for an overpriced FAS Bundle.

[amiller_1]

Your only option is to beat/beg/plead/negotiate with your NetApp sales about good pricing for a 2020 single head system. I have heard of some very aggressive pricing.... (may depend on the sales rep though)

The 2020 is a nice little box...you pick up dedup which the S Series didn't have.

[nbarsotti]

Hello,

This is slightly off topic but hopefully still relevant.  Since we now know that our S-family appliance will never support Windows 2008 native domains I am wondering about keeping the domain and forest functional level at 2003, but using all 2008 domain controllers.  Does any body know if that will work to support CIFS shares?  I currently have 1 2008 DC and 2 2003 DCs and my S500 is working fine, but I would like to replace the 2003 servers with 2008.  Thank you for the advise.

Nick

[woodlandpark]

I would love to know this answer too. I would guess that it would work fine since you already have 1 DC on 2008 and it's working fine as long as you keep the domain and forest levels down. However, even if this works, what would we be missing in 2008 functionality by leaving the functional level down?

[nbarsotti]

By leaving the forest and domain functional level at 2003 you would definately be missing some new domain featuers, this web site show a quick breakdown of the different features http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2007/11/21/functional-levels-in-windows-server-2008-part-i/  But you would gain some of the advantages of the 2008 server OS, just not the domain stuff.

[woodlandpark]

That's a good page. I just found another good one...

http://www.petri.co.il/understanding-windows-server-2008-active-directory-domain-and-forest-functional-levels.htm

It says there are no additional features when raising the forest functional level, only the domain functional level.

[ehoover99]

I have heard in talking with NetApp support,

A new version of OnTap for the Storevault is in Q&A.

Did not give release date.

Will provide full windows 2008 support.

Anyone else hear this?

[nbarsotti]

I did not hear that it will provide Windows 2008 support, but I did hear that there was an update that was currently being worked on.  The person I talked to did not have an ETA of when it would be released and he suspected it was only bug fixes and no new features.  Oh how I hope you're right!

[amiller_1]

I haven't heard that (Windows 2008 support) but would be FANTASTIC (would lessen the EOL blow a lot I think).

[nbarsotti]

I completely agree.

[mkincaid87]

An OnTap upgrade sounds nice, but the bigger problems with WS2008 are on the SnapDrive side, aren't they?

[dougperry]

Has anyone yet tried Windows Server 2008 with their s500?  I'd prefer not to simply use it as an iSCSI array.

Being supported verusus is actually working are two different things of course.

Maybe it does work with AD just fine?

Just curious if anyone has done it yet.  Still haven't heard about a new version of on-tap for 2008 from our rep.

Thanks,

-doug

[ehoover99]

I have our s550 joined to our win2003 domain and using the cifs functionality with not problems.

The domain cannot be 2008 native in order for S550 to join.

You also cannot use snapdrive 5 with win 2008.

You cannot use snapmanager for exchange on win2008 server.

Other than that our setup works pretty good.

They have released a new version of Ontap 7.2.1S10R1 (Fixes the Nic A flapping issue)

Eric

[dougperry]

Thanks for the reply.  I took have the s500 in a 2003 domain, and it was the 2008 domain with CIFS that I was wondering about.  Did you mean 2008 on that first line?

So, did you get an error when trying the 2008 domain natively or since it's not supported you decided not to go native.  It sounds like 2008 as an AD in a 2003 ad backbone/forest is fine.

Thanks,

-doug

[ehoover99]

Doug-

Our domain is Windows 2003 native, with 2003 & 2008 servers joined to it.

Have not tried to join 2008 native.

I'm going to try to stay at 2003 native until support for S-family runs out

and upgrade to FAS series.

Are you using any virtualization ?

Eric

[dougperry]

Yes.

I'm using Xen Server (4.1 and the free 5.0 version) and love it.  It does have built in support for netapp products for storage, but this basically lets me attach a vm to it for iscsi storage.

In this way, I could go to a native 2008 AD and use the s500 as storage for it.  It defeats the purpose of the SV in general, but unfortunately we won't be upgrading to a NetApp product anytime soon and are one of the unlucky customers who invested in two of these things in 2008 with the idea of migrating to 2008.

Thanks,

-Doug

[adamsteinhoff]

We just migrated from our S550 to a FAS 2050C. As much as the S550 left a bad taste in my mouth, the FAS 2050C is a sweet box with software that actually works.

This leads me to my question: What do I do with the S550 now?

1) Find a way to hack it to run 7.3 and use it as a SnapMirror target for the FAS box. (if anyone knows how to do this, I'm interested)

2) Use OSSV and use it as a SnapVault target. (Is this even possible?)

3) Sell it on ebay. (Doubt it's worth anything)

4) Install some other software image on it to make it useful. (which one?)

5) Something else.

My goal would be to use it as a backup point for the primary system. Maybe turn it into a VTL that will support NDMP from my main system.

Adam