NetApp needs to concentrate more hardware Component's like having special Customized & Engineered CPU's

[naveenrk]

Hi ,

NetApp needs to have brand   custiomed hardware like CPU's like IBM is using for it AIX OS.

Should have blade centre like Hardware architectures  where Customer's will get the benefit's like Add  as need the Performance .

[amiller_1]

Hmm.....can you elaborate a bit more on the business benefit?

Custom manufactured CPU's are expensive (see HP dropping theirs, costs over at IBM/Intel/AMD/Sun) especially if at smaller quantities (i.e. # of NetApp sales compared to # of PC/server sales).

I also personally see the server market as pretty crowded right now (with Cisco sucking the air out of the room right now for new entries as well I think).

Thoughts?

[naveenrk]

Hi ,

Customized   NetApp Storage  Platform Hardware Components is need to  have the Performance  , Scability factor  .

For example  instead of using the General purpose dual or Quad core  CPU's  in NetApp Storage Hardware  , it better have the  dedicated NetApp Brand CPU  to server  only the Storage Functions  which enhance  the Performace and Scability of the NetApp Storage Hardware  in the Market.

Like Qlogic is having  its brand CPU's for it  FCoE , FC adapter .

It is not for Only the CPU's , it can include any Components used in the NetApp Storage Hardware  like Solid State Drive (SSD)  .

[eric_barlier]

I would argue that you are better off not manufacturing your own hardware as that ties you down with vendors of said hardware. This especially

does not make sense if you are a software company like NetApp is.

Eric

[adamfox]

I have to agree with Eric here.  The tech graveyard is full of companies who tried to do it all and develop their own chips (see most of the old supercomputer companies like Cray, TMC, etc.) with the latest being the once mighty Sun Microsystems who, in my humble opinion, fought the "good software on commodity HW" trend for way too long.  Heck, I used to work for Auspex who stuck to the HW route and saw first hand how expensive it is.

The trend now is to do more with less.  Building our own CPUs would only raise the price.

As usual, I don't speak for NetApp, this is just one guy who's been around a while's opinion.

[eric_barlier]

yeah, but neither myself nor Adam are CEOs as far as I know, so we could be wrong 🙂

I do reckon its more efficient to customize your software to commodity hardware. Then again Apple are going the other way, they ve started manufacturing their own CPUs I believe. And then there is Google, they customize everything to fit their needs at the software stack, not sure about what hardware they use though.

Eric

[naveenrk]

Hi ,

As we  purchase the  NetApp Storage Hardware Components from the Vendors for example Solid State Disk Drive (SSD), CPU's etc.  ,  is it not  possible for the   vendor's   customized the product as per NetApp requirements so that  it not required to use the General Purpose Components for the NetApp Storage Hardware  which may enhance the NetApp Storage  Hardware  Performance and Scalability.

[jb2cool01]

I really don't see the benefit that you'd get with this. Sure you 'might' get better performance after shelling out loads of $$$ in R&D and then rewriting or redeveloping ONTAP but after you've done all of that then standard off-the-shelf CPU's would have increased in performance and you're in the same position that you started in.

If performance really is an issue (CPU performance certainly isn't for us) then there are already better chips out there to use. As far as i can see the fastest filer FAS6080 uses between 4 and 8 dual core 2.6GHz Opteron's and there are already 6 core Opteron's available at the same clockspeed.

If i understand correctly (May well be wrong) ONTAP8 also starts addressing these issues with the ability to cluster all of your devices to share the load.

[gridley]

Blades running ONTAP 8 would be cool though

Well not literally.