aborzenkov,
Agree with you.
My statement was specific to this release of ONTAP. Lots of features have changed since the previous release. I was thinking from the customer's perspective. What if the existing customer environment has some configuration that is unsupported and not yet documented? I would try a new product in a test environment before I push that to production, be it RC or GA.
From the definition of RC: ( link: http://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/products/ontap_releasemodel/ )
"RCs are suitable for customers who want to start exploring or certifying the release in their environment for either new features or bug fixes.RCs are fully tested and are suitable in development / test environments and in production environments, including those with business-critical workloads. NetApp might deliver multiple RCs for a release, as necessary, to address specific issues before the release is designated as a General Availability (GA) release."
From that of GA:
"The GA designation is given to the Release Candidate to indicate that earlier release(s) performed extraordinarily well across multiple deployments. Based on rigorous testing by NetApp's quality assurance organization and the experience gained from hundreds of customer systems running the Release Candidate extensively in various customer environments, the release demonstrated sufficient maturation. This maturation enables customers to achieve five-9s availability or better in production environments, including those with business-critical workloads."
Personally, I am a big fan of "five 9s" and would like to stick to GA. May be my personal point of view, other opinions are also welcome!
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