Re: Netapp pricing
There are several issues
1) Significant Data Migration pain with customers having to pay for it
2) Licensing costs
3) Management complexity. ONTAP has many many features *but* it also has several layers one has to configure, manage and monitor. You certainly need the appropriate skill set to do it although the technology is very good. It's just too damn complex.
4) netapp partners are having to constantly design around limitations and various rules. They have gotten tired of it especially with many available options around them these days
5) Lack of good management software. You may start at the UI and end up at the CLI to finish a task.
6) No good way to troubleshoot performance on this system. You need a PhD to figure out where things have gone wrong. Why do I need to always take a perfstat? We don't have time for this. Show us where the problems are, tell us what to do.
If you have an army of knowledgeable storage guys clustered ontap is very powerful but If you don't you'll spend more time managing it than you need to. It can be like driving a car without headlights at midnight.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
