RIP FAS9500 | NetApp | Page 1

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 12:46 PM

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Is it me, or is NetApp hell bent on killing legacy arrays? Event though they appear to be their bread and butter. The FAS90 just doesn't seem to be on par with the FAS9000/FAS9500. Those were more monolithic arrays, but so are mainframes, and there is still a use for them.

empty epoch Nov 18, 2024, 2:42 PM

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Why not? Same drive count. Same nvram. Sure the 9500 has more ram but the 90 is a significantly newer cpu and chipset that can do more with less ram

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 3:44 PM

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Flexgroups require RAM. The FAS90 has a quarter per node. That means I should plan on at least twice as many nodes as the FAS9500. More Flash Cache, etc. Hopefully they have dropped the GB licensing to compensate

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 3:54 PM

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why would you need to license more gigabytes storage licensed if you spread the same data across more nodes?
Also, from what I've seen, even with FlexGroups the FAS90 blows the FAS9500 out of the water.... but if you still need the double RAM (not 4 times btw) , you can still buy the FAS9500 for the forseeable future

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I mean I know that more RAM helps with speed, especially in spinning-rust systems where cache is essential, but I guess in such a case it would probably be a good idea to look into things like FabricPool which can provide even more performance with smaller controller models

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:02 PM

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FabricPool is highly overrated

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:04 PM

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in your opinion maybe 🙂

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:05 PM

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Yes, in my opinion'

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:05 PM

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for me it's FlexGroups that are overrated

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:06 PM

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Good for you man. Let's agree to disagree and keep it civil, shall we?

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:06 PM

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in any case, since there are no official numbers for the FAS9500 performance (sadly they're missing from the performance charts) there's no absolute numbers to compare

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:08 PM

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With FAS and spinning discs, I don't expect AFF or CFF performance. But with RAM, constituents, and FlashPools, I am able to provide an HPC environment with the performance and CAPACITY they require.

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I do have an AFF for really critical runs, but most of my HPC runs use spining disc

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:10 PM

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so, do you have any hard numbers that the FAS9500 can reach but the FAS90 cannot? Like IOPS or throughput or latency?

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:11 PM

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No, but I do have 8700 numbers. I have 8700's and they die

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:12 PM

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well, sadly I don't have first-hand experience with the FAS90 yet (our customers prefer to buy C Series for some reason 😉 ) but I guess that if you share your concerns with your NetApp contacts they can surely provide you with an NDA session and hard performance numbers for the new models

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:12 PM

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It would be nice if the numbers were published

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:13 PM

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empty ermine No, but I do have 8700 numbers. I have 8700's and they die

the FAS8700 is in the perf doc with a comparison to the FAS90. Only for IOPS though, and with 5 ONTAP versions difference

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the number is around 3 times that of the FAS8700

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:14 PM

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Well, I'm not ready to replace the 9500's yet. Again, my concern is the RAM used for FG's.

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:14 PM

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search for "performance tech spec" in the field portal.

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:15 PM

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empty ermine Well, I'm not ready to replace the 9500's yet. Again, my concern is the RAM use...

yeah, again, you don't have to replace them as they are not even EOA yet..

empty ermine Nov 18, 2024, 4:16 PM

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Yep. FG's have been a lifesaver, but they are RAM and Flash dependent for performance

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 4:17 PM

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waiting for a bit before buying the new model is not entirely bad... iron out the last few hardware issues etc., wait for the performance numbers from other users, etc.

solemn birch Nov 18, 2024, 5:24 PM

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during announcement NetApp said the FAS90 is "35% faster than FAS9500" but no real numbers have been released so far

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Additionally another two nice differences:

FAS70/90 has QAT support which FAS9500 has not, but needs to be enabled manually (bottleneck will be HDDs of course)
FAS70/90 supports NS224 shelves which FAS9500 does not

untold cape Nov 18, 2024, 6:37 PM

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also less rackspace

primal pier Nov 18, 2024, 8:46 PM

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empty ermine FabricPool is highly overrated

Fabricpool is awesome and saved us a shitload of money.... A-Series Metrocluster with 65 weeks of snapshots... You know, regulations

empty ermine Nov 19, 2024, 2:27 PM

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Yes, I am sure. However, we are all FSAS, and on-prem. I need to do the reverse of FabricPool, aka FlexCache and automatically move data to high perrformance storage, and back to FSAS when done. My problem is that I have huge repositories, and they are getting bigger, not smaller.
For me to use FabricPool, I would need to move 9PB of data to high performance storage, so I can then migrate it back.
In the meantime, I use FlashPools, which cannot be used with FabricPools in a StorageGrid config. So it would be very expensive for me to implement.

untold cape Nov 19, 2024, 2:33 PM

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FlashPool running fine in your environment? Because we learned our lesson with FlashPool when it came out, and stopped implementing/recommending it after. That feature was so buggy in the first years, I think almost every FP installation had some issues at some point (the SSD part running full even though the HDD part has plenty space, snapshots not rotating properly, various panics related to FlashPool, etc.)
Glad to see that these issues seem to be fixed by now!

#RIP FAS9500