EMC CENTERA

[Richard Steven]

Has anyone used an EMC Centera (CMS)? What are your feelings? Good / Bad and have you had ay problems with it? Network connectivity issues?

[Mark Whitehouse_1]

We have had a Centera on evaluation. Looks to be a good solution for regulated data in that it creates a new version of a file whenever a change happens. However when this is not a necessity it could waste storage. Our major concern is the API interface and the number of currently supported applications, I beleive that this could be overcome by using FileTek's Storhouse solution. Overall a decent product but at this time we feel that the disadvantages probably outweigh the advantages.

[Richard Steven]

In terms of bandwidth (8 x100ethernet) have you had any problems? Do you know whether the 8 ports can be aggregated e.g. etherchannel?

[Mark Whitehouse_1]

I don't think it's necessary to create an etherchannel. My understanding is that the Centera does some internal load balancing across the nodes that have been defined as access nodes.

[Ace Bgur]

Hi Gang-

EMC Centera and Content Addressed Storage are two of the fastest growing storage technologies around. I have recently started a CenteraTechGroup on Yahoo that discusses Centera and CAS software development efforts. I would like to invite those members of this storage discussion forum that are interested in CAS to join our group.

For those that are interested, here is a link to the CenteraTechGroup:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CenteraTechGroup/

This is the first CAS related discussion group on the net, and we already have over 300 members.

Thanks-
Ace