RE: Squid vs. NetCache

I know it's really bad form to follow up to one of my own
messages, but in light of what's happened, I think it's best.
 
Recently, Matt Petach said
> I would not purchase an NFS server from Network Appliances if I were
> you. We made the mistake of buying one of their F540 boxes with
> 50GB of disk for approx $70K US. It has locked up so many times
> this past week, we are regretting moving away from a sparc 20
> with DiskSuite as a fileserver. They are overpriced, unreliable,
> their support is non-existent. In short, they are one of the
> worst investments you could possibly consider making.
 
It turns out much of this was due to a series of smaller problems
that compounded each other. When we first tried to get in touch
with them, the number listed in the manuals simply had the
usual telco 'This number is no longer in service...' type
messages, which worried us; fortunately, they did have a forwarding
number, so were were eventually able to track down a real person.
 
After we actually got in touch with the tech support people, and
they had time to analyze some older core dumps, as well as some
core dumps we managed to generate amidst the lockups, they were
very fast to come up with recommendations, and even went so far
as to hand carry a new power supply, and then later, a whole new
unit over to us, to get us going again. I really flew off the
cuff after the first really bad night, when I posted that, and
those really aren't fair statements. The box had been up and
running for 70 days straight before we had these problems, and
the majority of the autosupport mail messages that would normally
alert them to the problems we were having got caught in a mailer
glitch, and didn't arrive until well after the crisis was under
way.
 
The box really has been very good, except for that one long
period of instability, and after they replaced the whole box,
it's been up and running perfectly, so it looks like I really
got all bent out of shape over a one-in-a-thousand failure case.
Kudos to Network Appliances for really coming through in our
crisis, and proving me wrong on all counts. They really do have
a top-flight support team, and they really are incredibly
responsive, once they're aware of a problem like this.
 
I think had we been able to make contact with them sooner,
and get them involved more quickly, the situation would
not have become as critical, and we could have reached
a resolution much more quickly.
 
In the future, I'll make sure to wait until a situation has
been resolved before posting knee-jerk messages like that.
Apologies to everyone involved, especially those here who
had to read the whole thing. :(
 
Matt Petach

-- 
InterNex Information Services   |           Matthew Petach
Network Engineering             |           mpetach@internex.net
2306 Walsh Avenue               |           Tel: (408) 327-2211
Santa Clara, CA  95051          |           Fax: (408) 496-5484