Chapter 1

Introducing Network Appliance Filers

About filers

What a filer is

A filer is a hardware and software system. It acts on network requests from clients and processes them by writing data to or retrieving data from disks in disk shelves that are connected to it. The software that enables the filer to perform these tasks is the Data ONTAPTM operating system.

Components of a filer

A filer consists of the following major components listed in the following table.

Component Function To learn more, read...
Filer main unit The piece of hardware that receives and sends data. "About filer main unit components"
Disk shelves Hardware that holds disks and is connected to the filer. "About disk shelves"
Data ONTAP Software that is the operating system for the filer. "About Data ONTAP"

Filer and filer main unit

Often, the filer main unit is referred to simply as a filer.

What a filer does

A filer provides the following features.

Feature Description
Network file service The filer enables users on client workstations to create, delete, modify, and access files stored on it. Client workstations are connected to the filer through network connections.
Multiprotocol file sharing Clients can use the following protocols to access data on the filer:
  • CIFS (Common Internet File System)--used by Windows clients.
  • HTTP (HyperText Transmission Protocol)--used by the World Wide Web.
  • NFS (Network File System)--used by UNIX systems.
  • (PC)NFS (Personal Computer NFS)--used by PCs to access NFS. Files written using one protocol are accessible to clients of any protocol, provided that filer licenses and permissions allow it. For example, an NFS client can access a file created by a CIFS client, and a CIFS client can access a file created by an NFS client.
Data protection The filer protects disk data in the following ways:
  • Network transaction logging--the filer records network transactions in case of failures and reconstructs transactions on recovery.
  • Disk redundancy--the filer reconstructs data disks in case of disk failure.
Autosupport Mail notifications about filer problems is automatically sent to Network Appliance Technical Support.

Copyright © 1999, Network Appliance, Inc. All rights reserved.

Part No. 210-02334
File: intro.htm
Last updated: 04/26/99 08:11:09