Disclaimer: If you don’t have a sense of humour and/or you just really love block storage, Parental Guidance is recommend.
For as long as I can remember it has not been uncommon for I.T “professionals” working in the storage industry or in a storage role to make statements about NFS (Network File System) as if its is a 2nd class citizen in the storage world.
I’ve heard any number of statements such as:
- NFS is slow(er) than block storage
- NFS (datastores) don’t honour all SCSI commands
- NFS is not scalable
- NFS uses significantly more CPU than block storage
- NFS does not support <insert your favourite technology here>
People making these statements are known as “Block Dinosaurs”
The definition of “Block Dinosaur” is as follows:
“Block Dinosaur”
Pronounced: [blok] – [dahy-nuh-sawr]
Examples
- a homo sapien becoming less common in the wild since the widespread use of NFS with vSphere and Hyper-Converged solutions
- a species soon to be extinct, of which attempts to spread Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about the capabilities of NFS storage
- someone that provides storage which is unwieldy in size, inflexible and requires an outdated technologies such as “LUNs” , “Zoning” & “Masking”.
- a person unable to adapt to change who continues to attempt to sell outdated equipment: e.g.: The SAN dinosaur recommended an outdated product that was complicated and cost the company millions to install and operate.
- a person who does not understand SCSI protocol emulation and/or has performed little/no practical testing of NFS storage in which to have an informed opinion;
- a person who drinks from the fire hose of their respective employer or predominately block storage vendor;
Synonyms for “Block Dinosaur”
- SAN zombie
- Old-School SAN salesman
- SAN hugger