Anecdotes on performance of Isilon and Windows?

Afternoon,

For some weeks/months now we have had an ongoing issue with an Isilon X series cluster in our Windows (primarily) environment. We've had numerous EMC support calls, a backroom engineer on site, multiple SRs and we still seem to be going round in circles. Issue involves intermittent stalls when browsing Isilon SMB shares in Windows Explorer. Obvious Microsloth jokes aside, this is has proven frustrating for certain of our power users.

Latest perceived wisdom is that all prior EMC diagnoses on the nodes (insufficient metadata cache, insufficient RAM, netlogon daemon dying, "Double Free" bug in OneFS) were wrong and we actually have an issue under Windows. We've been advised to experiment with disabling of TCP Chimney Offload on workstation NICs.

Being cluster newbies (sort of) we went into our Isilon "marriage of convenience" with full knowledge of the eye-watering costs but with an expectation of better support than we've had to date.Our diagnosis is ongoing and, I feel, will probably be ongoing until our support contract comes up for renewal and the $$$ provide increased motiovation.In the meantime I'm curious if anyone on the list has anecdotes (good or bad) to share on Isilon in a Windows workflow?

Thanks,

Peter Devlin.

AXIS Animation IT Manager : Suite 7-1, The Skypark : 8 Elliot Place : Glasgow G3 8EP

TEL +44 (0)141 572 2802 :www.axisanimation.com

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Axis Animation (Axis Productions Ltd)
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Registered Office: Suite 7-1, The Skypark, 8 Elliot Place, Glasgow G3 8EP