ExtremeZ-IP use and overall satisfaction?

[bbinder]

Hey all,
I'm curious, after searching the forums here and finding posts that are dated years back...anyone using ExtremeZ-IP that was using it before and still currently using it?
I have a client with primarily 95% Macs (Snow Leopard) and 5% Windows. They have a very nice Windows backbone to be honest - even better than the Mac servers when it comes to storage, speed and redundancy, unfortunately.
Since Casper seems to be pretty flexible when it comes to what OS you can run it on, I was hoping to use ExtremeZ-IP and get it setup to Gateway my AFP home folders from a client standpoint. My thinking is that I get ExtremeZ-IP setup (still have to call them) as the gateway device and then have it connect into some nice fast storage that's present on the network that can provide some nice spindle speed.
Then I can look at migrating their home folders from the dated Xserves to the storage array and have it served up via ExtremeZ-IP.
I want to get the Xserves retired before something happens to them; I know I can run the Casper suite on another server for them that's still Windows-based so that's another step in the process.
Currently, I'm still needing to plan out whether or not I'd do anything from an OD to AD migration, and it might be too much to do at once. So doing small migrations of AFP home folders, Casper suite, etc., in a tiered fashion is appealing to me so it's not a shotgun-blast of new network items with too many (possible) new problems to solve if I run into them.
Not sure how many people have ran into something similar, where you are/were all Xserve and migrated over to something else. It's certainly not the only option in town, but I'm interested in if anyone else has had the experience with it.
Thanks for any thoughts!
Brian

[jcurrin]

We use it, and it has worked great. We have migrated 80% of our servers over to it. 30TB's or so. The only problem we found which wasn't a big deal, is there is a limit of shares you can create. We have to section off each client onto a separate share. So we had to great creative in assigning permissions via AD.

[ssurma]

We use it and only have had one little problem in that sometimes the service does not always start on a restart of the server. We love it.

[tkimpton]

You can also make the macs comply with Windows illegal characters and path length restrictions so that you don't get burnt with backup or windows archiving mechanism falling over.

[ahussain7]

Currently we have a windows heavy infrastructure and the mac take up like 10% of it (5000 Machine clients). the only reason we use mac servers was for the OD Workgroup Manger, which this year we are going away from to support MCX as we found that the OD was too flaky and unstable.

we use extremeZ-IP to allow our users to have access to both windows and mac clients and have their home areas/ files accessible from where ever they are. Also we had a few SMB issues which extremeZ-IP also fixed allowing us to use AFP natively on the mac.

Like the rest of the guys have stated above we do from time to time have the restart issue but we have it running on 18 homes areas servers (VM servers) which use a netapp back end as the file store.

But we got GroupLogic at the time to give it us as a trial to see if it would fit into our infrastructure which it did and we were pleased with it, so I do recommended getting a trial from them to see if it fits your requirement but I think it will. also we have found that the support has been good too if you come across issues.

[geordie]

Just download the trial and set up a home directory to test it out. The main reason people buy our products is because we know the problem you are trying to solve. Yes ExtremeZ-IP is a great product but our support team has also worked with thousands of customers who are trying to do what you are.

Geordie
Consulting Engineer
GroupLogic/Acronis

[bbinder]

Well everyone - I certainly appreciate the responses on this. I'll have to look in to the trial on this to test things out and get the migration path going from Apple servers to Windows servers. Thanks again for the feedback - it's comforting to know that others are out there using this solution and that they are satisfied with it; as opposed to it being a very "band-aid-like" approach that doesn't quite measure up to daily activities.

[TravellingFritz]

Hi everybody,

we too have an old XServe G5 with an X-RAID attached to it (2004).

Is the speed of ExtremeZ-IP on a Win Server 2008 with a new PC the same or even better compared to the "old" setup mentioned above?
What about a virtualized environment for ExtremeZ-IP?
Spotlight search quick like on a Mac-Server?

Thanks for your help,
TravellingFritz