I just got in this morning from a very busy flying day! The plane I was flying had just come out of a major maintenance inspection. It was in the shop for 6 weeks! One thing experience has taught me is that no matter how good your mechanics are, after a plane comes out of “heavy maintenance” there are a lot of little problems that pop up from having things apart, nothing dangerous, just annoying.

Why do I bring this up here, well I’m learning that filers and storage equipment are the same way. Anytime you re-arrange a system, move a system, or somehow change a system, you will often find little annoying issues that get in the way of smooth operation. Sometimes these problems may not even seem related to the maintenance that was accomplished.

Last week Zerowait got a call from a customer who was having problems with their system. The Zerowait Engineers were also receiving auto support emails from the system, indicating a problem. After many phone calls and dead end troubleshooting, it came out that the customer had recently moved the system from one location to another. During the move a fiber cable got bent or stepped on and was not efficiently transmitting information. No one there suspected that simply moving a system from one location to another could cause such troubles. Once the ever-alert Zerowait engineer heard about the move, the cables were the first things to come to mind. Had the information about the move been discussed earlier, many hours of trouble shooting the wrong problems could have been saved. It is important to give the engineers all the information you have!

Zerowait’s chief engineer also points out that if you are going to use your older shelves with a newer system, many customers have found that the transition goes much smoother if they send their old shelves to Zerowait to blow out old volumes, zero drives and flash new firmware. Basically this will make your old seem new and more compatible with your new system.

In flying I have learned to take a plane out for a few “shake-down” flights, before you set out on any long or important flights. Your IT system might benefit from the same process. Before you trust your newly changed system with critical data, let your system burn in for a few days (a week even), run a few processes with it, check it out and make sure everything is working the way you expect tit should. Once you are confident all is well, you can also be confident that you will not lose critical data.

Always keep in mind that anytime you are making changes to your system, big or small, Zerowait is here to help!