Zerowait Corporation

Go fast, turn left. Rare Bear Wins!

Last week I was visiting customers on the west coast and then went out to the Reno Air Races. A few of our customers attended the races also, and we had great time. Reno is great, there is no other way to describe it.

During the week I heard from several customers that they are starting to implement the Sun Thumper storage platform for their NFS operations. It is affordable and seems to meet many of their requirements. One customer said he liked the platform except for the weight of the unit when it is fully configured with drives. It comes in at about 200 lbs, so he is only planning on putting four units in a rack. The Thumper is loud, at least as loud as a F760 with the old FC8 or FC9 shelves, maybe a little louder and they draw about 4 amps per unit it seems.The thumper this customer has can deliver about 12 TB usable storage as configured with 750GB drives. One outstanding issue is that as configured it does not serve CIFS yet unless he mounts SAMBA, but it was a very interesting visit.

Do you want your storage vendor to be proactive or retroactive?

According to this article NetApp is trying to be retroactive…

“Once up and running, there’s a Storage Availability Audit service. The retroactive audit makes sure customers are making use of the availability features built into the systems.”

Does the retroactive audit simply provide data for a ‘ root cause analysis’ review? Does NetApp have any tools that could help predict oncoming problems?

At another point in the same article I learned that the FAS2000 series is low priced and runs a lot of storage. I think this is the same unit that uses the Intel Mobile Celeron for its processor, which I learned from a NetApp customer who told me, but that is not mentioned in the article.

“Similar to NetApp’s FAS200 product line, the new FAS2000 series is designed as a low-to-mid-end storage appliance, but still sports some high end features and protocols.”

The jury of my peers is still pondering whether the Mobile Celeron is enough processor for the enterprise storage market. I suppose that the early adopters will be able to tell us soon enough.

It looks like NetApp is pricing the 2000 series products at the same price levels as their storevault product, does that make any sense?

Two tech companies with executives that play a lot of golf seem to be at war, maybe their CEO’s avatars can play Bocce together to settle their differences?

In an ironic twist of fate, two companies that are well represented in most of the data centers we work with are getting tangled up in a legal fight over patents and technical innovation. IMHO the only winners in this battle will be the attorneys because the customers of each company don’t want to take sides, they just want their data center to deliver high availability access to their data resources. The risk of boffins at Sun and NetApp implementing proprietary protocols and locks to prevent interoperability between Sun equipment and NetApp equipment is a scary thought to many data center managers.

I hope that these companies can settle their differences quickly and amicably, because there are many new players in the enterprise storage marketplace that may come to market with a disruptive technology which inevitably will hurt both Sun and NetApp. Additionally NetApp’s customers, employees, stockholders, integrators and resellers may get pulled in to this by being forced to take sides and make recommendations based on legal ramifications rather than on technical grounds.

Chris Mellor of techworld has an excellent article on the subject, and it seems that he is as surprised by this as I am.

We’ve moved!

For the last 8 years we have been in the center of Newark, DE, where the University of Delaware is located. We loved the location, but we outgrew our building and decided to move. We found our new building in January and just completed our move to 707 Kirkwood Highway in Wilmington, Delaware . Our new building is almost three times the size of our old one, and we were able to increase the footprints of our Data Center, production and storage facilities. Additionally, we substantially improved our offices and phone systems.

Moving from a University town to a commercial area has lots of advantages. It is easier for delivery vehicles to get in and out of our building, and we have more parking available for our staff and visitors. But we will miss the college town atmosphere.

Thanks to you, our customers, our business has been steadily growing, and our new facility will allow us to increase our staffing and inventory levels to continue our growth while providing you with the outstanding customer service levels you have come to expect from Zerowait.

I want to thank you for the confidence and repeat business that has allowed us to grow into this new building. We really appreciate the opportunities that you have given us.

Here is our new contact information:

Zerowait Corp.
707 Kirkwood Hwy.
Wilmington, DE 19805
Phone 302.996.9408
Fax 302.994.4302

Our toll free numbers remain the same:

Sales: 888.811.0808
Tech Support: 888.850.0808

Sun has a new plan, but can they execute on it any better now than they did in the past?

Sun wants to dis-integrate storage industry

“Sun is hatching a plan it hopes will literally disintegrate the storage industry by removing the value that comes from integrating software and hardware into storage appliances.

Joe Heel, Senior Vice President of Sun’s Global Storage Practice told TechTarget ANZ that: “In general computing, value stack has unbundled the different pieces of computing like the CPU, the operating system and applications. This has commoditised some components and elevated the important of the operating system.”

“In storage this has not happened,” leaving storage dominated by business models Heel likened to computing businesses from the mainframe era in which vendors provided all of the technology in their products. That dominance was famously undone as minicomputers and eventually PC-based systems mixed and matched components from different sources, a trend that gave rise to the Wintel hegemony.

Sun believes that today, the likes of EMC and NetApp are similar to mainframe providers and therefore susceptible to a new approach.

“In storage we want to drive this unbundling,” Heel said. “The intent is ‘de-mainframising’ of storage.”

The company’s first attempt at this project so will be an open source network attached storage (NAS) device due in early 2008.”

Most of the customers we do business with have a substantial amount of Sun equipment in their infrastructures. If Sun can clearly differentiate why their storage is now better, cheaper or able to provide a longer term ROI, perhaps some customers will delve into their storage platforms.

However, Sun has a reputation for being difficult to deal with, just like the storage competitors they are targeting. It is very hard to change a business model, it will be interesting to watch what happens.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. Theodore Roosevelt

I always thought that manufacturer registration programs were a bit shady, and now the government is looking into the practice. According to the Wall Street Journal...

“Justice Department filings in the cases don’t specify how much the kickbacks may have cost the government. However, in the case the department filed against Hewlett-Packard, it cited numerous payments that H-P refers to as “influencer fees.” According to the court papers, H-P in 2004 paid $611,969 to Accenture; $599,962 to Capgemini, a Paris-based outsourcing and consulting company, and $514,238 to GTSI Corp., a Chantilly, Va., systems integrator. Capgemini said it hasn’t been charged and doesn’t comment on investigations into other companies. GTSI didn’t respond to emails.

In a statement, H-P said it “is confident its business practices are appropriate. We plan to vigorously defend this action and look forward to demonstrating that H-P has done nothing wrong.”

The Justice Department says such fees undermine the contract process. For example, the government says companies that Sun called its “Government Alliance Partners” received “a back-end rebate of 2% in return for” a Sun sale. Sun also paid 10% rebates under its “competitive knock-out program” if a partner persuaded a government organization to replace a customer’s systems with Sun products. The government said Sun paid “millions of dollars” to its partners in 2003 to 2006 under these programs, which weren’t revealed to the government.

In a statement, Sun said it “has not paid kickbacks” and that the rebate and discount programs at issue “were conducted in an open and aboveboard manner.”

But the government disagrees…

“The government argues such fees and discounts are kickbacks, which are illegal under the Anti-Kickback Act of 1986. The act defines kickbacks as money or “compensation of any kind” provided to a government contractor to “improperly” reward favorable treatment. The act says it’s illegal to give or solicit such payments and to include any kickback amount in the contract price.”

Registration programs lock out competition for accounts, and inevitably favor friends of the manufacturers against the end user. Registration does nothing to help the end user and stifles competition. It is a bad idea and it should be stopped.

Either you have a competitive environment or you don’t, you can’t have it both ways.

“Agility means that you are faster than your competition. Agile time frames are measured in weeks and months, not years.” Michael Hugo

Recently we have heard from a number of customers that NetApp has been taking notice of our services and support. Last week at a government health agency the NetApp sales rep tried to convince the IT manager that NetApp’s support was far superior to Zerowait’s. From what we hear the manager told the sales rep and her experienced engineer, with less then three months of NetApp knowledge and who did not know how to read an autosupport, that Zerowait’s support had been excellent and that he recommends us to his peers.

A few weeks before that , at a large private medical practice in NC, NetApp reduced their price to meet the support price that Zerowait had quoted the customer. The customer says that their rep told them that the first price that NetApp provided them was their best price. After he received our quote however NetApp came in with a new lower ‘ best’ price that matched ours. I guess the new price was better than their previous best. Why not just tell the truth and give your best price in the first place?

And this week we were told by a customer at well known CRM technology company, that NetApp had reduced their price to a support price below ours. That’s competition!

All of these customers were told in one way or another by their NetApp representatives that there was not competition to NetApp for service and support of NetApp equipment. Why then is NetApp reducing their prices when a customer shows them a quote from Zerowait for our independent maintenance, monitoring and management services?

Their actions speak louder than their words and validate that Zerowait provides an affordable alternative to NetApp for service, support, and upgrades.

I like it when people tell you “the facts, and just the facts”.

That is why it is refreshing to read Jeff Browings’ blog entry’s on storage. Today, I noticed that he clearly described the current fad of ‘Thin provisioning” in an Oracle environment. Link

“This makes thin provisioning completely useless nonsense for Oracle data. Anyone who tells you otherwise should be viewed with deep suspicion. I say this without any bias whatsoever, since my employer sells arrays that provide thin provisioning too. I am simply telling you the way it is here.”

The trade press just regurgitates the press releases provided by the storage manufacturers, and does not seem to challenge the assumptions that the manufacturers make very often. Let’s give people the facts and let them make rational decisions on their strategic storage purchases.

Expect everything? Are you ready for the power of a mobile Celeron for your enterprise storage? Rumor has hit that NetApp’s FAS2020 uses the chip for its processor.

According to Wikipedia
“Celeron is a brand name given by Intel Corp. to a large number of different x86 microprocessor models that they produced and marketed as a budget/value CPU line. The Celeron family complements Intel’s higher-performance (and more expensive) product lines (currently Core 2 Duo and formerly Pentium). Introduced in April 1998,[1] the first Celeron was based on the Pentium II core. Later versions were based on the Pentium III, Pentium 4, Pentium M, and Core 2 Duo. These processors are suitable for most applications, but their performance is somewhat limited when it comes to running intense applications, such as cutting edge games or graphical modeling programs, as compared to that of their high-end counterparts.[2] “

Personally, I can’t understand why NetApp would go cheap on the processor, since only a few dollars more would get a real chip for the unit. But maybe they are looking to only provide customers with limited performance? Maybe this product should be sold with the marketing line, “Shut up, Expect less and be satisfied!”

You can’t make this stuff up!

“Leonardi said the heat causes already dry surfaces to dry further — which in turn creates more heat. ” link

My question – Is this a new scientific breakthrough?

“Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.”
Link

My question – How many people would want to drive a moose to work and back every day?

“NetApp built a cogeneration system that provides both power and cooling to its data center, but volatile energy prices have greatly changed the economics of the system since it was first installed four years ago. The lesson: combine heat and power (or CHP) systems may be green, but the payback can be unpredictable.” Link

My question – Hasn’t there always been an economic link between the raw commodity material costs and Return on Investment?

“There is a common misperception about how methane gets into the atmosphere,” Michael Abberton, a scientist at the Aberystwsth’s Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, said Monday. “It is actually through belching rather than the other end.”
Link

As we are all customers at some point we knew that there was a linkage between sales, marketing and Bovine. But Science has proven that we had everything backasswards