Zerowait Corporation

Zerowait sold a bunch of our NetApp Service Contracts this week : FAS960 Service & Support, F880 Support, F840 upgrade and installation, F85 for F810 swap.

Next week’s schedule includes a NetApp cluster installation, & NetApp storage migration.

Every week we get new customers for our alternative to NetApp’s high prices for parts service and support. Our established customers continue to purchase NetApp filers from us, many customers like our trade in deals on NetApp equipment. We are always purchasing more equipment, because as our support customer list grows we need an ever larger supply of parts for our spare parts reserve. Please keep us in mind if you have a NetApp take out opportunity or recently decommissioned NetApp equipment. As we build our parts depots around the country in the next few months we will be looking for even more used NetApp F840, F880 FAS940, FAS960 systems as well as R100 and R200 systems.

As the leader in third party NetApp Service and support, we have a growing list of NetApp requirements. We can provide you a reasonable price for your used NetApp equipment and spares kits.

How much of your NetApp total storage is dedicated to File system overhead, spares, and right sizing of disks?

Do you care?

Not everyone is concerned about how much it costs to purchase and operate a storage subsystem that starts at only 70 % efficiency. Many people feel reliability is more important than cost.

“Today, a cost-efficient, secure, and reliable remote disaster recovery strategy is critical—customers have no room for lost or inaccessible data,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Products and Partners at Network Appliance.

How can customers have room on their arrays for lost or inaccessible data when parity and spares take up more of their system than data storage?

Taking the graphic in this posting, and using its information we are able to explain where a customer’s storage budget is being used. As you can see, the usable storage in this graphic was less then 30%, but they had almost 35% reserved in spares. Imagine if this was an inventory item and you had to keep more spare parts for replacement than you used in production! Another interesting thing that this graphic shows is that parity usage almost equals usable storage.

In this example over 1/3 of the NetApp filer’s space is used up for system purposes. Over 1/3 is used for spares, and less than 1/3 is available for storage purposes. This example shows that the usable NetApp storage cost that this customer is paying for is quite expensive, since less then 33% of the storage system is actually used for storage. Using 2 or 3 36GB disks for your boot sector and 144’s or larger for your data volume can save you a lot of space on your total storage in a NetApp array, but that is only a start.

Zerowait can help you maximize your NetApp storage utilization, which will help keep your costs of storage down!

 What is your storage comfort level? How much is it costing you?

Many of our customers know what it costs to acquire storage, but very few have a way to assess the costs of holding on to excess storage. At what point are you in the cautionary area and when are you at the critical point, where you must add storage to your system?

Is it possible to migrate your storage data that has not been accessed in quite a while to a less expensive storage array? Is it possible to delete files that were only accessed once in the past three years? How much unaccessed , dead data is sitting on your most expensive storage arrays? How much would it cost to swap out your NetApp 36GB drives and insert 144GB drives in their place? Is upgrading your storage array a better option then replacing it entirely?

If your budget is under scrutiny but your storage requirements are going up, Zerowait can help you answer these questions, and help you get back to your comfort level.

Opening the door to NetApp savings:

A lot of NetApp’s customers call us and complain about NetApp prices for service, support and upgrades. After they call us, they explain their needs and requirements and we provide them with an affordable alternative to NetApp’s high prices. When customers have 10, 20 or 30 NetApp filers the savings with our service and support policies can amount to several thousand dollars.

In addition to the real savings that these customers receive on their NetApp filer support, they also receive our services that illustrate how they can more efficiently allocate their NetApp storage resources. NetApp’s sales folks are in business to sell you more storage, not to show you how to efficiently use your current storage. At Zerowait, our focus is on helping customers capture cost savings hidden in the NetApp infrastructure.

If storage efficiency is important to your organization, give us a call. We look forward to speaking with you.

What is your total cost of storage?

Do you consider your overhead costs when you look at your storage costs? How much does it cost for your non critical storage to be on your most expensive storage assets? This graph shows the weighted cost of storage for a single NetApp 840 filer given the cost parameters we were provided with. What is interesting is the cost of MP3 storage on this corporate asset. I wonder if the stockholders know how much it costs to store MP3’s on their NetApp storage? Maybe they don’t care?

Zerowait can help you discover your total cost of storage.

What does 4 hour support mean to you? What does it mean to your vendor?

This should be such a simple answer to get, and yet in talking to customers who have purchased 4 hour support from NetApp there seems to be quite a few different interpretations.

When does the clock start ticking on the 4 hour delivery? Does it start when your autosupport of a problem goes out to NetApp? Does it start when you call NetApp to open a trouble ticket? Does it start when NetApp confirms with you a problem? I have heard all of these answers.

Does NetApp’s 4 hour support mean a NetApp engineer will deliver and install the replacement parts and get your system up and serving data again within 4 hours or just show up in 4 hours?
Some customers have told us that 24/7 & 365 days a year they will have a NetApp engineer at customer site and putting in the parts to get them running again within 4 hours. Other folks have told me that they have some delivery guy show up and drop off parts. And yet a few other folks have told me that their NetApp 4 hour support is only M-F 8AM -5PM. Outside those hours the parts will be delivered Next Business Day.

There seems to be some confusion amongst NetApp’s customers about what 4 hour support means, but there is no confusion about the cost of the 4 hour support from NetApp. Universally we hear that is is very expensive. Zerowait currently offers Next Business Day parts replacement and also a replace to an OnSite spares kit program. This provides our customers with immediate access to their critical spares requirements. Additionally we are working on our domestic parts depot program now, and it should be rolled out in the next few months. If you have thoughts on what the best practices are for a 4 hours support program please write us and let us know what interests you the most.

Zerowait Service and Support policies.

Over the last few years our service & support business has been growing very consistently. You can view our latest press release here.

About 90% of our Zerowait Parts Assurance (ZPA) policies are in the contiguous 48 states. But we also are supporting customers overseas in
Europe, Asia and South America. At a recent conference, several European and Asian companies asked if they could partner with us for their regions. And we are currently reviewing their proposals. We are also working diligently on our domestic network of 4 hour or less parts depots.

We understand that our customers need service and support policies that fit their budget and their unique requirements. Not all customers fit into a stovepipe service solution, so we customize our support options to their needs. Whether our customer requires a single site supported or multiple sites and assistance managing their NetApp storage infrastructure our engineers, and support folks can help them.

If you are looking for an affordable and high availability service and support solution for your NetApp requirements, please give us a call. You will be glad you did.

Storage Pollution

Watching how clouds flow through the Appalachian mountain valleys the other day on the way back from Chicago reminded me of some of the charts and graphs I have see of how available storage works it way through an organization. Storage is viewed almost like air in many organizations. End users don’t recognize that there are costs involved with using storage.

Management costs, operational costs, migration costs, and on and on. But like air, the individual does not see his cost of polluting the environment. Society and government agencies regulate air pollution, but only storage managers can slow the growth of wasteful storage within the organization. Should we call wasted storage usage storage pollution?

Zerowait is working with some of our larger customers on software to help them manage storage pollution by looking at the costs of storage by user, extension and client. If you are interested in learning more about controlling your storage costs, please give us a call

NEW ZEROWAIT PRESS RELEASE

Ice over Altoona!

The forecast was for a clear day. But over Altoona, PA I was in the clouds and light rain at 5000 feet. I was watching my thermometer drop toward freezing, and before you knew it, I had accumulated a coating of rime ice. I called Pittsburgh approach & told them I was accumulating ice, I asked if I could climb out of the clouds. they gave me the ok and at 6500 I broke out. The ice did not sublimate until I reached Harrisburg, PA. I landed about 30 minutes later without any problems.

Our storage customers often run into unforecasted conditions with their storage hardware. Sometime it is because a new application takes up more storage then anticipated, sometimes it is a configuration issue. But when they call us for engineering help, our prime concern is to make certain that we can solve our customers problem quickly and then to stabilize their NetApp storage environment, and then we look at how to improve their storage to avoid the situation in the future.

Sometimes the forecast is wrong, but as long as you have an alternative solution, and a reliable ally you can make it through and land safely. This is true in computer storage and flying. This weekend the folks at the FAA’s Pittsburgh facility were able to help me through, and I sure appreciated their help!