Zerowait Corporation

Maybe it is time to update?

How do you determine when it is time to replace your equipment? Is it a capacity decision, a financial decision or a reliability decision? Do you review all of your upgrade options or just trust that your chosen storage vendor?

Since your storage solution has to last 5 to 7 years it pays to take a long term veiw of your service , support and upgrade costs. Also remember that your storage vendor contract is negotiable, you have to ask for them to put license transferability in the license agreement and also you should make certain to put a not on you PO mentioning that you would like to have the ability to use third party support as an option in the future.

Stop, don’t walk, you can’t do that!

Over the last few years I have been given free advice on our business many times. Typically, it involves what we can’t do for this reason or that. We were told by the sales folks at NetApp when we were resellers for them that there was no such thing as a transferable software license from them. We learned that that was not true, NetApp grants transferable licenses to those that ask for them. Zerowait sells transferable licensed filers all of the time now. It makes sense for customers and it makes sense for the organization that is selling their older filer to maximize their return on investment. Having a transferable license for your NetApp equipment is a good idea, you should ask for one from you NetApp sales person and also write “transferable licenses required” on your Purchase Order when you buy your new NetApp equipment.

Zerowait was also told that it was impossible to build a business as a third party service and support organization specializing in NetApp products. We were told it was too much of a Niche product and that no big companies would buy third party support from a small company like ours. Well, that also was not true, just look at our customer page on the web. I think you will agree that we have built a pretty substantial customer base.

So, when you are told by your NetApp sales person that you can’t buy transferable licensed filers, give us a call or send us an email and we will send you a sample of NetApp’s license transfer documents. If your NetApp sales person tells you that you can’t get service, support, parts and upgrades from Zerowait just ask him why not? And if you just want to get a better price from NetApp, show them a quote from Zerowait.

Zerowait provides high availability service, support and upgrades for your NetApp equipment.

I’m in Chicago for a conference and also visiting with some customers. Lefthand Networks has sold their equipment into at least two of NetApp’s accounts in town. Both accounts seem very happy with the price point and performance. Jon Toigo has told me to watch these guys. Perhaps NetApp should also?

External Combustion – 100 years ago it was high tech

Times change, and so does technology. Sometimes things improve but often there are unintended consequences. Recently a number of our customers have been asking them to help them upgrade their NetApp firmware. One of our first steps is to try to get an understanding as to what the company does and how it uses its filers. The reason we try to ascertain this is that some of NetApp’s firmware releases have a lot of bugs. So while the upgrade may fix one problem it might introduce two or three new ones. Since we maintain so many NetApp filers we have the knowledge to help you navigate the upgrade minefield and avoid some of the nasty surprises.

There are a lot of NetApp customers still running version 5.3 of ontap in NFS only shops on their F760’s without a bit of trouble. They have no reason to upgrade, their systems are stable, and they are happy with their systems as they are. These customers rely on Zerowait for our parts replacement services and our technical support. Although their reasons may vary a little, the main reason that Zerowait continues to add service and support customers is that our support is so much more affordable then NetApp’s.

At our warehouses, we keep a tremendous stock of legacy NetApp equipment. If you are looking for an affordable alternative to NetApp for parts, service, support or upgrades I hope you will give us call and perhaps join the Zerowait family of satisfied customers.

Who is watching your back?

Recently there has been a lot of press about the storage security problem,
And Dave Hitz of NetApp in his blog has written extensively about the security issue. He ends his blog last week with.

The bottom line is that for many applications, there is simply no practical alternative to cryptographic deletion, and lacking any practical solution, what people are doing is nothing at all. To me, the question isn’t whether cryptographic deletion is perfect – the question is whether it’s better than anything else we’ve got.

In summary, even though locks aren’t perfect, I’m going to keep locking my house.

What has puzzled me for quite a while is the following question. If NetApp’s executives are so concerned about Data Security why are all of NetApp’s cabinets keyed alike?

If you are concerned about data security, a good place to start is by securing your data storage cabinets. Changing your NetApp cabinet locks is an inexpensive place to start. With thousands of NetApp cabinets sold, you can be sure that some nefarious folks have the keys to your data storage cabinet.

 Your legacy NetApp equipment is not a historic relic from a bygone era.

But I wonder how many NetApp filers will be running over 100 years from their manufacturing date? I can assure you that there are thousands of NetApp 700 series systems still running. Zerowait has the parts service and support to keep them going strong. A lot of our customers have older NetApp equipment that is still working fine and not even close to maxed out on the storage capacity. NetApp made thousands of F760’s and F840’s that were sold with only a TB or two of storage. Many of these machines are humming along nicely not even close to 50% of the IOPS that the equipmentis rated for. A few of our customers have done the cost comparisons between the acquisition cost of upgrading with NetApp’s new equipment and the option of upgrading the storage on their legacy NetApp equipment and putting the system under Zerowait maintenance. The savings were startling.

A lot of NetApp customers call us up because they want to add storage to their legacy equipment. But they run into costs or unavailability problems from their NetApp resellers and NetApp itself. So, they call Zerowait. We stock thousands of NetApp drives and hundreds of shelves of different varieties in our warehouse.We have heads available in 700 series, 800 series, 900 series and RXXX series units. Additionally we stock F85, F87, FAS250 and all sorts of adapters, cards and cables.

Zerowait is the affordable alternative to NetApp for parts, service, support and upgrades.

We probably have a NetApp customer near you already!

We feel it is important to visit our customers, and so I have to travel a lot, and so do our engineers. Our customers expect us to live up to our High Availability reputation, and we do. In the next couple of weeks, I will be visiting most of our customers in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana. And then I have to travel to the Southwest and Southern California. If you are considering your affordable alternatives to NetApp for service, support and upgrades and would like me to stop by. Just give us a call and we can try to match up my travel schedule with your availability.

If you are going to SNW 10/26 & 10/27 in Orlando, I will be there also.

Synchronizing time
It seems like such a simple concept. But when you have storage networks that span a wide area, things can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. When you are trying to move data between networks that are not synchronized, things can really get out of whack in a hurry. When critical storage devices have to fixed now, and not tomorrow, many NetApp customers rely on Zerowait.

Recently, we were working with a customer who has a NetApp cluster and things were not working correctly for him. He called us up, and told us his problems and our engineers started parsing out the issues. Once our engineers got all of the issues with firmware upgrades, volume sizes , dead disks and network issues figured out we were able to help them solve their problems pretty quickly.

Benjamin Franklin said ‘time is money’, and our customers recognize that when it comes to critical data storage infrastructures it is better to have the engineers at Zerowait on your team rather then wait to get things fixed Manana!

Zerowait provides expert advice on configuring NetApp storage systems, in addtion to providing an affordable alternative to NetApp’s high prices for service, support and upgrades.

Watching an expert sand casting a mold recently, I was reminded of the time and expertise it takes to properly configure a Storage Network. So many of the storage installations we work with are set up with the general configurations suggested by the manufacturer and are never performance optimized for Structured (database) or unstructured data.

With NetApp equipment in particular, there are lots of settings that have to be addressed to maximize performance. And our engineers are working with customers daily on helping them optimize their performance with their NetApp equipment. NetApp systems need to be set up right and also these settings need to be reviewed whenever you upgrade to a new version of OnTap. As NetApp upgrades firmaware and adds features sometimes things need to be tweaked. Zerowait’s engineers help customers around the world to optimize their NetApp performance. So, if you have NetApp systems that are not performing as well as you would like, why not give us a call? Zerowait’s engineers may be able to help you get your performance back.

More Data More Beer

Last week Dave Hitz blogged about a NetApp customer that pointed out that without their Data there woluld be no beer flowing. And that would be bad . You can read his blog here.

Zerowait is around the corner from the Iron Hill Brewery. After a succesful implementation for a customer we often go there to celebrate another High Availability NetApp storage installation. It really is a great place to go, the food is delicious and the variety of beers is fantastic. This week they have a Russian Imperial Stout on Special. It’s Great! However, I usually order the Porter. Talking about Data OnTap while drinking a fresh micro brew is a time honored tradition. When I am in Palo Alto, CA. I usually have a gathering of customers at the Gorden Biersch Brewery. And when I am in Boston and Cambridge Massachussets we often get together with customers at the Cambridge Brewery near Kendall Square. When I am in Boulder visiting customers we go to the Brewery downtown to get together. I wonder how the close relationship developed between succesful storage installations and Micro Brew Beer? During the week of October 17 I will be visitng with customers in Chicago, I wonder which brewery we will gather at?

As many of you know, who have visited us in our offices, Newark , DE is a small university town. But there are a lot of good taverns, bars and restaurants in town. If you are traveling between New York and Washington DC, and trying to control your NetApp storage upgrade or support costs give us a call, we are just off I 95. Talking about NetApp and Beer go well together, maybe that is why they call it Data OnTap?.