Zerowait Corporation

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!

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.