Zerowait Corporation

“Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.” — Margaret Thatcher

Zerowait’s clients come to us through a variety of sources, but they all expect integrity and a grasp of the complex issues relating to storage. Occasionally, our advice is contradictory to the manufacturer’s sales and engineering representatives comments they have recently heard. Typcially, this is because the manufacturer is looking at tactical sales goals, while we are looking to provide our customers with long term strategic storage advice to maximize their return on investment.

Looking at long term storage solutions presents an even greater challenge. The final paragraph of an article in this week’s Economist provide’s a perspective on what lies ahead for us:

Looking further ahead, the combination of databases, tagging and search will make it possible to navigate large numbers of documents in all kinds of radically new ways. David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale University, imagines searching using time and space axes: imagine picking New Haven, Connecticut, on a map and then zooming back to 1701 to see information about its founding. Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland has devised a new way to display search results in which data appear as concentrations of information in a “tree-map”: the colour, position and size of thousands of results can then be taken in at a glance. As folders fade away and search software evolves, it seems that we may, at last, be able to find what we’re looking for when we need it. With the death of the folder, perhaps we can finally get some work done

Storage support – not just a day at the beach!

Providing top notch storage support services certainly takes a lot of time and commitment. This week I have to travel to visit our customers in Colorado. Compared to Delaware, Colorado is a mighty big state! Visiting customers is the only way that we can learn what customers need and what their problems are. And I have found that our customers appreciate that I come out to visit them. A typical month, will see me traveling 10 days around the country to visit our customers.
Recently, we have seen a large increase in our NetApp support & service business. Many companies are purchasing our three year support contracts, which seems to mean that many customers expect to be running their 700 series and 800 series equipment for a long time to come. Zerowait will continue to provide affordable service and support for this equipment for as long as there is a demand for it. I hope you will keep us in mind if you are looking to reduce the costs associated with your NetApp maintenance.

Dave Hitz of NetApp has a new blog!

I wrote the following note on Friday to Dave welcoming him to the Blogosphere.

TO : daveblog@netapp.com

Hi Dave:
Welcome to the blog world, your input and thoughts are going to be widely read I am certain.

A few things that I find our readers are most interested in are:

1) The issue of transferable software licenses

2)The cost of storage

3)The operational costs for running more storage than you require for current storage demand

4) Storage performance testing

I hope that you will participate in my blog occasionally, and I also suggest that you read Jon Toigo’s blog at www.drunkendata.com , my blog is at Zerowait.blogspot.com

Best regards,
Mike

Dave Hitz is one of the sharpest guys I ever met, I hope that he will provide insights into the storage world and how NetApp users can get the most out of their storage investments.

Zerowait mentioned in article in Processor

“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
— Henry Ford
Zerowait is building our reputation one satisfied customer at a time. Mike Linett

A lot of Zerowait’s customers have been to our offices in Newark,DE and seen that I sometimes drive my 1935 Ford truck to work. This truck is 70 years old and still runs like a top. I can get almost every part on this truck through an on line store or from a catalog for delivery in a day or so. Occasionally, we use it to make deliveries to our local customers. It usually is an eye opener when we roll up to the receiving dock in it. Henry’s company built a great truck in the middle of the depression, and it is reliable 70 years later. It is easy to use and easy to work on. Nothing fancy, it just runs and does it’s job. It is sort of like a NetApp F700 series filer – simple and reliable.

In the late 1990’s NetApp built about 15,000 of the F700 series filers. However, NetApp has been trying to get their 700 series users to upgrade to newer units for years. NetApp’s sales folks are compensated handsomely on new unit sales. But in many storage environments the F700 series remains the perfect solution for the requirements they serve. NetApp’s business model is in selling new equipment, Zerowait’s business is based on service and support of all NetApp equipment.

Zerowait maintains a lot of these F700 series filers for customers throughout the USA. We provide next business day (NBD) parts replacement and maintain a tremendous amount of spare parts in our warehouse. If you are concerned about the long term viability of your NetApp 700 series filer, give us a call. Our engineers can help you get the most of your filer, and our Zerowait Parts Assurance (ZPA) contracts are really quite affordable. We look forward to hearing from you and we hope that you will join the growing family of Zerowait’s satisfied customers.

Zerowait mentioned in article in Processor

“Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.”
— Niels Bohr

Landing a plane on a pick up truck might seem like a crazy idea. It certainly takes an enormous amount of skill and confidence for both the pilot and the truck driver. And yet, I have seen this done dozens of times without any serious incidents. Of course, it is only done at air shows, under controlled circumstances with little or no wind. It takes a lot of planning and control to do it right in front of a crowd.

When you install your new storage solution or upgrade your storage software do you try it first in a controlled environment? Do you test it under load in real circumstances, or do you just trust your vendors’ tests and their word that everything will work fine right off the bat. Often Enterprise Storage solutions are sold based only on marketing promises and vendor test results. How does the equipment work in your environment? Unlike the air show act of landing a plane on a Pick up truck, today’s storage managers are being asked to install equipment that has to work every time but has never been tested under load in their environment. The short term consequences can often be disastrous to a company that depends on data availability. An on line company that can’t process credit cards or process orders because their data is unavailable is closed until things can be made to work again.

The aerobatic act of landing an airplane on a truck takes practice and a knowledge of the weather conditions. It can’t be done in a high crosswind. Does your transition plan take your network conditions into account? If you are installing the storage equipment, can you rely on your network folks to provision the switches correctly. What is your back out plan?

Zerowait can help you answer your questions and help you plan for a successful NetApp installation. We have installed dozens of NetApp filers in a tremendous variety of conditions. We can help you bring your storage project in for a soft landing within a tight budget.

Zerowait mentioned in article in Processor

“Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.” — Alexander Hamilton

The view from the cockpit of a twin engine airplane is a little more complicated then from a single engine airplane. But you feel a little safer with an extra engine. Since twins are faster than singles you need to plan a little better when setting up for a landing in instrument conditions

Similar to twin engine pilots most companies feel a lot safer about their storage when they have a reliable backup and restoration plan. But unlike twin pilots, who practice single engine operations, many companies don’t practice their restoration process. This leads to a major problem for many budget constrained IT departments, but one in which Zerowait can help. Zerowait has a disaster prevention strategy that we use and that we have worked with other companies to implement. The kernel of the idea came from a conversation that we had with some NASA engineers on how they would use a combination of load balancing and data mirroring to provide both back up and recovery in one solution.

Based on this conversation our engineers developed the idea and we now use it for our own disaster prevention solution. Zerowait has now begun to help some of our customers implement our Disaster Prevention in their data centers. Tape is great for archiving, but can you get your company up and running again quickly by restoring from tape? When is the last time you tried it? If you are nervous about the costs and consequences of your data recovery solution give us a call. Our solution might work for you too.

Zerowait mentioned in article in Processor

Boulder Dam or Hoover Dam? Its the same dam thing.

Does it make a difference if you buy the NetApp version of the FAS270 filer or the IBM 3700 version? Same box, same software, same service and support. The only difference is who gets compensated and who gives you the best deal. It pays to call around for your new NAS hardware. However, will NetApp or IBM provide you continuing service and support three years from now, or will they try to force you to upgrade your storage infrastructure?

If you are looking at your storage solution simply to build a dam to control you growth of storage today, the strategic consequences of your future operational costs for service and support will be of limited importance. However, if you are looking at your storage as a pool to provide storage for your customers long term needs, perhaps you may to want to thing strategically.

At what point does a leading company in the storage business decide that remarketing is a more profitable long term business then providing innovative customer driven solutions? At what point does a leading disruptive technology provider in the NAS niche decide that it is better to manage relationships then to provide its own innovative solution to its customers? Are these vendors thinking tactically about their own current market share, or strategically about their customers long term needs?

What is your storage vendors long term strategy? Zerowait’s is easy, we will provide affordable service and support for NetApp filers.

Zerowait mentioned in article in Processor

Stratregic Leadership in the storage industry.

Today our engineers are doing an installation at a Data Center near New York City. The area between Washington DC and Boston represents about 25% of our NetApp service and support business. As the leader in NetApp service and support it is natural that our local customers ask us to come on site to help them with Data Migrations and upgrades. But in reality since we are between Philadelphia airport and BWI it is just about as easy for us t go to Oakland, Boulder or Seattle as it is for us to get to Boston. And so our engineers travel a lot, and so do I. Frequent conversations with our customers have revealed that our customers work with us and follow our advice for a variety of reasons including a track record of successful installations and migrations, trust in our professionalism, follow through and reputation, and the thrill of completing a project on schedule. Our customers often contrast us to their hardware vendors’ Account Managers and sales folks who are so obviously compensated by making their short term sales numbers instead of creating long term trusting realtionships.

My job as President of Zerowait is to build relationships in which our employees can provide creative support solutions for our customers’ NetApp storage solutions. Our customers recognize that we have built a team that is dedicated to building the leading company in this niche. We look forward to working with you on your next strategic storage upgrade or support solution.

“When you work seven days a week, fourteen hours a day, you get lucky.”
— Armand Hammer

Today our engineers are doing an installation of a transferable licensed F840 with a couple of TB of disks at a client of ours in Maryland. The client called on Tuesday because his filer was running at capacity and wanted to know what affordable options we could put together before the weekend for him. Working within a tight budget, we put together a solution for him that will meet his storage requirements today while leaving him plenty of room to expand in the future. We had to rearrange our schedules a bit to accomplish the task, but putting the customer’s needs first remains a priority of our company.

How long will it take to get a replacement drive?The Netapp nearly requires drives purchased from Netapp. Once we were a bit shocked when the “next business day” for Netapp to replace a drive which failed on June 31st was July 6th. The explanation? It was past noon on the 31st. The 1st and 2nd were a weekend. The 3rd was the day before the 4th and everyone had been given an extra day off. The 4th was of course a holiday, and the 5th was the earliest ship date, for delivery on the 6th. They offered (and we accepted) same day delivery for a $500 surcharge. They called this “sudden” service.

Many customers, and NetApp Resellers, depend on Zerowait to have the parts they need when they need them. Zerowait stocks Ready To Ship Filers, drives and storage shelves. Unlike NetApp, which may take two weeks to ship a simple order, we usually can get customer parts orders out right away. Using our on line store is a great way to speed up the order process, but you can call us also at 888.811.0808 . However you contact us, we hope you will join the growing family of satisfied Zerowait customers.

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
— Kurt Vonnegut

Yesterday, I was visiting a large government customer in Washington DC., their NetApp salesperson told them there was no such thing as a transferable licensed
filer. Since they had purchased Filers with transferable licenses in the past from Zerowait they knew that Filers are available with transferable licenses. When they pointed this out to their NetApp salesperson, I was told he promptly switched gears. But not before frustrating the customer. Many of the customer’s engineers have been to our offices and worked in our configuration labs over the past few years to test systems and learn some tricks from our engineers. It is a great realtionship and has gone on for many years.

This customer values that Zerowait provides affordable support for their NetApp equipment for years after NetApp ends support, but also appreciates that they can
get engineering support and work on a one to one basis with our engineers on questions about configurations. We have been working with some of these engineers for almost ten years now. And then there is a comfort and trust factor that makes everything a lot easier to discuss, especially over some beers on a nice evening like last night!