Zerowait Corporation

Where are you going with your storage architecture? What is your destination?
Are you looking just to solve today’s storage problems or do you have a 3 to 5 year strategic storage plan?

Most of the customers we deal with on a regular basis have a strategic storage plan. They like their NetApp equipment and they plan to stay with their architecture for a few years. One problem that these satisfied customers run into is that they have a homogeneous environment that is easy to maintain and has a single type of Storage shelf and head. But if they need to add equipment they find that NetApp has superseded their units. So they must either purchase a dissimilar unit or find a secondary source that stocks older equipment.

Often they find Zerowait, and are happy to learn that we not only stock the equipment, but also have transferable software protocol licenses from NetApp. So if you are looking to expand your superseded NetApp equipment, please give us a call. Zerowait stocks a huge variety of NetApp equipment at affordable prices.

Affordable NetApp service and support – no matter where you are

Over the last few years we have built an international business providing parts, service and support to Network Appliance users. Typically, NetApp customers call us after their initial warranty has expired and NetApp provides them with a service and support quote which is quite expensive. A few months ago, NetApp quoted a midwestern state government over $100,000 for their F760 service and support. Our quote was considerably less and Zerowait got the business.Recently, we started receiving requests to provide three (3) year service contracts to our clients. And now we have created a three year ZPA service and support plan that provides our customers with long term storage support and services at a very reasonable price.

If you have a large NetApp infrastucture and are looking for ways to reduce your operational storage costs, please give us a call. Zerowait has an excellent reputation for providing an affordable alternative to NetApp for upgrades, service and support.

Storage Pool & Islands of Storage

No matter how you look at it, when you have a storage problem all of your storageseems to be in one place. One data center, One storage system, One back up, and if is not up and running you have got One big problem.

Is your storage easy to access?
Is the storage performance acceptable to your average user?
Can you add more and fatter pipes to improve performance?
Is your storage pool filled with files that never get accessed?
Is the pool filled with empty storage disks that never get used?
How much does it cost to keep unused storage running?
How much does it cost to run a storage pool that can’t be accessed?
How much is your maintenance and support costing per TB of storage?

Zerowait can help you answer these questions, so you can provide cost effective storage solutions to your user base. Zerowait Specializes in providing an affordable alternative to NetApp for service, support and upgrades.

Sometimes you are out there and all alone.

Who are you going to call for your NetApp hardware support when you recognize that you might have a problem? Obviously you can call the manufacturer, their SE’s are excellent. But they are going to provide you with answers and solutions to help them sell and support their proprietary solutions. Your network configuration might not fit their standard tool set, or you might be running a combination of legacy filers and newer equipment and you have some questions. If this is the situation you are in. Zerowait can help. Our engineers service, support & maintain hundreds of filers in a tremendous variety of applications and environments. Our customers range from the one man IT staff to the largest outsourcing companies. Zerowait is the recognized leader in third party NetApp support.

So, although you might feel like you are all alone, with a Zerowait support contract and service agreement you can be certain that the best technical staff is there to help you with your most complex NetApp problems.

“Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.” Theodore Roosevelt

When is the last time you reviewed your cost of storage? Recently I was meeting with a customer and they wanted to know what their cost per GB was and also their cost of operating their storage infrastructure. At Zerowait, we use a cost estimate of $1.00 a day for each head and $1.00 a day per storage shelf.
When folks ask us to estimate their storage costs we have to ask some questions to ascertain whether they want us to figure fully weighted costs or only acquisition costs and estimated direct operational costs. Some customers of ours can provide with their costs for manpower and their cost allocation for square foot of space. But most of our customers can provide us with acquisition costs .
Even so an analysis we ran recently showed that on a particular filer 7.8% of the filer was being used for MP3 files and almost 10% of the files had not been accessed in over a year. My question is what is it costing to have mainline storage used up by files that are not used or are not relevant to your business operations. I wonder how much it is costing filer users to keep this data in the primary storage assets.

If our competitors saw us walking across the Hudson River, they would say it was because we can’t swim.

Building a partnership with our customers depends on our ability to deliver what we promise on time. Visiting customers and discussing their problems with them is the best way we know to be able to provide them with the service and support they need.

Last week, in Colorado, I met with several clients who had unique requirements for their short term projects. Over the next week we are going to be working with them to
provide them short term solutions for their project’s storage requirements. Keep us in mind if you are looking for an inexpensive solution for a project or data migration.

Zerowait provides affordable alternatives to NetApp for upgrades, service and support.

“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