Zerowait Corporation

How much have you snooped around the blog site? Have you noticed off to the right there is a store link? Well you should go there and get registered. In the store you will find much of what Zerowait has to offer, including prices and how to order.

Now since you are a loyal reader of the Zerowait High Availability Blog, I will offer you this tip. After you decide what you want, don’t just order it, call Zerowait first, not only can they make sure it is really what you need, but they may also be able to offer you a discount or a new lower price. Besides it is always nice to have human to human interaction every once in a while.

Have a great weekend! I am off to St Kitts again, with stops in Myrtle Beach and Atlanta. However, before you pack your bags to come along, keep in mind, I will barely have time to get off the plane in any of these locations.

Sometimes an article can tell you something completely unrelated to the main topic. For example, this July 2001 article from SupplyChainBrain.com is about tracking and planning of inventory; however, there is a sentence in there that NetApp users may be very interested in. Almost hidden at the bottom of the first page, it says, “As a result, NetApp needs to recycle defective parts, many of which can be repaired, as quickly as possible…Yet customers are receiving new boards only between 20 and 30 percent of the time. The trick is to maximize the use of a given part before it reaches its inevitable moment of obsolescence.”

I hope the local pet store doesn’t adopt this philosophy with their gold fish, or I may be making far to many trips there to keep live fish in the kids new tank. “Better hurry up and get that one out the door it’s now healthy but getting pretty old.”

Did you know that your replacement parts from NetApp are more than likely used? Could it be that they are not just used, but rebuilt, or even an unchanged piece of another bad system?

When you get a used part from Zerowait, you can be sure that it has been thoroughly checked. Zerowait tests, inspects, and runs all used equipment once when it comes in, then once again before it leaves to go to the customer. All equipment is run, or burned in, for a reasonable amount of time, to insure that it will function to the high standards that you expect.

I have also heard rumors that Neospex will be offering new compatible drives with a three-year replacement warranty. Once in production, they will be available through their exclusive distributor, none other than Zerowait.
Now for the moral of the story. Get your compatible & used equipment from the used/remanufactured equipment specialists, Zerowait! With years of experience, Zerowait can supply you with a system and/or hardware support to keep you up and running. If new and compatible is more to your liking, Neospex, through Zerowait, may soon be able to help you with that too.

You probably saw that Mike Linett submitted a post to the Zerowait High Availability Blog. He will do that from time to time.

Having read his post, I almost passed right over a very interesting statement. Mike said: “Today, I read an article that said that HDS and NetApp were breaking their OEM agreement. This does not surprise me at all, NetApp does not play well with others.” I didn’t want anyone to miss his point, so I asked him to expand on his initial comment.

Mike then filled me in on some NetApp history. You see, some years back, NetApp had a partnership with Dell; NetApp produced 700 series units with the Dell name on it for Dell to sell. As Dell’s direct sales force started to take sales away from the NetApp sales force the OEM deal fell apart. This seems to have had other unintended consequences since the F85 and the F87 were manufactured by Dell, for NetApp, But the support went away when the relationship broke down. This is why Mike recommends that people stay away from Low end NetApp Products. Their history is to drop support on them quickly.

Now we see that the Gfiler relationship with Hitachi Data Systems Inc. has eroded. From a support perspective what does that mean for the oil and gas customers that bought these units?

Today, NetApp has announced a partnership with IBM. How long will this relationship last, and who will be NetApps next partner at the dance?
What does this mean to you? As the relationships with NetApp go away, the support for that equipment dissolves and NetApp goes on to partner with someone else, leaving the current customers standing lonely by the punch bowl.

Here is an article I found on Information Age web site. It paints a pretty grim picture of the used equipment market due to the high cost of re-licensing; with NetApp and Cisco being the main focus.

Not to worry, there are ways around the high costs. One way is to purchase used equipment that has a transferable license. Zerowait has some of those systems available now, and others coming real soon. One of these systems, coupled with a Zerowait backed ZPA policy for hardware support, can save you a lot of money over new equipment.

Now that is only one solution, and that doesn’t get you the Ebay type bargain that the article talks about. If that is what you are looking for then you have more than software licenses to worry about. Yes there are bargains on Ebay, but how much do you want to trust a 760 that has been sitting in someone’s garage since “that computer place down the road” went out of business. How do you know it works and what assurances do you have? What if you start it up and it dies 2 weeks later? Worse yet, what if you have trouble integrating it into your system and it knocks the whole network off line; who will come to your rescue? Certainly not the Ebay seller who wants to know if you need a printer to go with your “Rare, like new F760!”

OK, I know it isn’t always that bad, sometimes you can get a good deal on Ebay, but rather than take a chance, why not buy your used equipment from Zerowait? Zerowait has their highly trained engineers test all equipment that comes in. Once sold, it gets tested again before it gets sent out to you. Zerowait can provide technical assistance as well as hardware support for all used equipment.

The bottom line is, yes, it is more expensive than you think to get used equipment re-licensed through NetApp, but there are ways around those high costs. Call Zerowait and discuss the possibilities.

Sometimes two technologies converge and bring a whole new wrinkle to our business. Today, I read an article that said that HDS and NetApp were breaking their OEM agreement. This does not surprise me at all, NetApp does not play well with others. The next article I read did surprise me. This article says that Hitachi is coming out with 1 TB disk drives in 2007. Since most filers are sold with about 1 TB of storage, it seems like Hitachi might have a disruptive technology on its drawing board, how will this development effect the low end of NetApp’s product line? Strategic planning in the enterprise storage world will change radically when storage disk capacity quadruples in 2 years.

Who are your friends? Anyone can tell you what you want to hear, but your friends will also tell you what you don’t want to hear.

Today, I am going to be your friend. I happen to know that there are still a large number of you still running systems with 18GB and 36GB drives. Most know that NetApp doesn’t make those anymore. A smart person may think that there won’t be a big demand for older smaller drives, so there will be plenty available for a long time. So they will hold on to those systems and be able to replace those drives, cheap, for a long time. An even smarter person will realize there are a lot of smart people out there holding on to those systems and the demand for a finite quantity of drives may drive the price up or even deplete the supply.

What am I trying to say? If you have one of these systems, and you don’t have the need to upgrade, you might want to start picking up some spare drives. Zerowait has them, but even Zerowait is beginning to have a hard time finding more out there. You may even want to pick up ZPA hardware support from Zerowait. Then you wont have to find the drives, Zerowait would find them for you!

Today I am writing from Nassau. It’s almost time to head back home, so I will be brief yet again.

I have mentioned more than once that Zerowait is a great place to get hardware support and used equipment, but did you know you can get world class technical support from Zerowait as well? If you are about to make a major system change or just want to learn a new technique, it is always a good idea to have an expertly trained engineer standing by, just incase things don’t quite go as planned.

Through Zerowait, you can get support by the hour as you need it, or you can pre-purchase blocks of time (at a discount) that you can use as you need them. Zerowait Engineers are a great standby asset for those times when you or your IT guys get in a little over your head. However, do them a favor and if you are planning a change to your system, give the Zerowait engineers plenty of heads up first, not only will they be ready for your call, but they will also be able to give you a couple of good tips so that you don’t need to call them in the middle of the night with an unexpected emergency.

Have a great weekend!

I got called out, last minute to do some world traveling, so I’m going to be a little brief today. Yesterday I mentioned that if you bought a used F760, Zerowait can provide hardware support for it. Did you know that Zerowait can provide you with Hardware support and technical support on all your NetApp Equipment? Well they can and at a great price! If you call them they can give you a quote – 888.811.0808 .

My point yesterday was that we should take test numbers with a grain of salt. But I added some test info, which brought me a few questions about performance. It seems that there must be a fair number of people actually looking at the FAS270. Is it right for you?

Let’s compare the F840, the F940, and the FAS270.

840 does about 11000 ops/sec
940 does about 17000 ops/sec
270 does about 07000 ops/sec
(Clustered filers yield more, but it’s short of 2.x)

Another big thing to look at is capacity, network and redundancy.

The 840 will support 6TB RAW, 12 TB in a cluster.
The 940 will support 12TB RAW, 24 TB in a cluster.
The 270 will support 6TB RAW, A clustered 270 still only supports 6TB RAW

The 840 and 940 can have multiple NICs, HBAs, SCSI, FCP cards added to them. As a network filer you could configure these boxes with redundant HBAs, create ether channel with 4 GigE ports for more throughput and redundancy, connect to redundant switches, etc.

The 270 has 2 GigE ports, one fiber channel for connecting an additional shelf, and one fiber channel that functions as an initiator for tape drives.

Is the 270 good for you? You need to answer these questions first:
What is the application?
What is the expected growth?
What are the uptime requirements?
What are the performance requirements?
How much space do you have?

The 270 is a nice compact machine for the small office or home office, but it is not really for enterprise class, business critical applications.

A nice used, inexpensive 840 (With or with out a transferable license) is probably the best choice unless you need the power and scalability of a 940.

If you really want a bargain and space is not critical, you can get a used 760. (I didn’t mention them since it is almost impossible to get one with a transferable license these days.) You can get a good-used 760 for a great price and Zerowait will even provide hardware support to keep things running smoothly.

I was talking to Mike Linett the other day and he mentioned something that was very interesting. He said that many of Zerowait’s customers have been asking about the FAS270. You see it sounds life a great deal, a fast, easy, and inexpensive system. At least that’s what NetApp’s test numbers show.

There is a major flaw in test numbers; just take a look at who is doing the testing. Wouldn’t it be in NetApp’s best interest to have test numbers that look real good? If it were my job to set up a test for the sales department, I would make sure that the configuration set up and data used be just the right stuff to make the equipment look lightning fast and flawless. That’s called making the boss happy.

Another option is to go to an independent source for testing, however, the test configuration and the files used in the testing may not be the same as what you use. So something that sounds really good may not work for you.

Now back to the FAS270, we are lead to believe that it is a fast, easy, and inexpensive system. Just take a look at these test numbers on the FAS270 and keep in mind these numbers are from Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Now compare these numbers test numbers on the F840. It looks to me like in two very similar tests, the older out dated F840 is actually faster and better than the newer FAS270.
Sounds like the 840 is what you want, but you can’t get one from NetApp anymore. So what do you do? Call Zerowait!