Extensible NetApp: Thinking outside of the box

MAD Blog: HP not letting it go ...

There is a specter haunting HP's Karl Dohm, the specter of NetApp's sale force snookering customers about the real value of NetApp storage.

Patrick mentions the true test, i.e. that there are many happy NetApp customers who are running Exchange.  There is truth to this of course, but it isn't a good basis of comparison because every major array vendor has happy Exchange customers.  However, its reasonable to say that these installations can't know what they don't know. 

Karl can not accept the notion that the value NetApp brings to the market is real. After first trying to prove that NetApp can not run on Exchange:

The problems we are talking about here are the core of WAFL, and are clearly not easy to fix - or they would be already fixed.  NetApp is not unique is having problems of course, all array vendors have their strong and weak points.  But to assert that WAFL has no weaknesses around fragmentation, performance, and capacity utilization defies common sense.  The old wounds are there for a reason.

Karl had to back peddle and admit:

I'm not saying you can't run Exchange successfully with NetApp.  In fact I'm sure you can.  The question looking for an answer is whether the user gets good value in choosing NetApp to run Exchange.

So reading Pat Cimprich's latest response was particularly gratifying.

Look, the FUD that HP is currently throwing out there is age old FUD that EMC has been throwing out for a while.

After 10 years of watching an artiste like EMC spread FUD, watching this ham-fisted attempt at spreading the same FUD is, well, embarrassing. And having to respond to it, is well irritating.

A Response

Couldn't resist linking to this blog from Pat Cimprich of Avanade which is a response to Karl's comments on WAFL.

Progress of a kind.

When I wrote my series on WAFL, I was hoping to cure the storage industry of a virulent form of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt  (FUD) centered around WAFL performance.

The story, typically, goes like this:

1. WAFL is a file system and hence not a real storage system
2. WAFL performs great but over time the performance degrades
3. When it degrades it gets much worse than everyone else's
4. And worse there are all these latency spikes
5. Because WAFL is a file system (cue spooky music!)

I figured, if I killed point 1, then the rest of this FUD would die...

So imagine my surprise when i read Karl'sblog on WAFL

What I didn't count on was the virulence of this FUD.

Instead of ridding the industry of the FUD, the FUD changed into:

1. WAFL is this unique thing that nobody understands
2. WAFL performs great but over time the performance degrades
3. When it degrades it gets much worse than everyone else's
4. And worse there are all these latency spikes
5. Because WAFL is this thing nobody understands

Well, that's progress of a kind. 

Previously the argument would have begun with an appeal to general misunderstandings of how SAN and WAFL worked together. Now the argument is based on an appeal to the basic lack of information about our system works, that allows the author to argue whatever point they want, and then leverage a synthetic benchmark that proves whatever the author wants.

But back to Karl and his blog...

Karl was making the following bold assertions based on his research:

FAS systems not suitable for Exchnage

But of course, Avanade's white paper would disagree.

FAS systems perform poorly over time

But our SPC-1 longevity results would differ

A large number of NetApp customers have been tricked by our sales force

After all, that is the only possible explanation for our market share given how inappropriate our system is for the kinds of workloads we've been selling quite well into.

The problem that Karl has is that without appealing to some basic architectural understanding that we can all share, he is forced to create synthetic workloads that prove his point. And the problem is that there are real workloads with real data that prove the opposite point.