NetApp - The Missing Shade of Blue

Silence Isn't Golden

I've an apology to make. Apparently, comments are disabled on my latest posts. I'm using MicroSoft LiveWriter, and we've had a number of issues with TyepPad recently, so, in all fairness, I'm going to blame someone else.

TypePad. No, Microsoft.

EMC. That'll do. It's all EMC's fault.

So if you had some comments to make recently (polite, sarcastic, infomative or otherwise), please return here and have a go.

Here are the affected posts where I think comments are closed;

• WALLE, It's Time To Dump EVA
• Shurely, Shome Mishtake
• Because We Have To...
• My Goodness, Is It That Time Already?

My apologies. I've a support call into EMC TypePad to see if we can't get this fixed once and for all.

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WALL·E, It's Time To Dump EVA

I'm a big fan of Pixar, and I loved WALL·E. I even went and bought the DVD, I'm that smitten by this work of genius.

Here's the challenge that Pixar rose to, and that I think summarises the greatness of this film; it's a cartoon about WALL·E, a robot that falls in love with another robot, EVA. Yes, I'm a child when it comes to this kind of stuff, but that's some trick Pixar pull off. Reality twice removed; a cartoon about robots and love. Brilliant.

I can't love HP's EVA though. And I don't think I'm going to like the latest EVAs either. When they arrive, that is.

For months I've been hearing about the next range of HP EVA StorageWorks systems. Last year, the EVA4400 replaced the EVA4100. Then the EVA6400 and EVA8400 were supposed to replace the EVA6100 and EVA8100 respectively.

"So where does this leave the EVA6100?" asks Chet Jacobs, way back in April 2008.

It's a good question, and if anyone should know, he should; he's Chief StorageWorks Evangelist at HP. 2H2008 has come and gone, and there's been nothing about the missing boxes since then.

Can we expect a launch of an extension to the EVA range any day soon now? Probably, but I think you'll have to wait until March 10th.

So if you're a customer of HP and you're about to buy in to the HP vision of storage with an EVAx100 system (something I wouldn't recommend, but you know that already), I'd be looking to ask a lot of hard questions of your HP and HP channel sales people.

Like; So where does this leave me when I buy an EVA6100 or EVA8100?

• Is it field upgradable at no expense to me when the new model comes out? Will I have to take an outage to do the upgrade?
• What kind of performance improvement does the new range offer?
• What kind of huge discount do I get for buying yesterday's tin?
• Am I still stuck with FC connectivity only? No iSCSI? No dedupe? No NAS? No smarts at all? Are you guys kidding?

Don't be a wally (in the British sense). HP are no Pixar, and it's time to end the love affair. Dump the EVA now.

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Shurely, Shome Mishtake

Beyond the fact that we're both Scots, Sean Connery and I share little in common. For instance, although I am much poorer, I am far more handsome than he. In person, of course; that awful photograph at the top of my blog really doesn't do me justice.

But perhaps the voices are similar. One of the greatest compliments I've ever been paid was when a member of the fairer sex said that I sounded like the great man himself. As Sean has a voice that can melt even icebergs with a few simple words, it was seriously flattering.

So it might be a disappointment to know that the voice you can hear when you press the "listen now" button on the top of each blog entry isn't me; it's computer generated. Really cool technology though; text to speech has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years, and are now far removed from the Dalek-like voices that characterized early systems.

There's the occasional stumble, for instance with the word deduplication. But barring a few blips and the lack of choice of voices and accents, it's an excellent tool for enabling a blog in the audio dimension, and odiogo are to be congratulated on the technology that makes it possible.

And where did I find it? It pains me to say it; Chuck Hollis' blog over at EMC.

That's the downside. Chuck Hollis sounds exactly like me. As Sean or I would say, (and if you could only hear us you'd agree); shurly, shome mishtake.

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Picture source: wikipedia, by Alan Light, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Because We Have To...

I spend too much time worrying. Far too much. I get concerned that our competitors are going to find out our Big Secret. A colleague has asked me to respond to a competitive analysis of NetApp's deduplication, and I can't get past this paragraph. The stress is killing me.

"So, we ask again, why is NetApp the only vendor to provide dedupe on the primary volume. Answer: because they have to."

NetApp provide leading edge technology solutions, a list so long I won't post it here; for that, our corporate website does a great job. But I still worry.

NetApp has tens of thousands of customers using these technologies to their considerable advantage, including deduplication. That's from measured data we collect from customer systems (using AutoSupport). And yet I still worry.

NetApp has a Virtualization Space Guarantee program, now extended to include other virtualization products including Microsoft's Hyper-V and Citrix' XENServer.

Ulcers. The fear is gnawing away at me. The Big Secret, our dirty laundry. I can't take the stress of this, so it's time to confess.

...it [NetApp] tries desperately to hide but at the same time seems driven to confess as if subconsciously trying to purge some unresolved guilt. 

This isn't my usual shrink speaking. This is an HP competitive storage analyst I'm quoting, but he's good, no? He's so right, that's where the stress is coming from; hiding the Big Secret.

It's time to come clean. I confess. We only provide deduplication on primary volumes because we have to.

Confession made, the guilt is gone. What a relief! I feel better already.

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My Goodness, Is It That Time Already?

And that's my last take on the subject; I can't really get that excited about the fact that we're in the same position relative to the sun as we were this time 365 revolutions ago.

Still, since I'm here, here's a few things to look forward to this year

Darwin Day

February 12th is the date; it's the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.

Rabbie Burns

The year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns.  I'll drink to that!