Add Lightness

My regular readers (5 or so) will now know that I'm the proud possessor of a Caterham 7, a direct descendant of Colin Chapman's iconic flying machine, the 50 year old Lotus 7.

Constructed from a tubular space frame chassis, clad in as little bodywork as is possible, and with small and light engines, the fundamentals of a car that was said to be “too fast to race” hasn’t changed in half a century. Chapman held that:

"Adding power makes you faster on the straights. Subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere."

He was one of the great engineering geniuses of the race and motor industry.

While doing a bit of research on cloud architectures, I stumbled across an email archived on an internal engineering wiki, sent by Dave Hitz way back in 1997. The discussion was about adding a specific feature to a NetApp product, and the upsides and the downsides of doing so. (I've edited Dave's missive for brevity.)

Hey -- I love philosophical controversies, so I'm going to dive right in!

... One of the most important questions you can ask about an appliance is: Should we add this feature?

... The potential drawbacks include:

• The feature decreases one or more of "fast, simple, reliable."
• Testing the feature (in every new release FOREVER) slows down our release cycle and hurts time-to-market.
• Documenting the new feature makes the manual thicker and harder to use.
• The feature has disadvantages that are hard to explain, and customers who try to use the feature may get burned.
• Very few customers actually need the feature, reducing benefit.
• The feature is expensive to implement...

So how are my little car's design and Hitz's email connected?

I'm not a engineer of either motor or software variety, but I see the similarities. What Hitz is identifying are the same engineering principles as espoused by Chapman, applied here to NetApp's software. As Einstein said (yes, it's rent-a-quote week here at ShadeOfBlue Towers);

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

When I look around at the creeping featuritis that rival storage systems employ, the scale and size of the moving parts, and the horrendous complexity of the solutions they sell, I'm sure that the competition are employing intelligent fools. They certainly show little appetite to move in the opposite direction. I'll not bore you with examples, as I'm sure you know who they are and what systems and solutions they sell.

That's what struck me about NetApp when I joined NetApp some 4 or so years ago, and strikes me now. Our solutions are no more complex than they need to be; fast, simple, reliable are still the hallmarks.

But there is one item I'd like to add to Dave's email; I believe there's an extra quality that shines thorough in all our solutions and proposals. Colin Chapman, in possibly his most famous quote, said; 

"Simplify. Then add lightness."

That's the feature I think we have in abundance; added lightness. So when you're buying storage solutions -- heck, if you're buying anything -- keep Dave's list in mind for your next RFP/RFQ/RFI, And then add in this; 

In the proposed solution, please identify where you added lightness.

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Update 8May: Steve Klinkner has an excellent series of posts on adding lightness. I've just read them (sorry Steve, I sometimes don't have enough time to keep up!), and this is one of the proofs that we take this "fast, simple, reliable" goal very seriously indeed. Well worth a read to see the kind of thinking that goes into the development of our software.

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Comments

[Claus Møller]

Hi Alex, you nailed it. And even Lotus didn't allways stick to the original thoughts.

Being a fellow "believer" in Colin Chapmans theories, I own an Europa which was intented to replace the Lotus Seven when launched in late 60's.

With electric windows, a heater and even windscreen wipers the Europa is a bit heavier and a bit more complex. And I have learned why some people are led to believe that Lotus means: Lots Of Troubles, Usually Serious :-) (Lucas, who delivered some of the electrical internals are now nicked "Prince of Darkness" - a fate even worse..)

Being desperate the moment everything seems to be in working order, my Europa is now for sale and soon to be replaced by the joy and value gained from lightness and simplicity....

[Alex McDonald]

I didn't know that EMC did a system called Europa... but selling it and moving on to a NetApp system is a smart move!

[Steve Klinkner]

Alex, nice article. The spirit expressed in Hitz's email has been alive and strong at NetApp ever since I joined.

I reflected on this numerous times during the development of NetApp System Manager.

I have previously mentioned some of the things we worked to simplify in System Manager, and have collected them here.

[Alex McDonald]

Thanks Steve. I've HTMLified your link to make it easier to go to.