Edward "Lumpy" Stevens was a cricketer from the time when bowling was performed underarm or underhand, rather than the modern technique of roundarm bowling. Lumpy was famous for his ability to find lumps and bumps in the pitch, and consequently his bowling confused as the ball careered erratically towards the batsman.
For Honest Lumpy did allow
He ne'er would pitch but o'er a brow
Nowadays, cricket is a much more sophisticated game. Pitches are flatter, bowlers are faster, and umpires are on the watch for ball tampering and other activities that give the bowler an advantage. And underarm bowling is not part of the modern game of cricket.
So it’s time for the umpire to send Lumpy Dell back to the pavilion.
Dell Bowls Underarm
Every day, I get concerned sales and systems engineers emailing me about some document that our customers have been given by the competition.
“I attach a new document that Dell/EqualLogic is handing out to customers. Can you put together a response?”
The document is entitled
“Guide to comparing storage performance efficiency for business applications by leveraging Microsoft sizing tests”
In case anyone from Dell is reading this and needs a visual reminder, here’s the front page.
The contents are as long as the title, at 17 pages. But what is it about, and why would a sales colleague be looking for help? Dell’s words;
Microsoft wants to ensure systems are properly configured for running Exchange. The Exchange Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP) allows vendors to validate to Microsoft’s satisfaction sizing of storage performance and capacity for Exchange.
This, to be clear, is not one of Dell’s ESRP submissions; there’s nothing wrong them. This is a separate document that Dell give their customers.
The conclusions are going to be blindingly obvious, but I’ll repeat them anyway;
Microsoft-approved results of each vendor’s self-testing illustrate several advantages for EqualLogic:…
Comparisons Galore
It’s about everyone else’s ESRP submissions. This massive piece of marketing FUD directly compares and contrasts ESRP results from just about every vendor that’s ever published one.
EMC, HP, IBM, LeftHand, NetApp, Hitachi. In dense tables with helpful explanatory footnotes, the document details the lot. Dell again;
- IOPS per disk for most vendors
- Backup and log replay performance for most vendors
- Example results of each major vendor’s primary native SAN testing
- Examples of tier-2 SAN offerings
Then a point by point analysis of each submission and its shortcomings when compared to Dell/EqualLogic.
What a tragic waste of effort.
ESRP Is Not a Benchmark
Cheekily, Dell/EqualLogic’s FUD department have included a handy section called
Locating the key data inside ESRP reports
It is, of course, missing the one vital piece of information. Pick up any ESRP submission from any vendor; here’s one of Dell/EqualLogic’s. They all have the same boilerplate text. So pick up the link pay close attention to page 18. Here’s what it says;
The ESRP Storage program is not designed to be a benchmarking program. Its tests are not designed for achieving the maximum throughput for a given solution. Rather, they are focused on producing recommendations from vendors for the Exchange application. Therefore, the data presented in this document should not be used for direct comparisons among the solutions.
It’s Not Cricket
It might be a good idea for Lumpy Dell to re-read the rule book. No-one wants to be publically outed as underhand.
[updated 10 Oct; Skip (see comments) pointed out that this blog wasn’t very clear on which document I was criticizing. I’ve made clarifications.]
