[rescue] RE: somewhat OT: secondary market storage?

[Brian Hechinger]

On Mon, Apr 01, 2002 at 10:17:11PM +0100, Chris Byrne wrote:
> I used to work for a storage company. We had Hitachi and EMC online, ADIC
> libraries, and we had test Shark boxes, Auspex, NTAP, and a few other
> solutions. Here's what I found generally

here's what i've run across over the years:

> EMC: Their technology is crap, their reliability blows chunks by today's
> Can ya tell I don't like EMC maybe, just a little bit.

i hate EMC.  their hardware is not great and their support BLOWS.  we have
four RS/6000 boxes hooked up to a small EMC via FC (switch fabric, not AL)
and the one Brocade switch needed to be replaced (dual path setup) there was
nothing wrong with the switch other than the console port stopped working,
and while that didn't affect our ability to use the switch, it makes it really
scary since we would be screwed if something were to happen. :)

anyway, i'm wandering from the point.  there are a bunch of utilities that are
on those four RS/6000 machines the handle the FC stuff.  i couldn't get them
to do what they were supposed to, so i called one of the other tier3 guys
since he's pretty clueful about AIX and i'm not, so we farted around for a
while and found out that these utilities are written by EMC.  no online docs
on the AIX boxes, so i called the cage and got the EMC guy on the phone (you
know, needing to control the situation, becuase i'm SURE we aren't smart
enough to change a fucking fibre switch ourselves) and he was a hardware guy
so he didn't know anything about it and offered to call in and find out.  he
called EVERY tech support person he could find at that company.  not a single
one know ANYTHING about these utilities.  they looked for documentation.  they
didn't have any of that either.  so they could not help me at all.  finally
i ended up jsut rebooting the boxes thinking that they would figure it out on
their way up, which they did.  if i had just rebooted the machines in the first
place i could have saved myself about 4 hours of an early sunday morning.  i
was very very pissed about that.  although i did get a nice fat incident pay
check since i racked up 8 hours of work that night. :)

> Hitachi: Their performance and technology are great, but their marketing and
> but they are a little less anal about it. Very expensive, but worth it

very expensive.  VERY IMPRESSIVE HARDWARE.  blows away any of the crap EMC
ever made.  FE is spotty, our FEs were people who sorta knew about computers
reading out of a fucking manual.  hell, *I* can do that.  it takes a little
convincing, but you can get HDS to let you have control of the box, although
you can't stop it from calling home or they will void your support contract.
that's ok, it's nice getting a phone call, "hey, you lost a disk, i'm 
downstairs with a new one, could you let me in?"

> NetApp: Sales force with half a clue. Not too bad software wise especially
> for their NAS solution but their hardware isn't the greatest in comparison
> to say HDS. Good professional services but poor field service and tech
> support Expensive, but a good value

does NetApp even do "direct attach" stuff?  i thought they were all NAS.
i've dealt with them quite often, and they kick a large amount of NAS ass.
if i have to pick a NAS, that's the one i'll pick.  we have EMC NAS boxes and
they are JUNK.

> Auspex: The storage company I worked for was full of ex auspex employees.
> MTI: Good product. Not the highest performance out there, somewhere in the
> IBM: The large shark boxes are somewhere near the EMC and HDS for

never dealt with these three, so i can't really comment.

-brian
-- 
"Oh, shut up Buddha."  -Jesus Christ (South Park)