GrumpyStorage

We Americans are just better. We don't have ...

2011-12-23T20:16:44.260Z

We Americans are just better. We don't have the commerce controls restricting our activity.

Take for example what our banks can do - trash themselves and then - you and yours.

(somebody, anybody, get me outta here...)

2011-12-21T23:00:42.218Z

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Great post, I really appreciate your point of view...

2011-10-21T01:09:33.609+01:00

Great post, I really appreciate your point of view on this!

Buy a Kindle DX from the US and get on with your l...

2011-06-30T01:23:35.174+01:00

Buy a Kindle DX from the US and get on with your life.

Don't make me retest for 5% speed gain...... t...

2011-04-14T22:05:04.117+01:00

Don't make me retest for 5% speed gain...... the users will be never notice in most cases unless it is to tell us we should have improved productivity by 20%

I've tried reading PDFs on my Kindle and it ca...

2011-04-07T23:19:08.283+01:00

I've tried reading PDFs on my Kindle and it can be a painful experience. I'd very much like to see product documentation that was readable on a Kindle particularly as I also make use of the Kindle reader across my phone and a netbook. Bring back reference cards - ideal for a phone form factor.

I don't like the Kindle or any of its supporti...

2011-03-31T10:24:13.958+01:00

I don't like the Kindle or any of its supporting software. I prefer ePub files that can be read on even more platforms than the current Kindle software.

I would rather see ePub formats of documentation that would even better handle the open nature of the distribution and not the Kindle format. PDF isn't a bad second step from their. But very opposed to Kindle format because of the restriction it places on publishers and customers alike.

My biggest challenge with using Twitter (or Hootsu...

2011-02-23T20:29:02.288Z

My biggest challenge with using Twitter (or Hootsuite) on my iPhone is the interface means I am less likely to tweet on it simply cause I hate using it as a keyboard.
Is the Android phone any better or worse for this?

Plume, formerly Touiteur, has been my #1 on Androi...

2011-02-22T16:28:31.393Z

Plume, formerly Touiteur, has been my #1 on Android for a while. Tweetcaster is another great one. Twitter for Android has recently had a face lift that makes it more usable, but it's still not up to par w/ the rest. Twidroid is one I haven't used at all yet, but didn't UberMedia also just acquire Tweetdeck?
Twitter has been aggressive in the past, let's hope they soon realize they're place as a service provider and let the ecosystem cover utility apps.

It gets worse. This week we were informed by our L...

2011-02-18T11:20:49.061Z

It gets worse. This week we were informed by our LSI distributor that the MegaRAID 8888ELP wouldn't be available shortly. When asked to give us a definitive date, they couldn't.

We escalated it directly with LSI and they said they wouldn't give a EOL date either "because there are still parts available in the distributors/channel and defining an EOL date would impact their sales" (presumably because people would avoid buying it).

So screw customers.. let's just make that last buck with the remaining pieces and that's it.

Orange, really ? Oh well - now get yourself a co...

2011-01-08T22:25:01.599Z

Orange, really ?

Oh well - now get yourself a copy of Calibre and enjoy free newpapers and easy format conversion for ebooks from other sources.

a lot of your complaints about apps and/or widgets...

2011-01-02T16:31:28.926Z

a lot of your complaints about apps and/or widgets, live wallpapers, etc. being enabled immediately after reboot if installed to SD or should still run if the SD card is mounted elsewhere is a tough one. 1st the home screen and launcher (among other items and including widgets and application stores) are loaded much earlier in the boot process than mounting the SD card, which is considered an external storage device. Second, I'm not sure you can't install to SD out of the box. That's a freebie in Froyo (2.2) and you have the capability to move a lot of apps to SD. Obviously there are a ton of work-arounds to cache items, etc. You can repartition things and move mounts around as well as optimize file systems (ext3/ext4), but I think you're talking more in terms of out of the box, and I can agree with you there.
Hey, let's start a company that does full cloud based backups of all the worlds new Android devices.... "for a fee" :-)
Lastly, you can do a lot of the home screen customizations you're looking for with home screen replacements like LauncherPro Plus and ADW EX. Those home screen folders with alike apps, how about a custom icon for that. No problem. And no, you do not need to have root access to install these home launcher replacements?
Feel free to reach out to me with questions, I already follow you on twitter and of course this blog :-)

@dboftlp

I really appreciate your post and it was superb .T...

2010-12-31T09:07:29.308Z

I really appreciate your post and it was superb .Thanks for sharing.I would like to hear more about this in future.
Regards:
http://www.blackitsoft.com/inventory-pos-software.aspx

Someone who sees the world like I do, lets do lunc...

2010-12-16T12:33:22.301Z

Someone who sees the world like I do, lets do lunch :) Seriously, USB, headphone sockets, plug sockets near beds, this is all so _obvious_ !!

I am sooooo behind the curve. I just bought the It...

2010-11-14T15:37:30.363Z

I am sooooo behind the curve. I just bought the Italix "Parson's Essential" italic fountain pen. It does not take batteries, though.

[disclaimer: I work for a storage software company...

2010-10-13T22:18:45.230+01:00

[disclaimer: I work for a storage software company that doesn't sell hardware at all.]

I must agree that storage hardware is a commodity, but it isn't sold as if it was one -- and more importantly, customers are buying this high-margin hardware (!).

I understand your blog posting as a call for a cultural change in the way the _whole_ storage ecosystem and business works.
From my perspective it's the customer that has to ignite the change; I just can't see any of the big storage vendors to change their pricing / business policies anytime soon since their business "works" from their perspective.
IMHO customers have the duty to drive the suggested cultural change. Many should be more open to alternative storage approaches, technolgoies and especially business models -- and ultimately said customers must buy said systems, of course.
Else I see no reason for the big guys to change anytime soon.

Ian Agreed; the physical components of storage ar...

2010-10-11T10:18:22.582+01:00

Ian

Agreed; the physical components of storage arrays are pretty much consistent; other than perhaps some issues around reliability/availability etc. In environments of scale, the ability to manage at much lower cost is a more appealing and desirable trait. That said, it needs to integrate into a consistent management framework.

Regards
Chris

Nice review Ian. Don't know what I was doing ...

2010-09-16T18:35:05.986+01:00

Nice review Ian. Don't know what I was doing when you published it - must have been distracted. Anyway, now I'm going to have to pick one up for my wife, considering the endorsement above.

Great topic. I personally would like to see a two-...

2010-09-02T15:05:17.017+01:00

Great topic. I personally would like to see a two-step vendor process for RFEs.
1. Post them internally on a vendor wiki so that employees can see them all and comment/collaborate on them.
2. Open the wiki up to customers so that they have visibility to the comments (or lack thereof) and can participate in the collaboration.

Also posted a response on the aggregate requiremen...

2010-08-08T16:44:54.889+01:00

Also posted a response on the aggregate requirement here: http://bit.ly/duBafj

Hi Ian, Before I answer some of your questions - ...

2010-08-05T13:55:26.040+01:00

Hi Ian,

Before I answer some of your questions - why "NotApp"? Also, are you already a customer?

1. VARs and NetApp engineers don't go to the council, customers get invited. Not sure about outside the US, ask your local NetApp rep (but you need to be a customer and have been using the gear, at least that's the rule of thumb I've seen here).

2. RFE contents and procedures - again contact your local NetApp team, I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige.

3. A lot of the innovations will come not as a trickle but as an explosion, refer to #1 and 2.

4. Aye (I earned the right having lived in Aberdeen for many years :) ) Again #1,2

5. Bycast could be a fit here though that was not the intended purpose, again no vendor has this built-in AFAIK, everyone needs some external box.

6. Live, clean NFS migration you'll see, CIFS as a protocol is almost impossible to move live.

Oh there's a sense of urgency for many things, but we also want to cater to the vast majority of our customers, who seem very happy with the stuff on offer.

I'll repeat my question though:

What established vendor provides the stuff you're asking for (or is even close)? I'm merely asking, since I'm not aware of any.

Thx

D

Actually looking at where I am storing most of my ...

2010-08-04T21:19:41.155+01:00

Actually looking at where I am storing most of my files i.e on GPFS filesystems, my migration of SAN to NAS may not be especially hard. In fact, as long as we stick with GPFS, the whole tech-refresh is in many ways a lot more simple and non-disruptive.

Ian Good questions, and (some) answers. 1) Yes, ...

2010-08-04T20:48:57.220+01:00

Ian

Good questions, and (some) answers.

1) Yes, you can have a 100TB aggregate that
contains a mix of dedupe (restricted to <=16TB) & non-dedupe flexvols (<=100TB). Functionality like clones, snaps, thin provisioning apply to all.

2) Not yet. Currently you can mix disk types as long as they're of the same spin speed and size (FC 15K with SAS 15K for example).

3) Evacuating a shelf is problematic without evacuating the aggregate. That (afaik) would be the only solution.

4) Details are coming; they're under wraps at the moment, but I'll speak to Uday (the product mgr for WAFL) to see what we can say publicly.

6) Beer is good. The missed opportunities I too can see from an outsider's perspective. But development at this scale, while maintaining backward compatibility, innovating and developing new features that customers want to buy, is not easy.

7) Excellent, I can't wait :-)

Martin, As usual totally agree! It staggers me th...

2010-08-04T19:57:36.507+01:00

Martin,

As usual totally agree! It staggers me that more time isn’t spent by vendors making refresh & migration easier – that is the best way to reduce and transition pain (emotional, physical, financial or otherwise). Odd…

Not so sure about the need for SAN<->NAS migration – but sure you’re several steps ahead of me on that requirement…

Cheers

Ian

Dimitris, Thanks for the comments – appreciated i...

2010-08-04T19:44:23.835+01:00

Dimitris,

Thanks for the comments – appreciated in content & style! I’ll try an address your responses :-

1) Customer councils – Can I ask when you last had a customer council session (with customers not resellers) outside of the USA? Can I ask what the invite criteria is for this? (as in the circles I deal with are all PB+ NetApp customers and nobody seems aware of anything)

2) Suggestions – It would be good to see evidence of this, a disclosed RFE list from customers perhaps? (under NDA if you must) It would also be good to understand & have clarity on your RFE process and tracking etc? (as like most storage vendors this area is ‘in need of improvement’ – being polite here, but have a look at http://www.grumpystorage.com/2009/10/rfe-for-rfes.html for more thoughts)

3) Fully agree with testing, and also understand the need for uptime (I have legal obligations to regulators about uptime – so trust me I know this well) – however my point being that you’re judged by the end result not the internal malarkey to get there. In this area the rate of functionality & scale improvements from NetApp has dropped over the last few years, with most customer exposed changes being through hardware updates. During this same time period other vendors have gone through similar major architecture & code-base changes and have matched their scale restrictions etc.

4) OnTap 8.0 – agree it needs to be pretty different, but then I’m expecting to see a rapid timeline of features/function innovation and scale limits removed in minor release versions over the coming months – is this the case?

5) File migration – I believe transparent namespace migration, both within & between heterogeneous boxes to be a major pain area today. For people of material estates this is a constant issue (I have the issue today on over 15 NAS arrays current being migrated) – something NetApp doesn’t appear to have any offerings in.

6) Protocol migration – your last question is an interesting one, frankly I think the key use case is to be able to move any protocols seamlessly (along with the relevant namespace mngt etc). The area of particular pain here is NFS & CIFS.

Don’t get me wrong, NetApp is still the NAS leader (and in many key ways) – but that lead reduces every day (and is certainly not as big as it might be perceived in California), and there appears to be little sense of urgency (a ‘common burning platform’ feeling if you like) about moving some of the basic stuff forward…

Cheers

Ian