Now Storage is a very small world, everybody knows everybody and everybody moves from company to company; is there a storage salesman who has not worked at EMC?
But one thing which really destroys credibility is when a salesman (or even a SE) says ‘I couldn’t tell you this in my previous role but the problem with product ‘X’ is this but we were told not to tell you this. Or yes, the product I was selling had that serious flaw etc, etc….’. Now what aren’t you telling me about your new company’s product? What’s its dirty little secret? Why should I trust you this time? This negative selling doesn’t help anyone!
So my new favourite vendor question will be ‘Tell me what is wrong with your product? What is its dirty, little, secret?’
I would think that this sort of behavior says more about the individual than the company, no?
— Chuck
I wasn’t pointing the finger at any particular company, it’s pretty common behaviour across the board.
A good SE or Sales rep. should be able to sell you on any product.
I regularly talk about the benefits of a competitors product.
The active-passive(secondary) vs. active/active controller conversation is something I get into regularly, I can easy convince a customer of the benefits of both architectures.
I can also give you a list of customers that I’ve given even accounts of both to in the past 24 months.
Truth be told, they all have flaws, and it’s a salesman’s job to have you overlook said flaws.
Your question is a good one, and anyone who answers with “Nothing…my product is perfect.” should be politely shown the door.
Every product has it’s weaknesses – it’s all a matter of figuring out which weaknesses you’re willing to put up with or that will not cause you pain/distress in your current environment, and which products you simply can’t tolerate the down-sides of.
OK Martin, How’s this:
3PARs thin provisioning (or anybody else’s for that matter) is not a great solution for individual, end-user bulk storage.
Why not? – because end users tend to use their network folders as personal stashes to collect digi-nuggets dujour. U know the type – not every user – but those 2% repeat offenders that take the fullest advantage of their company’s laissez faire information benefits package.
Is compulsive, repetitive data dumping an abuse of corporate resources? Maybe not – far from me to judge. But can it screw up a thin provisioning installation? Yes, especially if there is a lot of it going on. Don’t think of TP as a solution for digital libertarians running amok in your domain – that’s not what it was designed to fix. Use normal, fat provisioning for end user storage.
Mark – I wouldn’t hesitate to use thin provisioning for file-level storage (NFS/CIFS) but I don’t think I’d consider using it for block-level storage.
The real problem with using this for block-level applications (as in presenting it as a SCSI device directly to a host) is that Operating systems react…well…negatively when the FAT shows that a file-system has free-space but a write can’t complete. It looks to the OS like a complete disk failure.
There are very few “dirty little secrets” IMHO. They don’t stay secret for long if they’re that much of a problem.
There are failures, errors, bugs; but these are complex software technologies sitting on fallible hardware.
And what may be a negative for you — let’s say, thin provisioning as in Marc’s example — isn’t a negative if you don’t intend using thin provisioning. Or if you use some form of quota management. Thin provisioning fails through poor tools or bad storage management. It’s suitable for both block and file, if you understand the limitations.
There are lots of dirty tricks though, which is a different matter altogether. I don’t condone any salesperson using negative selling. If the product is good enough and, critically, it meets your needs, it’ll sell on the basis of the positives.
I agree that a good saleman should certainly be able to sell you on any product and I don’t have problems with sales guys moving around. What I do have a problem is when they say things along the lines of ‘When I worked for ‘A Random Storage Vendor’, we knew that there was a major flaw with product X but we covered it up and were told not to tell you! But now I can tell you all about it!!’ This may be true but it does lead me to wonder what you are hiding now!
It certainly damages your credibility in my eyes.
When I’ve got a minute, I’ll do a list of all the FUD I can remember. Some of it might make you smile, some of it might be true….