Kendall Libby wrote:
right now. Going by units of "1 cpu, 1gb cache, 200gb disk", EMC comes in cheaper after a small number of units. For us. YMWV.
Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
But these wouldn't be units that would be equal comparison. What matters is primarily ops/$ and GB/$ for roughly the same
Kendall indeed pointed out one "unit" measure, combining performance and storage, that works well *for us*. ops/$ and GB/$ may not be a primary concern for everyone [0], nor may it be a majority concern [1]; I don't think it's fair to make such a blanket statement.
There are subjective factors, of course. And, if you ask NetApp for their super-duper maintenance and support plans with bacon and extra cheese, in order to try to narrow the service level gap and compare apples-to-apples with what EMC offers by default, the price gap narrows quite a bit, too.
Bruce wrote:
not doubting what you say; I'm just annoyed customers are comparing the two and yet don't appear to have numbers on this.
[...]
Since we don't know how much all the EMC and related stuff cost, it's hard to accurately compare the two solutions. I bet it is much higher,
[...]
Personally I don't mind who prefers what just so long as all the facts are on the table.
Vendor quotes are often confidential, and info gained from NDA's certainly are, so release of numbers can be a big no-no. In a public forum, we can only quote list prices and independent performance numbers and currently shipping features. But here, as in our personal consumer lives, "nobody pays list price." ;)
It's hard to make an orange look like an apple; and, it's equally hard to make a pear look like an apple, too. Vendors in a comparison have to be sqeeuzed into a framework that is not complementary to any of them. Apples-to-apples comparisons are very difficult when the paradigms and company philosophies are vastly different, too. If we were talking about CheapPCDiskDriveVendor #1 and #2, it might come down soley to parameter/$ and we probabaly wouldn't be having this interesting discussion. ;)
[0] I ran across this quote this weekend which was rather interesting: "There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." --John Ruskin [2]
[1] I'm with Brian (?) on the ops issue, though. More, more, more!
[2] I'm not commenting on either vendor in question specifically. I just thought it was a nice thought to think about since so many people get wrapped up in one thing ($) when making purchases, for business or pleasure. Step back from the tree and look at the forest.
Until next time...
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