This is, unfortunately, the way the EMC chooses to do business and the main reason that I do not like them. I have, to this point, not been required to purchase any of their equipment and prefer NetApp. As for NetApp support, they are outstanding in North America and are working on their global support model. Quite frankly I would rather buy an Auspex over an EMC -- is Asupex still in business?????
EMC has a God complex. They will perform maintenance on any EMC anywhere whether you want them to or not. I suggest that anyone having an EMC disconnect the phone line until you need assistance from tech support and then disconnect it immediately afterwards. EMC bills itself as number one in storage solution, which is true -- for direct attached storage. It is not, however, the number one in NAS. They are new to the NAS market and are undergoing some growing pains but they are improving.
Attacking the competition with untruths is a poor way to do business and one should really take that into consideration before purchasing a product from someone that does so. If they are lying to you now, when are they telling you the truth?
My very humble opinion on EMC.
Sincerely,
Glen D. Geen
Barry Lustig wrote:
This is an excerpt of an email that was sent to the management of a company that I'm working with. They had spec'ed F85's for a fairly low performance 10-20Mbits/sec. environment. The main requirement is reliability and ease of use. How does one respond to blatant misrepresentation of a competitors product?
barry
A few highlights of the comparison:
- The F85 is a stripped down, single CPU, low end device with multiple
points of failure and a very poor data protection. NetApps service is rated very low by industry experts and they offer next day shipment of parts that the user must install themselves.
- The IP4700 is fully redundant, multi-CPU, mid-range device with no
single point of failure and hardware based RAID 5 data protection. EMC's world class customer service center has ranked #1 for 6 consecutive years by Gartner Group. Standard 2 year warranty guarantees 4 hours ON SITE w/Parts service by EMC technicians. Plus, our 'call home' proactive maintenance system monitors trends within the system and reports them automatically to our customer service center. Often, EMC technicians will repair a system BEFORE the component actually fails.
The 4700 will be configured with 8 drives usable, plus 1 drive for RAID 5 parity and 1 drive for hot swap redundancy. It is scalable all the way to 7000GB (7TB) vs. only 648GB for the F85. The 4700 as configured above is 8RU.
In general, the F85 does not scale sufficiently for growth, has poor customer service behind it, has no redundancy, has multiple points of failure, and utilizes a sub-par RAID 0 data protection scheme.