Maybe I'm missing out on the really important aspect of netapps???
Other than a jacket I got at Admin training I've never received my new clothing line from Netapp! Is this an optional part of the Support Agreement, or should I start complaining that I'm not receiving the level of support from Netapp that I should be!
For the benefit of you netapp guys who monitor this board, I wear an Extra Large.
Of course, in Netapps defense, I've never received any EMC shirts either.
(p.s. don't bother with the boxer shorts, I won't wear them)
Chris Lamb skeezics@measurecast.com 04/19/01 07:00pm >>>
My story about EMC is rather different, I guess.
Some local EMC reps scheduled a visit with my boss and came to visit us a while back. I wore not one but _two_ NetApp shirts that day - the very cool engineering shirt (black pre-F630 shirt with Mothra on the back) and the snazzy denim Land's End shirt with the embroidered logo on it. The night before I printed a copy of the recent INPUT survey, highlighting the part where I'm quoted (anonymously), and left it on my boss's chair. He brought it to the meeting.
They arrived. I smiled and shook hands and did the business card thing. We sat down at the conference table. They asked their questions, and I politely answered them. It went something like this:
"What about reliability?" they asked.
"I've been running NetApps since 1995, and to the best of my recollection I have never once lost data due to hardware or software failure," I replied.
"Yes, but what about uptime?" they inquired.
"alexandria> uptime 3:32pm up 187 days, 14:10 1162740653 NFS ops, 129052586 CIFS ops, 0 HTTP ops colossus> uptime 3:32pm up 171 days, 8:48 1692312427 NFS ops, 0 CIFS ops, 0 HTTP ops", was my reply.
"Expandability?" they suggested.
"I have 21 free slots for more disks - I bought the box with extra shelves and a 2nd controller so that I could grow it on-line without any need for downtime. I can grow our box to > 1TB without even thinking hard."
"Performance!" they pleaded.
"My Oracle DBA is happy, and says he can't see a difference between the 760 and a locally-attached dual-loop A5200. Besides, with a head-swap we can trade up to the 800-series, or cluster, or trade-up and then cluster, and I've got all the slots I need to add extra Gigabit cards..."
"Yes, but our 'phone home' support feature and customer service are second to none!" they intoned.
"Actually," I said, "your story about the hardware tech showing up on a Saturday with a replacement disk for a demo machine reminds me of a similar incident... one day a box arrived unexpectedly from Netapp with a replacement drive in it, which puzzled us because we hadn't reported a failure. But sure enough, we walked into the server room and one of the disk canisters had a red light on. Five minutes later we swapped it out and that was that. Sure a lot cheaper than sending a field circus guy out to do a job that any basic systems operator can do."
(Ouch, that stung a bit, but hey, I _like_ playing with the hardware, and if I have one complaint about the reliability of my filers it's that after I bolt it into the rack and plug it in, I don't get to fool around with it much. That's a blessing, of course. :-)
"And as for service, a funny thing happened in the middle of the night a few months back, when I was innocently rearranging some power cords to balance the load on a split-phase UPS, oblivious to the fact that the 'autosupport' emails were being sent out. Imagine my surprise when an email arrived 20 minutes later from the Netherlands, asking if I needed to have a replacement power supply shipped..."
They got the point. Clearly, they weren't going to make a sale that day. :-) But we listened to their presentation, and had a pleasant enough chat, and that was that. I had done my homework about their product line, too, and I think they knew it. They didn't try to BS me, and they didn't try to badmouth Netapp. So I can't comment on whether or not this is typical behavior from EMC reps, but my experience wasn't at all negative.
Mostly, though, it's the shirts. If my vendors didn't clothe me I'd have nothing to wear! :-)
-- Chris (still waiting for NetApp boxer shorts)
-- Chris Lamb, Unix Guy MeasureCast, Inc. 503-241-1469 x247 skeezics@measurecast.com
"Timothy Cook" TCOOK@joy.com writes:
Maybe I'm missing out on the really important aspect of netapps???
Other than a jacket I got at Admin training I've never received my new clothing line from Netapp! Is this an optional part of the Support Agreement, or should I start complaining that I'm not receiving the level of support from Netapp that I should be!
Yes, you might want to consider that.
A couple of months ago I added a new 36-gigger to my F720 setup, and since I failed to notice the little sticker on the bottom of the disk about supported ONTAP versions, the filer halted and production stopped. Ouch.
Not two hours later I received an overseas FedEx package containing a NetApp sweater. Now that's service!
i ran into the same problem with [i believe] the cheetah 18G drives. i later found the insignificant little piece of paper stating that there might be a problem if you didn't download the latest disk defs.
i can understand the filer not recognizing/using the disk. but slamming to a halt? brrrrrr.
the netapp engineer agreed that the notice should be large red and very visable. sad to see that this did not happen.
if anyone in netapp-land is listening, could this packaging bug be fixed? thank you. i'd be happy to provide case details to netapp upon request.
-- email: lance_bailey@pmc-sierra.com box: Lance R. Bailey, unix Administrator vox: +1 604 415 6646 PMC-Sierra, Inc fax: +1 604 415 6151 105-8555 Baxter Place http://www.lydia.org/~zaphod Burnaby BC, V5A 4V7 Good camouflage clothing is hard to find. -- Real Life
"Timothy Cook" TCOOK@joy.com writes:
Maybe I'm missing out on the really important aspect of netapps???
Other than a jacket I got at Admin training I've never received my new clothing line from Netapp! Is this an optional part of the Support Agreement, or should I start complaining that I'm not receiving the level of support from Netapp that I should be!
Yes, you might want to consider that.
A couple of months ago I added a new 36-gigger to my F720 setup, and since I failed to notice the little sticker on the bottom of the disk about supported ONTAP versions, the filer halted and production stopped. Ouch.
Not two hours later I received an overseas FedEx package containing a NetApp sweater. Now that's service!
-- Leif Nixon Sysadm/developer Ericsson SoftLab AB
E-mail: nixon@softlab.ericsson.se Phone: +46 13 23 57 61
On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Lance R. Bailey wrote:
i ran into the same problem with [i believe] the cheetah 18G drives. i later found the insignificant little piece of paper stating that there might be a problem if you didn't download the latest disk defs.
I ran into this in a slightly different fashion a couple of years back and it almost made me toss the filer into the bay. I had ordered and received a box full of new disk drives for one of the filers and the drives very nicely had big red stickers on them saying "you must use version x.x". I dutifully went to the NOW site to download the software and was not able to do so. I called up to complain and was told that I was not allowed to download the new version because the maintenance had expired. I explained that I needed the new version because I had purchased new drives and they required the new version but the only response I got was "your maintenance is expired". I had to call my saleman and threaten to stop doing business with NetApp before they allowed me to download the software.
In the long run I figured out why the maintenance had lapsed and got it reinstated but as you can tell from this email, the experience left a very bad taste. The audacity of selling me new hardware and then refusing to allow me access to the software required to make use of it was almost beyond belief. If I can't make use of the hardware then why the hell did you sell it to me!!
I think I've got everyone on this thread beat. I am the proud owner of a black leather NetApp jacket. Currently the best vendor swag in my whole wardrobe.
-- Jeff
On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 02:54:44PM +0200, Leif Nixon wrote:
"Timothy Cook" TCOOK@joy.com writes:
Maybe I'm missing out on the really important aspect of netapps???
Other than a jacket I got at Admin training I've never received my new clothing line from Netapp! Is this an optional part of the Support Agreement, or should I start complaining that I'm not receiving the level of support from Netapp that I should be!
Yes, you might want to consider that.
A couple of months ago I added a new 36-gigger to my F720 setup, and since I failed to notice the little sticker on the bottom of the disk about supported ONTAP versions, the filer halted and production stopped. Ouch.
Not two hours later I received an overseas FedEx package containing a NetApp sweater. Now that's service!
-- Leif Nixon Sysadm/developer Ericsson SoftLab AB
E-mail: nixon@softlab.ericsson.se Phone: +46 13 23 57 61
Well maybe you need the SAM+ support agreement. -gdg
Jeffrey Krueger wrote:
I think I've got everyone on this thread beat. I am the proud owner of a black leather NetApp jacket. Currently the best vendor swag in my whole wardrobe.
-- Jeff
On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 02:54:44PM +0200, Leif Nixon wrote:
"Timothy Cook" TCOOK@joy.com writes:
Maybe I'm missing out on the really important aspect of netapps???
Other than a jacket I got at Admin training I've never received my new clothing line from Netapp! Is this an optional part of the Support Agreement, or should I start complaining that I'm not receiving the level of support from Netapp that I should be!
Yes, you might want to consider that.
A couple of months ago I added a new 36-gigger to my F720 setup, and since I failed to notice the little sticker on the bottom of the disk about supported ONTAP versions, the filer halted and production stopped. Ouch.
Not two hours later I received an overseas FedEx package containing a NetApp sweater. Now that's service!
-- Leif Nixon Sysadm/developer Ericsson SoftLab AB
E-mail: nixon@softlab.ericsson.se Phone: +46 13 23 57 61
I think I've got everyone on this thread beat. I am the proud owner of a black leather NetApp jacket. Currently the best vendor swag in my whole wardrobe.
Dude.
I work here, and I don't have anything that snazzy.
Stephen Manley DAM and NDMP Ragamuffin
On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 08:35:16AM -0400, Timothy Cook wrote:
Maybe I'm missing out on the really important aspect of netapps???
For the benefit of you netapp guys who monitor this board, I wear an Extra Large.
Just out of interest, can you get ahold of netapp clothing out with them giving you the odd t-shirt at meetings and sales opportunites? My single netapp t-shirt is wearing thin... :)
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David H. Brierley -
Gavin Kelman -
Glen Geen -
Jeffrey Krueger -
Lance R. Bailey -
Leif Nixon -
Stephen Manley -
Timothy Cook