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One of the things that happens when you run a storage/technology blog, is that you will regularly get emails from PR firms with press-releases hoping that you’ll write a post touting their product or at least link back to their site to improve their ratings in the serach engines.

My problem is, that while I’m an avid storage/technology blogger, I have an science/engineering background.  What this translates to is this.

If you haven’t seen it happen, it’s a hypothesis.  If you haven’t put the functionality to the test, don’t assume it’s real.  And if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

My wife, having spent many years in marketing, was quick to explain to me how marketing really works.  “Play up the good, discount the bad, and forget the mention the fatal flaws.”

So when a new storage hot-shot approached me to write an article about their new hardware, and gave me the specs as they saw them, i refused, flat out.

If you tell me your product does 100,000+ IOPS that’s fine.  I’ve not seen it so I have only your numbers to go on, and for all I know your numbers were invented over Bacardi’s at the local pub.  Send me a demo and I’ll be happy to try it out and report the numbers.  Just beware it better do what you say it’s going to because I will report the real numbers, good or bad.

I have a few years in R&D under my belt, I know how testing is done.  I also know how any test can and usually is skewed to show off the strengths of a product.

When I worked for another non-emc storage vendor and had to tell them that their new array wasn’t capable of pushing more than 13MB/sec, they asked me not to put that particular fact in my report.  When I refused, i was suddenly “laid off.”  (of course a short time later the rest of the company was, so that may not have been quite the cause/effect I like to intimate.)

That’s marketing…sadly it’s not science.  And the one truth is marketing people have difficulty tolerating engineering people.

I’m surpised my wife puts up with me actually.

Interestingly enough, my favourite Veritas sales guy from Strategic Technologies (www.stratech.com) actually managed to do the virtually impossible.

He got me to thinking and questioning my blind believe in “what EMC says.”

I’m looking at a different options for WORM archiving right now.  Of course the first player in the game is the G5 Centerra.  It’s reportedly bulletproof, and when the auditors come through testing your compliance, their sales shtick is that “they just look at the centerra and wave it through”.  (Much like the san diego border patrol, right?)

So what got me thinking about the NetApp “Archive and Compliance Solution” is that it offers everything Centerra does, without locking you into the API that Centerra does.

One of the biggest problems with the Centerra is that you are locked into their technology.  Once you start archiving to centerra, it’s a nightmare to get off it should you decide to years down the line.  This is because there is no “filesystem” per-se to migrate off of.  Everything going to the centerra has to go through their API.

The Network Appliance product however offers a CIFS/NFS solution, so saving files to the archive can be as simple as copying files to a directory.  (I don’t know the details of how revisions are kept yet, I got about 100 pages of documentation that I was planning on going through this weekend, before the yard-work hit me. )

This means that not only can you browse the filesystem and copy anything out of it you want to, but that you can also migrate out of it with a minimal of fuss if you need to.

The CIFS/NFS solution also makes it more compatible than the Centerra.  Since the Centerra CAS system requires the Centerra API, a limited number of applications work with it.  Now as of this writing the Centerra meets my needs, however who knows what the higher-ups are going to decide to bring in.  And if they bring in a new application that A- requires archiving of data, and B- doesn’t support the Centerra, then we’re screwed and have to go out and get something new anyway.

Now the other bonus is that it’s my understanding that the price point of 4TB (Usable – Replicated) of NetApp storage is much more pleasant than 4TB (Usable – Replicated) of Centerra storage.

Now I know that most of my readership are Hitachi/NetApp people, so i know the way the responses to this are going to go.  My question is actually this:

Does anyone (other than my EMC sales team) see a compelling reason to stick to the Centerra?