What Are You Doing Right Now
-
tl;dr
-
It's 11.30pm here, 28C and humid. Yuck.
-
@dafyre said:
DAY 4
- All vendors see similar margin ratios. This is a well known issue. No matter how many vendors you talk to they will always push SAN-based IPODs. The process of asking vendors for IT advice is what created the IPOD in the first place as it is the cheapest way to sell a SAN which has the highest margins. They all did it and millions of companies that were doing exactly this process fell victim to this design because it is the natural result of combining sales people giving advice, no IT checks and balances and the nature of storage margins. It is also what pushed RAID 5, all based on sales margins.
I don't argue that this is generally the case. We saw this happen when we were trying to purchase our storage setup. The question that we (the IT Team) kept coming back to "What happens if SAN 1 fails?" We asked the storage vendors we were speaking to about this, and two of them were like "you replicate from SAN1 to SAN2"... We liked the HP guys because they were the first one that told us that theirs was an active/passive cluster. No down time if SAN1 fails because SAN2 would automatically take over with no down time... Sadly, we did have to test this scenario several times, and (not so sadly) it worked beautifully.
That part is great. But where the issue comes in is that no one in the chain will ever step back and say "what about not having the SAN at all?" SAN is great in the right use cases, so maybe it was right here. But as everyone in the chain was paid by selling SANs, they answers were going to always be based around the assumption that a SAN was going to be purchased.
-
@dafyre said:
This is why you ask for options, not promotions. Granted, it should be expected that you the get high margin promotions first -- after all the sales rep needs to eat too. But those can be easily tossed aside as outside of your budget range or not the product you are looking for after you do your own research.
Doesn't work that way, though. The promotions are to them, not to you. They get special kickbacks for pushing certain products. That's why one day the VAR will be all about Watchguard firewalls and the next day all about SonicWall. If you are just requesting a price, you don't need the sales person. If you are asking for anything more than a price, you are being guided by the promotions but will never be told about them.
-
Have a good day people....
-
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Minion-Queen said:
Have a good day people....
have fun storming the castle.
Do you think they'll make it?
-
Much panic, very despiration, wow:
Cloud At Cost System Message:01/06/2016 01:25 PM
CloudAtCost is planning on deploying servers in 20 Datacenters across Canada and the US. Where should we start?
Vote Here: <link removed>
Is it just me or does ^that sound a lot like the "We're goin' down! Make it look like we're afloat still" that all the shonky shops do right before they disappear off the face of the planet? -
@scottalanmiller Good talking to you the other day
-
@dahlinme said:
@scottalanmiller Good talking to you the other day
You too! And welcome to the party!
-
So we had a VERY successful shopping trip today. We managed to get groceries AND the power adapters that we needed. We are SO excited. What a difference this is going to make.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
DAY 4
- All vendors see similar margin ratios. This is a well known issue. No matter how many vendors you talk to they will always push SAN-based IPODs. The process of asking vendors for IT advice is what created the IPOD in the first place as it is the cheapest way to sell a SAN which has the highest margins. They all did it and millions of companies that were doing exactly this process fell victim to this design because it is the natural result of combining sales people giving advice, no IT checks and balances and the nature of storage margins. It is also what pushed RAID 5, all based on sales margins.
I don't argue that this is generally the case. We saw this happen when we were trying to purchase our storage setup. The question that we (the IT Team) kept coming back to "What happens if SAN 1 fails?" We asked the storage vendors we were speaking to about this, and two of them were like "you replicate from SAN1 to SAN2"... We liked the HP guys because they were the first one that told us that theirs was an active/passive cluster. No down time if SAN1 fails because SAN2 would automatically take over with no down time... Sadly, we did have to test this scenario several times, and (not so sadly) it worked beautifully.
That part is great. But where the issue comes in is that no one in the chain will ever step back and say "what about not having the SAN at all?" SAN is great in the right use cases, so maybe it was right here. But as everyone in the chain was paid by selling SANs, they answers were going to always be based around the assumption that a SAN was going to be purchased.
In this case not having a SAN did not fit the business goal that we were mandated with. Keep our files up and working, even if the main server building burns down with as little down time as possible. That was our business mandate. (This happened due to a couple of issues beyond our control becoming a major panic point of the administration at the time) Backups are great to have, but at the time, that was not the business goal (we still had them of course!). That is the largest reason why we did not back away from the SAN idea.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
So we had a VERY successful shopping trip today. We managed to get groceries AND the power adapters that we needed. We are SO excited. What a difference this is going to make.
Food is kinda nice... but so is being able to charge your portable stuff too, ha ha ha!
-
So things you don't get to see every day.... NATO bombing squadron taking off. We don't know the details, but when a NATO base spends twenty minutes launching planes that shake the island and they circle around and fly off straight at Syria... you can guess.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
OMG... I swear the people over there are freaking incompetent... the number of people on SW that just "fear" anything virtual, hosted or remote is crazy.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1374462-starting-over-do-i-need-avtive-directory
It should be worth noting that "avoiding the MS train" is not a business decision. Yes you can build a comprable suite of tools completely open source and free, but how long will that take, and how much work to maintain in that fairly small environment? Would that choice help or hurt the businessbin the long run? Prepare proposals both ways, then let the management make that decision.
It can be done in less time, less resources, and less management. It's like people think you need to compile every program that you run in Linux and then manually patch upgrades in config files by comparing with diff.
-
@dafyre said:
In this case not having a SAN did not fit the business goal that we were mandated with. Keep our files up and working, even if the main server building burns down with as little down time as possible. That was our business mandate.
But SAN doesn't enable that in any specific way. SAN actually makes that worse and then you have to mitigate the servers risk AND the new SAN risk that was just added. You can have SAN in this setup, but the SAN can't be part of the solution. But it is standard for sales people to act so convincingly like it is that most companies believe it and buy the SAN anyway. SAN has only one purpose and that is cost savings at scale despite the added risks that it brings. SAN can be part of an HA strategy, but SAN itself lowers the availability rather than raising it. You can always do even higher availability without the SAN.
-
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
So we had a VERY successful shopping trip today. We managed to get groceries AND the power adapters that we needed. We are SO excited. What a difference this is going to make.
Food is kinda nice... but so is being able to charge your portable stuff too, ha ha ha!
We were on four days of lentils already!
-
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
DAY 4
- All vendors see similar margin ratios. This is a well known issue. No matter how many vendors you talk to they will always push SAN-based IPODs. The process of asking vendors for IT advice is what created the IPOD in the first place as it is the cheapest way to sell a SAN which has the highest margins. They all did it and millions of companies that were doing exactly this process fell victim to this design because it is the natural result of combining sales people giving advice, no IT checks and balances and the nature of storage margins. It is also what pushed RAID 5, all based on sales margins.
I don't argue that this is generally the case. We saw this happen when we were trying to purchase our storage setup. The question that we (the IT Team) kept coming back to "What happens if SAN 1 fails?" We asked the storage vendors we were speaking to about this, and two of them were like "you replicate from SAN1 to SAN2"... We liked the HP guys because they were the first one that told us that theirs was an active/passive cluster. No down time if SAN1 fails because SAN2 would automatically take over with no down time... Sadly, we did have to test this scenario several times, and (not so sadly) it worked beautifully.
That part is great. But where the issue comes in is that no one in the chain will ever step back and say "what about not having the SAN at all?" SAN is great in the right use cases, so maybe it was right here. But as everyone in the chain was paid by selling SANs, they answers were going to always be based around the assumption that a SAN was going to be purchased.
In this case not having a SAN did not fit the business goal that we were mandated with. Keep our files up and working, even if the main server building burns down with as little down time as possible. That was our business mandate. (This happened due to a couple of issues beyond our control becoming a major panic point of the administration at the time) Backups are great to have, but at the time, that was not the business goal (we still had them of course!). That is the largest reason why we did not back away from the SAN idea.
How did SAN solve this? the building burns down and your SAN with it.
-
@Dashrender said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
DAY 4
- All vendors see similar margin ratios. This is a well known issue. No matter how many vendors you talk to they will always push SAN-based IPODs. The process of asking vendors for IT advice is what created the IPOD in the first place as it is the cheapest way to sell a SAN which has the highest margins. They all did it and millions of companies that were doing exactly this process fell victim to this design because it is the natural result of combining sales people giving advice, no IT checks and balances and the nature of storage margins. It is also what pushed RAID 5, all based on sales margins.
I don't argue that this is generally the case. We saw this happen when we were trying to purchase our storage setup. The question that we (the IT Team) kept coming back to "What happens if SAN 1 fails?" We asked the storage vendors we were speaking to about this, and two of them were like "you replicate from SAN1 to SAN2"... We liked the HP guys because they were the first one that told us that theirs was an active/passive cluster. No down time if SAN1 fails because SAN2 would automatically take over with no down time... Sadly, we did have to test this scenario several times, and (not so sadly) it worked beautifully.
That part is great. But where the issue comes in is that no one in the chain will ever step back and say "what about not having the SAN at all?" SAN is great in the right use cases, so maybe it was right here. But as everyone in the chain was paid by selling SANs, they answers were going to always be based around the assumption that a SAN was going to be purchased.
In this case not having a SAN did not fit the business goal that we were mandated with. Keep our files up and working, even if the main server building burns down with as little down time as possible. That was our business mandate. (This happened due to a couple of issues beyond our control becoming a major panic point of the administration at the time) Backups are great to have, but at the time, that was not the business goal (we still had them of course!). That is the largest reason why we did not back away from the SAN idea.
How did SAN solve this? the building burns down and your SAN with it.
And more importantly, how did a SAN solve this in a way that a normal server would not have? SAN can do it by having replicated SANs. But you can do it with replicated local storage, DAS or NAS too. Every storage technology can handle that scenario if you replicate between buildings.
I've done this with local storage across counties before.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
In this case not having a SAN did not fit the business goal that we were mandated with. Keep our files up and working, even if the main server building burns down with as little down time as possible. That was our business mandate.
But SAN doesn't enable that in any specific way. SAN actually makes that worse and then you have to mitigate the servers risk AND the new SAN risk that was just added. You can have SAN in this setup, but the SAN can't be part of the solution. But it is standard for sales people to act so convincingly like it is that most companies believe it and buy the SAN anyway. SAN has only one purpose and that is cost savings at scale despite the added risks that it brings. SAN can be part of an HA strategy, but SAN itself lowers the availability rather than raising it. You can always do even higher availability without the SAN.
How does it not? The "SAN" I am talking about is an Active/Passive cluster so it is not an IPOD at the storage level. We already had the redundant servers, power, and network links. We didn't have to worry about "syncronizing" files across multiple servers and stuff like that since the SAN handled it for us.
In our case, the SAN fit the business goals perfectly. SAN1 went in the Main Server Room rack, and SAN2 went in the backup server room rack in another building with multiple paths back to the campus network. We already had redundant servers, so adding the SAN not only allowed us to keep files up if the main DC burnt to the ground, it allowed us to keep the campus operating. And these systems being RAID 5, and 8TB of drives, you can imagine how often each unit failed more than 1 drive at a time. However, our campus never knew that there were issues and our administration was happy that we were able to meet their mandate at a cost that didn't give the beancounters nightmares for months. (Only a week or two, ha ha).
