The Storage Compass

I am sure many people in IT get pissed with IT jargons and terminologies. More so if it is a customer, especially when he or she is not well versed with the fundamental concept behind the technology architecture.

Even after 20 years, with most of it in storage, I have a hard time switching from one vendor’s jargon to another (sometimes). But it has gotten harder for me lately, since I teach ONTAP courses for NetApp, EMC Cloud Infrastructure and doing my work with the ZFS stuff. Soon, I will take on EMC VNX, Information Storage Management (ISM), Big Data courses as well, and I also plan to do some Nexenta training too.

Who would know that an ONTAP NAS volume would be known as file system in EMC VNX for File (aka Celerra), and a data set in ZFS? Or a ONTAP aggregate is almost like a ZFS pool but with some differences or a clone might be called a replica in HDS and so on …

In fact, all the definitions above could be wrong because I am getting confused. 😉 You would be too if you have to switch from one vendor’s jargon to another. And the poor EMC pre-sales who has not been with any other vendor except for EMC all his career would have a hard time rewiring his brain if he had joined another vendor like NetApp.  Or IBM, or Dell, or Oracle or anyone for that matter.  No wonder the customers are pissed.  Continue reading

Did Dell buy a dud?

In the past few weeks, I certainly have an axe to grind with Dell, notably their acquisition of Quest Software. I have been full of praise of how Dell was purchasing the right companies in the past and how the companies Dell acquired were important chess pieces that will propel Dell into the enterprise space. Until now …

Since its first significant acquisition into the enterprise with EqualLogic in 2008, there were PerotSystems, Kace, Scalent, Boomi, Compellent, Exanet, Ocarina Networks, Force10, SonicWall, Wyse Technologies, AppAssure, and RNA Networks. (I might have missed one or two). To me, all these were good buys, and these were solid companies with a strong future in their technology and offerings. Until Dell decides to acquire Quest Software.

At the back of my mind, why the heck is Dell buying Quest Software for? And for a ballistic USD2.4 billion! That’s hell of a lot of money to spend on a company which does not have a strong portfolio of solutions and are not exactly leaders in their respective disciplines, barring Quest’s Foglight and TOAD. A quick check into Quest’s website revealed that they are in the following disciplines:

 

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