In March 2008 Pillar decided to guarantee our customers could actually use 80% of their “Useable Capacity” – that is, they could run 80% full – with minimal deleterious effects on the Axiom performance. This was a first in the industry.  I blogged about it and customers and prospects found the offer compelling.  Recently, EMC rattled NetApps and HP by posting a Storage Efficiency number which of course did not include Pillar because we score better...  The remarkable thing is that while we top the charts on Efficiency as defined in Hollis’ blog, we blow the competitors away by allowing, and guaranteeing a reasonable written utilization of 80%.

NetApps honestly does poorly at utilization.  Out of the box they recommend setting aside huge amounts of storage, like 40% or more, because of their architecture. While they spin it as a customer benefit, WAFL simply dies hard if there is not a lot of free disk space.  You don’t want to run a NetApps system more than about 60% “full” if you are accustomed to any sort of performance.

So here is the corker:  We issue a guarantee that customers can get 80% utilization, and NetApps follows with a 50% storage saving guarantee.

In summary, NetApps offered a guarantee that says you only need to buy half of the raw storage with their systems as you do with others’ storage. 

Honestly, I’ve never seen such disingenuous BS in my life.

Here are the conditions on the NetApps “guarantee” – otherwise known as the “fine print”:

1. It's a raw capacity comparison and the competitor’s array must be configured using RAID 10 vs. NetApp's RAID 6 (DP).

Absolutely ridiculous. RAID 10 imposes 100% overhead and is much faster than RAID DP (which has much less capacity overhead).

2. Must run VMWare

OK, but why? Who gives a damn?  Why isn’t their storage better in non-VM environments? After all, we are comparing RAID 10 to RAID 6. With a reasonable sized array you are 90% there without VMWare, De-dupe, and other associated flim-flammery, aren’t ya?

3. Must use dedupe.

So is this a NetApps benefit or can all of us with dedupe do this?

4. Must use Thin Provisioning.

I'm not entirely certain why this is a requirement. With Pillar you can use it or not – your choice.

5. Must engage Professional Services to validate the config.

Oh for God’s sake. Is this that hard? You can’t find this out without using Professional Services? Do you need an accountant too?

6. Must be less than a $2,000,000 deal.

I love the reason they limit this guarantee: “Rogers responded that they're (>$2M systems) also the most likely to see dramatic efficiency gains, and so they don't need an assessment service to calculate what those gains might be.”

Stunning. Never guarantee something that is a shoo-in. Always hedge your bets by placing money on stuff that is riskier. Never bet on a sure thing.

7. No more than 10% of the following data types: images and graphics, XML, database data, Exchange data and encrypted data.

Seriously? No databases? No Exchange? Is this a laundry list of data they can’t compress well?

I keep thinking to myself – NetApps is a good company. They have some good stuff. Who in the hell made this up? Really. This is embarrassing.

Mike