So there's been a bit of a dust-up going on over mid-tier storage going on. Chuck Hollis from EMC posted an interesting idea about evaluating "Usable Capacity" for arrays. He focused on an exchange use case. He compared the recently released CX4, NetApp's FAS series, and HP's EVA. Three very competitive models. He then proceeds to say why he thinks the CX4 is a better value because it achieves a 70% Storage Capacity Efficiency. That is, 70% of the raw is usable. He then does the same thing for the other two giving an HP EVA 47.2% and NetApp 33.61%. There's a pretty good set of links associated with it to show he's not making these numbers up. Problem is, like with anything, there's more than one way to do something. And boy did NetApp fans (and some employees) and EVA fans (and some employees) let him have it. There was also a follow-up post by Chuck Hollis And in the comments for both posts, NetApp and EVA champions throw some counter-evidence and poke holes in the configurations (which were worse case in my opinion) Chuck used that made the other offerings suffer in comparison. So when you change configurations to ones that favor NetApp or HP, they each best EMC (of course they do...). The truth is always somewhere in the middle.
The tit-for-tat bickering that went on in the comments ran the gamut. Some were very insightful and pointed out areas that Chuck should consider. Chuck also responded to some of the comments in a respectable (although somewhat antagonistic) manor. Some of the comments were down right rude. I guess an average day on the internet, come to think of it. My beef is Chuck's taking the worst case or outdated case scenarios for the competitors while using the new-car-smell versions of EMC's products. He hides behind the idea of "show me the document on their website that says that" mantra. Some commenters rightfully called him out to produce the same for his gear. This all took place before the long labor-day weekend so it'll be interesting to see if it keeps it's momentum this week or if the down time has tempered people's zeal.
It also reminded me of a bit from Comedy Central's The Daily Show from back in May. In it Terry McAuliffe (Hillary campaign staff) and Chris Matthews (MSNBC commentator) engage in what Jon Stewart calls a "West Virginia Douche-Off". I got that kind of vibe from from the back and forth between the NetApp and EMC crowd. You can see the clip here (it's the last 1:42 of the clip, starts around the 6-minute mark):
Tip of the hat to Chris M Evans who's blog post turned me onto the drama
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