I had a horrible feeling that it was all going to go this way this year, like boy racers proving their manliness, the vendors have decided to drag-race their various devices around the SpecFS track.
EMC and IBM loading up their systems with nitro and blasting down a straight-track which has little to do with reality. NetApp standing on the side-lines and pointing that someone is cheating. Is it IBM, is it EMC? Do we care?
Obviously the vendors do….I do wonder if it’s not time to come up with a new benchmark; I’m thinking like a Top Gear challenge.
1) Arbitrary budget set; let’s say £100,000
2) A number of challenges to be set such as
- how fast it takes to rack, stack and configure?
- how fast can you make it go?
- how much data can you store now you’ve configured it for performance?
- how quickly can a non-storage person add shares etc?
You know realistic things?
3) And then we get a pair of cranes and play conkers by hanging the devices off them and smashing them into one another!
Probably better if this version of Top Gear (thanks for the export by the way!) would be centered on delivering what was promised, and doing so in a manner that serves the core business, rather than just the IT function.
But that would be hard work – eh? It would require some active working knowledge of the business challenges being faced. Not saying that a workable solution (in IT terms) is unimportant, but I rarely see any thought given to building requirements that focus the eye on the core business at hand.
I know, I know, we’d rather focus on the infinitely more interesting bits whirling around the box, but those don’t pay us, do they?