By Matt Stansberry, Site Editor
What differentiates your systems from the competition?
Our blade architecture is very easy to integrate servers and storage into the same form factor.
Another big difference is the use of off-the-shelf components. It gives us a couple of advantages: When something changes, we're able to implement as soon as it happens. We're shipping [Intel's latest offering] Woodcrest the day it's available. It makes it much easier to come out with new products.
From what I've read, you're taking a different approach to cooling. Can you tell me about that?
Our system can actually operate in the hot row. If you look at our rack, blades slide into both sides. There is no back or front. The cooling is all through the center. We draw air in through the base and accelerate it toward the top.
Normally, the servers at the base of the rack get all the cooling, and the ones at the top of the rack take what they can. We draw in more than 2,400 cubic feet per minute (CFM) of air. Each blade is getting 100 CFM. We don't have one blade getting 300 CFM and others getting less. Our blades have no cooling on the parts themselves. All of it is provided by the cabinet.
If you're in a raised floor environment, our installations have no problem being in a hot row. We don't draw air in from the ambient room unless we're in a solid floor environment.
If your rack is sucking in 2,400 CFM on a raised floor intake, does it create a problem for the surrounding equipment?
No. It seems counterintuitive, but the blade rack creates a pressurized area on the floor. We actually improve poorly circulated areas. The only place that ends up changing is right near the CRAC units themselves.
You mentioned the use of off-the-shelf components. What about networking?
We do not embed networking into our rack. Therefore, you can use the Cisco, Force10, whatever you prefer to have on normal rack mount gear. One of the things that's really limited [Marlborough, MA-based] Egenera is closed hardware and networking. They're highly managed, but they don't want anyone else to manage their gear and don't manage others' gear.
Beyond Egenera, who do you see as your competition?
IBM and HP are our two main competitors. We're right in their crosshairs and they're in ours.
What about Sun's plans to join the blade market?
The market is very skeptical on Sun blades right now. Unless you're a traditional Sun house, you're not taking this very seriously. That's where Sun is seeing the growth in their x86 systems. I don't see Sun taking any business from HP, IBM, Dell or us for that matter.
[Driggers founded San Diego-based Verari 10 years ago. The company recently appointed former EMC-exec David Wright to CEO. Wright will take over the business functions, allowing Driggers to focus on the technology.]
Verari Systems' chief technology officer David Driggers spoke to SearchDataCenter.com about how the company keeps blades cool, even in the hot aisle.
By Jo Maitland, News Director
How do you pick a channel partner?
We have very specific guidelines that we follow when selecting channel partners. Those guidelines typically revolve around how quickly they can deliver, the breadth of their offering and pricing.
What do you buy and from whom?
Because of the big differential between what we spend on storage versus the rest of our IT needs, we typically look to vendors that handle the largest breadth of gear as possible. For EMC gear, for example, we work very closely with Dell. EMC has one of the largest networks of resellers and VAR [value added reseller] partners out there but we have found that we still get better service from a firm like Dell because of the fact that we buy so much other nonstorage-related equipment, servers, etc.
For smaller purchases or purchases we need in a faster delivery window, we work with a variety of local and national VARs and in many cases buy direct. In the case of software, we will, whenever possible, buy direct if the firm offers direct download. Even when a VAR can offer better pricing, the convenience of a direct download or automatic license purchase is far more important.
In your opinion, what are the advantages of working with a channel partner?
As an organization, we find that we need to be able to have established relationships with a variety of vendors and resellers to meet all of our needs. This is especially true when we are on a tight delivery timetable. A local reseller may charge a premium versus a larger national reseller or the vendor themselves, but they are able to add value and justify that price with a quicker turnaround.
The second key issue is that when we work with the larger resellers, we are able to get a lot better service because of our larger purchase volume. For example, we recently purchased an entry-level EMC SAN for a specific project, and had the scope of our project change overnight. We needed a SAN that could scale much larger and had to go with a higher end model that would scale further. EMC has a policy that once a PO [purchase order] is signed, they will not take a unit back unless it is due to a technical problem. Because of our relationship with Dell, they were more than willing to work with us, and did so in as painless a way as possible. If I was working direct or with a VAR that only handled storage or that I did not have the same dollar volume with, I am not confident we would have had the same experience.
Third, in theory, channel partners can introduce us to new products that we were otherwise unaware of, but in practice that is pretty rare in the current business climate.
What are the downsides to working with resellers?
This depends largely on the specific reseller and the way in which the manufacturer themselves has setup the reseller program. We have seen some nightmare scenarios when resellers are responsible for first tier support or sales engineering and the resellers are not equipped with the necessary technical resources to meet our needs. This is especially true when the reseller does not have the right number of specific subject matter experts and tries to utilize more generalists.
We also have a hard time with resellers that do not stock product. In the current climate, we typically make final purchasing decisions a week or two before we need the product installed in our data center. In some cases, due to project scope changes or emergency capacity upgrades, we need to be able to have a product the next day. Most resellers today, and for that matter, many vendors themselves, are not prepared to meet that kind of delivery timetable. For organizations with static needs or even static rates of change, that may be fine, but for a rapidly growing Internet-centric business it causes a lot of problems. To resolve this issue, we typically have three or four key resellers that can source any one product we use, so with a little legwork we are able to meet our timetable.
Are channel partners really independent?
Absolutely not. In my experience, channel partners are sales organizations and we treat them as such. We have had countless interactions with technology resellers that pitch either the product they have the highest margin on, or a product they need to move for internal purposes. We address this by doing as much homework as possible ahead of time and then utilize their subject-matter experts for specific implementation or integration questions.
Do you think you can get a better price working with a channel partner versus dealing with vendors directly?
My experience with pricing has been that it is directly related to the size of the manufacturer. We find that vendors with a large, diverse, mature product line, like EMC or Sun, offer their best pricing through the channel. Newer players or vendors rolling out a new product and looking for early adopters will inevitably offer better pricing and terms directly, than through their partners. With the competitive VAR landscape, there are fewer firms willing to distribute products on a loss-leader basis, but that still remains a vital strategy for vendors attempting to push a new product into the market place. Like any savvy buyer, we try to exert our pricing pressure and take advantage of such situations.
Buying storage gear from the channel needn't be as dicey as you might imagine as long as you know what to look out for. Aaron D. Sawchuk, co-founder and chief technology officer of managed services provider ColoSpace Inc., in Rockland, Mass., talked with SearchStorage.com about his experiences buying from the channel and some of the advantages this has brought him in dealing with key suppliers.
