Storage

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.

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.

What is the difference between record-keeping of VoIP messages versus traditional telephone messages?

There are going to be different types of records created by telephone calls when you do things digitally. When you do things digitally as opposed to the old-fashioned way, it creates new challenges in terms of retention. For example, if you look at old voicemails, analog form, there wasn't much expectation in the way of preserving them.

With digital voicemail systems and systems that turn voicemails into wave files that then get e-mailed, now you have this whole new possibility and treasure-trove evidence and information that would be potentially subject to preservation obligations, just like any other form of information. The key thing to remember is that the type of media in which the records are stored is largely irrelevant when it comes to determining your obligations to preserve. And, as the types of media that are creating these records with different types of digital information multiply -- for example, records created through VoIP -- it becomes more and more critical for companies to be very focused on their policies and practices regarding information management.
How does a company decide what to retain?

What you need to retain is going to be dictated by subject matter, not by type of media. So, for example, if there are records created by a VoIP system that deals with your 10K, the fact that some records are created by VoIP has no bearing whatsoever on your preservation obligations. You're going to have to figure out a way to deal with that. You can't say, oh well, this is stored in this type of media and these records are created by this type of software application, therefore I don't have to worry about preservation.
When you talk to companies, do you find that many believe they don't have to keep a record of it because it was done over the phone?

Absolutely, there is a lot of uncertainty in terms of what exactly is the extent of preservation obligations with respect to certain types of media. The big issue that still predominates that discussion is backup tapes. While it is entirely possible that at the end of the day the court might say, 'Well, I really don't think it was reasonable to expect you to preserve that type of information,' the way the preservation obligation is generally interpreted is more media neutral. At the end of the day, there might be arguments you could make in terms of burden and cost, as to why you shouldn't have to keep that information, but in the absence of a ruling that says, for example, VOIP is not the kind of information you need to preserve, you'd better preserve it, if it's relevant to subject matter that falls under some preservation obligation.
What are the biggest errors in judgment companies routinely make when dealing with electronic records?

One is keeping information that they're not required to keep. The consequence of that is tremendous cost, when in response to either regulatory investigation or litigation they are required to retrieve and search that information and review it for production. They find they have needlessly multiplied their burden by keeping information that has no business use and wasn't governed by some legal preservation requirement.

No. 2, is not having thoroughly thought out and implemented information management policies and practices. You would be amazed at the big companies with vast sprawling corporate networks generating gigantic amounts of information -- a lot of it very sensitive -- that have not made much headway into implementing policies and practices, so they can have some measure of control and can explain why they have certain information and not other information.

No. 3, is they are not in touch with the de facto information policies -- what actually happens at the company. A lot of what happens is driven by IT people. So, for example, somebody in IT decides that because of storage capacity issues, they are going to purge e-mail on active servers every 90 days. Then a litigation happens, or there is an investigation, and either no one was aware of the purge or thought to communicate with IT that they need to perhaps to suspend the purge.

This gets to the heart of our audience. So CIOs need to be brought into the loop?

Absolutely, the interface between CIOs and lawyers is the story. In all these cases where companies have been punished for losing electronic information, 99% of the time it can be attributed to some kind of communications failure between lawyers and IT people. Not bringing IT into the loop on legal issues is a common and serious mistake. Morgan Stanley is probably the most prominent example. A few years back, there was a case, Keir v. UnumProvident Corp., a big insurance company. The decision gives a fascinating inside look at what happened in terms of the miscommunication between the outside lawyers and the in-house lawyers down to the inside tech people at the company and their vendor, IBM, which handled their backup systems.
What makes VoIP messages such a potential nightmare is that to produce voicemail that has been sent and saved digitally, you have to listen to it real time and transcribe it.

That's right, and the burden involved in that may result in not having to produce it. But it might not, and when you're dealing with regulators, they are less sympathetic to the burden argument.

Now you don't have to create records that wouldn't otherwise exist. If it is not your normal practice to record those oral communications, you're not required to go out and record them and create records just because you have some preservation duty. It doesn't mean I now have to walk around with a tape recorder and anytime I say something to someone that is relevant to a litigation or investigation I now have to tape record it.
Adam I. Cohen is a partner in the litigation department in the New York office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. Nationally recognized for his work on discovery and document retention issues associated with electronic information, he is the co-author of Electronic Discovery: Law and Practice. The authoritative 2003 primer has already been cited in four landmark e-discovery decisions by federal district courts. SearchCIO.com asked Cohen how CIOs should be treating that murkiest of electronic records -- Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) data. The takeaway? Do exactly as company lawyers tell you to.

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