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SC has two sites, thirty miles apart, connected with some sort of WAN link. (an OC-3?) There are two large storage devices at each end, one made by us, one made by our competitor. They do mirroring over this. The competitor's boxes have been there for some time. To get the storage boxes talking to the IP link, there is a converter box, not made by either of us.
Customer installs our shiny new box, and the mirroring function breaks. Often. We struggle for a couple of weeks digging down into logs to find the source of the timeouts, when the customer breaks the news that: "Oh, by the way, when your box dies, the competitor's box breaks too!" (This is different from what they said before, when they failed to tell us the other box even existed.)
We reply: Your puny OC-3 and weak converter box are no match for the combined efforts of two high-end storage arrays. You have a capacity issue, we didn't design your network, we didn't sell your converter box, go fix it.
Customer replies: But it didn't break before I installed your box, obviously your box is causing the other one to break!
We reply: Our box doesn't even know yours existed... the reason your evil box didn't break before is because you weren't over-capacity before...
Customer replies: Waahhhhh!!!!! I want you to fix it anyway, for free!
(It turns out that their IP provider guarantees only 50ms response time, while their converter box retransmits in only 10ms. This is a recipe for a complete network meltdown. They still think it's our fault.)
Some customers, you just want to tell them to return it so they can give the competition heartburn instead...
SirWired
Customer installs our shiny new box, and the mirroring function breaks. Often. We struggle for a couple of weeks digging down into logs to find the source of the timeouts, when the customer breaks the news that: "Oh, by the way, when your box dies, the competitor's box breaks too!" (This is different from what they said before, when they failed to tell us the other box even existed.)
We reply: Your puny OC-3 and weak converter box are no match for the combined efforts of two high-end storage arrays. You have a capacity issue, we didn't design your network, we didn't sell your converter box, go fix it.
Customer replies: But it didn't break before I installed your box, obviously your box is causing the other one to break!
We reply: Our box doesn't even know yours existed... the reason your evil box didn't break before is because you weren't over-capacity before...
Customer replies: Waahhhhh!!!!! I want you to fix it anyway, for free!
(It turns out that their IP provider guarantees only 50ms response time, while their converter box retransmits in only 10ms. This is a recipe for a complete network meltdown. They still think it's our fault.)
Some customers, you just want to tell them to return it so they can give the competition heartburn instead...
SirWired
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