We've got a rumor running around in our shop that EMC, and especially
with their CLARiiON product, that they lock customers out of the system
so that only EMC Support reps can perform what I would consider
standard debugging procedures.

I mean stuff like determinging if a particular disk in the SAN was bad,
etc.

Are these guys exaggerating?

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Jeffery wrote:

> We've got a rumor running around in our shop that EMC, and especially
> with their CLARiiON product, that they lock customers out of the system
> so that only EMC Support reps can perform what I would consider
> standard debugging procedures.
>
> I mean stuff like determinging if a particular disk in the SAN was bad,
> etc.
>
> Are these guys exaggerating?
>
If You want best support for Your EMC products.. You should ask EMC. I
think same goes with every other vendor.
If You, as a Clariion administrator, want to see if some disk or any
other component in array is faulted, You can use Navisphere Manager. It
will show up there. All the logs and other stuff, that You will
understand, are also accessable from Navisphere.

--
Kristjan
Everyday Clariion admin

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On 13 Jun 2006 15:15:09 -0700, "Jeffery" <je44ery@gmail.com> wrote:

>We've got a rumor running around in our shop that EMC, and especially
>with their CLARiiON product, that they lock customers out of the system
>so that only EMC Support reps can perform what I would consider
>standard debugging procedures.
>
>I mean stuff like determinging if a particular disk in the SAN was bad,
>etc.
>
>Are these guys exaggerating?


I've talked to EMC customers and it sounds pretty standard.  Most EMC
customers (maybe all?) don;t even provision LUN's, a little EMC man
comes and does it for them.

~F

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Faeandar wrote:
> On 13 Jun 2006 15:15:09 -0700, "Jeffery" <je44ery@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>
>
> I've talked to EMC customers and it sounds pretty standard.  Most EMC
> customers (maybe all?) don;t even provision LUN's, a little EMC man
> comes and does it for them.
>
> ~F

Sure, but is that because the customers don't want to be bothered or
because they aren't allowed to by EMC?  There's a big difference.

I **definately** want to be bothered with my own SAN admin.

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On 13 Jun 2006 16:07:34 -0700, "Jeffery" <je44ery@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>Faeandar wrote: 
>
>Sure, but is that because the customers don't want to be bothered or
>because they aren't allowed to by EMC?  There's a big difference.
>
>I **definately** want to be bothered with my own SAN admin.


I do not know.  What I do know is of the people I've spoken with most
are not happy with the restrictions placed on them by EMC.  The extent
may vary but for me I found what I needed to know.

~F

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In <nelu82l8jjj22sg9r0abf8v8beu0r2vq02@4ax.com> Faeandar <mr_castalot@yahoo.
com> writes:

>On 13 Jun 2006 16:07:34 -0700, "Jeffery" <je44ery@gmail.com> wrote:
 

[vbcol=seagreen]
>I do not know.  What I do know is of the people I've spoken with most
>are not happy with the restrictions placed on them by EMC.  The extent
>may vary but for me I found what I needed to know.

What is there that people want to know that cannot be discovered via
Navishpere and/or NaviCLI?

We order new disks, install them and provision the storage.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Hi.
The reason for limiting access to storage is that most of the admins
don't have sufficient knowledge. You need access directly SP in the
moment when something is really bad and I  cat bet that in such case
you will not be able to help yourself  - you can only make things
worse.
ALL info neccessary to troubelshoot storage are accessible by
Navisphere or Navisphere CLI. ( getall , getlog and SPcollects)
Additionally if something is wrong storage will send you email
notification.
You can generate logs using NaviCLi and check them on your machine -
the only missing bit is a knowledge how to interpret them.....but all
is up to you.
If you need more knowledge - please create personal account on
Powerlink.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On 13 Jun 2006 16:07:34 -0700, "Jeffery" wrote:

>Faeandar wrote: 
>
>Sure, but is that because the customers don't want to be bothered or
>because they aren't allowed to by EMC?  There's a big difference.
>
>I **definately** want to be bothered with my own SAN admin.

EMC don't prevent you from doing standard admin on a Clariion or even
on a Symmetrix.  You can provision your own LUNs, look at disk
activity etc.

Back in the bad old days (7+ years ago) the tools for customers to
properly admin a Symm didn't exist (EMC didn't own DataGeneral then,
so no Clariion) and therefore an EMC Customer Engineer had to perform
most maintenance activities.  But this certainly isn't the case now.

As other posters have said, many admins don't have the knowledge or
can't be bothered to properly maintain their storage, so they pay EMC
to do it for them.  Equally, many customers don't want their own IT
staff playing around with the storage arrays.  This is mainly true in
the Symmetrix world, but I've seen it happen for Clariions too.

HVB

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> I do not know.  What I do know is of the people I've spoken with most
> are not happy with the restrictions placed on them by EMC.  The extent
> may vary but for me I found what I needed to know.

Hmm.  I'm not sure what restrictions they would be referring to...  As
an EMC customer (on both Symm & Clariion) I have been able to:

Create logical devices and protection schemes-- RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, etc.
(symm)
Create device groups (symm)
Create meta-devices and meta-luns (both)
Create raid groups-- RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, etc. (clariion)
Create luns (both)
Detect faults (both)
Setup SNMP trap handling for faults (both)

Things that I could not do as a customer include:

Replacing the hardware myself-- including drives
Buy my own hardware and put it in the box (because doing this requires
EMC support to certify it-- which is expensive)
A couple of one off changes that aren't supported in the management
software (like changing some director bit settings on the symm), but
when the software doesn't let me do this, EMC has always done this for
free.

Faeandar:  If you can get your friends to give specific restrictions,
I'd love to hear of them, so I can bring them up with the EMC people
that I know...

Thanks,
Aaron

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On 14 Jun 2006 07:23:53 -0700, "AWS" <spiegela@gmail.com> wrote:
 
>
>Hmm.  I'm not sure what restrictions they would be referring to...  As
>an EMC customer (on both Symm & Clariion) I have been able to:
>
>Create logical devices and protection schemes-- RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, etc.
>(symm)
>Create device groups (symm)
>Create meta-devices and meta-luns (both)
>Create raid groups-- RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, etc. (clariion)
>Create luns (both)
>Detect faults (both)
>Setup SNMP trap handling for faults (both)
>
>Things that I could not do as a customer include:
>
>Replacing the hardware myself-- including drives
>Buy my own hardware and put it in the box (because doing this requires
>EMC support to certify it-- which is expensive)
>A couple of one off changes that aren't supported in the management
>software (like changing some director bit settings on the symm), but
>when the software doesn't let me do this, EMC has always done this for
>free.
>
>Faeandar:  If you can get your friends to give specific restrictions,
>I'd love to hear of them, so I can bring them up with the EMC people
>that I know...

None are friends, merely people I've spoken with in the past.  Perhaps
it was designed by management that the staff did not have access, I
don't know.

I've been so used to HDS for so long now that I never reviewed changes
in EMC.

~F

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