Got Storage? HDS doesn't!

Seen in my inbox earlier today.

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to ukspkmx04.hds.com.:
>>> MAIL From:nameremoved
<<< 452 4.4.5 Insufficient disk space; try again later
<nameremoved@hds.com>... Deferred: 452 4.4.5 Insufficient disk space; try again later
Warning: message still undelivered after 2 hours
Will keep trying until message is 2 days old

(Before we begin it should be noted that I'm so embarrassed for you right now.)

My friends lets try and figure out why HDS just don't have the disk space. Is it..

A: HDS's ugly baby thin provisioning implementation is so awkward to configure that even HDS can't get it right?

B: HCAP. Not so good for email archiving. Or archiving. Or anything.

C: UVM is doing what UVM is good at. Falling over when you need it to be up and running.

D: In an effort to go green the LUNs providing storage to the mail servers are Hitachi Power Savings enabled. Now that they're offline they aren't going to spin up anytime soon. Or ever. 

Though it could it be..

E: They're waiting for Flash Drives to become available for the USP.

Hitachi IT staff. It looks like your current storage vendor isn't meeting the challenges of your business and as such it's not wrong to consider switching. 

Don't wait for this to happen again call one of these numbers and we'll get through this together.

Kidding aside, it goes to show that we all have IT issues at some stage. Some are just funnier than others. ;)

Comments

[David Meiri]

Hmmm.... doesn't EMC have quotas on mailboxes as well? This means our mailing system might send similar messages. I think that a more interesting discussion would be how email bloat makes this medium inefficient, and the transition we see these days to sharing information through social networks, blogging, eroom, etc.

[Storagezilla]

EMC had quotas in the days before EmailXtender but now EX is archiving email to Centera in compliance with business policies the quotas are long gone.

If you're using a corporate desktop/laptop you'll find the EmailXtender Addin installed if you check Add/Remove programs.

It's been a godsend to be honest, a while back I was always out of space in my inbox. No longer.

[David Jones]

As someone who works in the Storage Industry (from a customer and not a supplier perspective), I find this post to be hilarious, and indicative of our suppliers as a whole. This is written by someone who works for EMC, a company whose support site is down almost every Saturday for maintenace. Information lives, except when Powerlink is down for essential maintenace!

[Storagezilla]

"Almost every Saturday" is an exaggeration but yes high traffic websites are taken down for maintenance to apply critical application/security updates when required.

But of course the emails telling me a system will be undergoing maintenance don't get bounced out of my inbox due to a lack of disk space.

[TimC]

"Almost every Saturday" is an exaggeration but yes high traffic websites are taken down for maintenance to apply critical application/security updates when required.

Actually, that isn't much of an exaggeration. And your excuse about patching is weak at best. I've yet to go to support.microsoft.com and find a "down for maintenance" message. And they're running windows...

[Storagezilla]

Okay so I dug into this and last months numbers show Powerlink had 99.9% uptime. That's no more than 40 minutes of the site being unavailable due to maintenance or other issues.

The reason maintenance occurs on a Saturday morning is that it's one of the lowest traffic times of the week, indeed that time was suggested by Powerlink users as previously the maintenance window was during the low traffic point on Saturday night.

I have passed the feedback onto the Powerlink team.