OCI/OCB alternatives for take-out assessments.

[CHRISMAKI]

Now that OnCommand Balance has been restricted to FAS-only controllers and OnCommand Insight is useless for either NAS or small SAN environments, what is the consensus for the appropriate tool for take-out assessments? I'm looking for feedback from both partners and NetApp employees here. A lot of our SAN take out targets are smaller than 100TB, the line in the SANd (haha) for OCI, so we're looking for an OCBalance replacement basically.

Thoughts?

[moechnig]

Can you elaborate on the 100TB floor for OCI?  I'd like to better understand why it wouldn't be useful in a small environment.  Do you typically see poor results with auto resolution in small SANs, or some other technical issue? 

[chunge]

There is no 100 TB limitation in OnCommand Insight.  As long as the product is able to discover the devices within the support matrix, OCI can be used as an appropriate tool for hardware take out opportunities.  OCI can be used for NetApp NAS, as well as EMC Celerra and Isilon.

[ostiguy]

100TB might be the minimum orderable quantity with the quote tool.

There are a variety of fixed costs for adding an OCI customer (We oem various widgets and software from various places), which is one of the likely reasons for the limit - Disclaimer - I am an OCI SE, not PM, nor am I speaking for them

[moechnig]

But we shouldn't need to quote OCI for a takeout assessment.  Does the Free OCI Assessment team decline opportunities under 100TB?  If so we should be able to do something in the field with a presales project. 

Edit:  You may read this as me volunteering to do so. 

[chunge]

The Complementary Pre-Sales Assessment doesn't have a cutoff point in terms of capacity.  As long as there is a valid salesforce opportunity for a hardware sale, and the devices are supported for collection, it is fine.

[lcrewe]

Hi all,

I would also like to point you to the customer facing material available on the Assessment program, which includes:

• Assessment Brief that explains the process, etc.
• IDC white paper that exaplains why doing an assessment is valuable and includes with two NetApp assessment case studies.

They are available on netapp.com at: http://www.netapp.com/us/products/management-software/infrastructure-assessment/index.aspx

Feel free to share. 

Additional sales resources are available on the Field Portal.

[CHRISMAKI]

I was never actually told that OCI wouldn't work on environments less than 100TB, it was just hinted that it may not be appropriate. What we found however is that the report didn't actually determine bottlenecks in the way that Balance would have. Also, partners are required to leverage the OCI assessment team to get these done. So, original question, is there any alternative out there from NetApp that the partner can deploy?