The Murals in Restaurants

Body

"The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums."
--- Peter De Vries

The quote above applies to blogs as well. Those about competitive products of which the blogger has little to no hands-on experience tend to be terribly misleading or technically inaccurate. We saw this last month as Sun Microsystems' Jeff Savit tried to discuss the IBM System z10 EC mainframe.

This time, it comes from EMC bloggers discussing NetApp equipment, and by association, IBM System Storage N series gear.I was going to comment on the ridiculous posts by fellow bloggers from EMC about SnapLock compliance feature on the NetApp, but my buddies at NetApp had already done this for me, saving me the trouble.

From EMC:

• [NetApp's Compliance Isn't Compliant], by Scott Waterhouse
• [NetApp SnapLock badly Broken, by Mark Twomey (StorageZilla)
• [Got Rabies?], by Mark Twomey (StorageZilla)

From NetApp:

• [Responsibility vs. Hysteria], by Val Borcovici
• [NetApp SnapLock Continues Working], by Kostadis Roussos

The hysterical nature of writing from EMC, and the calm responses from NetApp, speak volumes about the culturesof both companies.

The key point is that none of the "Non-erasable, Non-Rewriteable" (NENR) storage out there are certified as compliant by any government agency on the planet. Governments just aren't in the business of certifying such things. The best you can get is a third-party consultant, such as [Cohasset Associates], to help make decisions that are best for each particular situation.

In addition to SnapLock on N series, IBM offers the [IBM System Storage DR550], WORM tape and optical systems, all of which have been deemed compliant to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC 17a-4] federal regulations by Cohasset Associates. For medical patient records and images like X-rays, IBM offers the Grid Medical Archive Solution [GMAS]designed to meet the requirements of the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act[HIPAA].For other government or industry regulations, consult with your legal counsel.

technorati tags: IBM, EMC, NetApp, N series, SnapLock, compliance, compliant, NENR, WORM, DR550, SEC, 17a-4, GMAS, HIPAA, tape, optical, disk, systems, Cohasset Associates, z10, EC, mainframe, Sun