A Note To Sun

We've used NetApp hardware for our NAS needs for the last few years. My boss bought two a few years ago and they've been rock solid. They have gotten a little long in the tooth and our capacity needs have grown, so we decided that this was the year to upgrade.

Around the time that I started thinking about what to buy, Sun started making noise about their Sun Storage 7000 line. These bad boys pack a bunch of disks in a nice chassis, pump it full of Solaris (Open? not sure), format the whole shebang with ZFS then gussy the whole thing up with a nice web interface.

And they only cost $10k. Nice.

Wait! They even have a 60-day Try and Buy offer! They ship it to you (free) and you can play with it for 60 days! Like it? Buy it for a 20% discount. Don't like it? Mail it back! (free)

So I sign up and a week or so later I test it out. It's everything I hoped it would be! I spent way too long emailing around trying to find out how to actually buy the damned thing. I've got the approval and a credit card in my hand. It took me a few hours to find out who to talk to.

I finally get the right person and I say "This thing is great. Give me two!"

Sorry sir, you'll have to fill out paperwork for another Try and Buy to get the discount on the second unit.

Huh? Seriously. Seems so. What a pain in the ass! Have you looked at your stock price lately? Why are you making it so hard for me to give you money? I feel like I'm standing at the door, leaving breath fog on the glass with money clenched in my hot hands. Why do I have to take 30 minutes out of my day to fill out paperwork again?

So, resigned to my fate, I add "Fill out Sun's stupid fucking paperwork" on my TODO list and go back to work. Guess what happens. NetApp calls! They come out and talk to us and we send them away with instructions to send us a quote in 2 days, as we like the Sun gear.

Lucky for Sun, NetApp came back with too high a price. Even though NetApp would've taken my money happily and given me what I wanted, I decided to go with Sun. Consider that a dodged bullet, Sun. You might want to consider if this "open" push is at odds with your ridiculous bureaucracy. You should not make it hard for me to give you money. But thanks for the sweet Try and Buy.