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sad initial impressions of LairdShare
At NAB, I spent a lot of time looking at low cost SAN systems. One of these systems was the new LairdShare. It looked teriffic, and I deal with Markertek on an almost daily basis ordering parts, so having an affiliation with one of their products (they own Laird), I figured this might be teriffic.
On another forum (I think it was FCP-L), the designer of Lairdshare -DVDAN23 or DANDV23 – posted some comments on LairdShare. I thought this would be a cool thing to look into, and emailed him some questions. They were never responded to. Laird has a user group, with only 2 comments or questions, so I tried to join the Laird user group. I was never granted “approval” to join the user group to ask questions.
I am writing this right now 5/23/08, because I received a call from Colin at Laird today, wanting to know if I needed more information on LairdShare (we met at NAB). So I have been on the phone on hold for the last 30 minutes with Laird, trying to call Colin back at
800 898 0759, x7316. But no one answers.SO what happens when you buy LairdShare – and have a problem ? I am trying to get some preliminary sales information, about basic configuration questions, and I can’t email anyone, I can’t speak to anyone.
I feel validated about “bitching” about LairdShare (before I even get started), since I give Markertek my business on EVERY FACILITY INSTALLATION that I have done since I moved to Florida in 1999. Markertek (and TecNec) are truly great companies, but if they ever expect for LairdShare to be a real product, maybe they should have some way of contacting them, to ask some basic questions.
I only hope that someone from Laird replies back, with some sort of answer to this.
Bob Zelin
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17 Replies
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I recently brought up this very same point in a post about other shared storage companies.
While researching the exact same thing you are…reasonably priced shared storage solutions, just about every company we contacted either didn’t respond to inquiries, took days to do so, or when they did respond, didn’t or couldn’t answer the handful of questions I asked. Sorry…but this is gonna be a long post!
Emails sent requesting information went unanswered…phone calls went unreturned…and promised follow-ups never came.
We contacted all the major players in the under $25,000 arena…and a couple in the $35-$50,000 range.
The only companies that provided good service were Apace systems, Tiger Technologies and Aberdeen Systems. We contacted roughly 20 companies. Most sold complete systems, but a few were software or hardware only, like Tiger, which sells SAN software, and Aberdeen, which sells hardware.
Of the other companies, the ones that did finally respond usually did so with convoluted and confusing product descriptions or pricing lists…or in some cases, with recommendations or technical information that was flat-out wrong. Others made the technology out to be so complicated that it would require a team of IT experts to install and administer the system.
The company we chose (Apace), won not so much for their product’s capabilties or price (which were certainly important), but mostly because they gave us unbelievable service. Their reseller, IEEE, inc. answered emails within hours, and returned phone calls the same day, usually within the hour. They spent hours on the phone with us in conference calls prior to the sale explaining and demoing the product. Their engineers spent literally 3-5 hours setting up our system remotely…taking control of each PC on the network and tweaking settings. They did this two afternoons in a row…acting as if we were the only client they had.
After a power outage…when I couldn’t find the power switch to turn the unit back on (it’s the size of a pin head), I called, got a live-person immediately, and was up and running in seconds. Now granted…I’m pretty much an idiot for not being able to find a power switch…but it’s the only thing I’ve had to call for since the unit was installed 3 months ago. It defragments itself automatically and best of all works as advertised.
Bernard at Tiger Technologies was also very helpful and very responsive…and we seriously considered his product coupled with other hardware.
I just couldn’t imagine buying from some of the other companies. Many didn’t seem to have a clue about how their systems worked…how shared storage systems work in general…or didn’t seem to care about our requirements.
Most ignored my brief, consice list of requirements, which was copied into every email sent and read into each phone message I left. The sales person would ask me questions I had already answered in detail. One company made me fill out a long, poorly laid out PDF form before they’d give me more information. I had literally answered all the questions in my initial email…but that wasn’t good enough…they couldn’t provide a quote or answer my questions until I put that same information into their crappy, confusing form.
Companies would repeatedly tout how well their system worked with Avid or Final Cut…until I pointed out that we used Harris VelocityQ editing systems…a fact that was explained in detail in all initial emails and phone calls.
Some of these companies are among the biggest names in the shared storage business! How they got there I have no clue. Maybe they’re going through growing pains. All I know is if I don’t respond to our client’s emails within 24 hours, and follow through on what we say we’re going to do for them…they don’t stay our client very long.
I’ll take the small company with a solid product and great customer service over the big Kahuna with the fancy product and indifferent service every day of the week.
It doesn’t do much good to turn out a great product if your sales people can’t sell it and your customer service people can’t fix it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I agree with Chris. Although I wound up ultimately going with Tiger Technology MetaLAN (I will discuss the details of this in another post), I too found that Tiger Technology and Apace Systems were the ONLY very responsive companies, that were eager to answer every question, eager to send out eval units, eager to help insure that the systems were setup properly, and working without issue. I might add at this time that solutions from Tiger Technology and Apace are also the LEAST EXPENSIVE out there.
This is not to say that LairdShare is not an excellent solution. I want to find out more – but I simply can’t – nothing on the Laird Telemedia website, no repies from my emails, impossible for me to join their website user forum.
I was also recently intrigued by a company called 2degreesfrost, owned by Robin Frost, who has recently started to discuss his hi speed SAN system on the XSAN forum of Cow. It seems like a teriffic product, but when I went to ask some tough questions (they use MetaSAN as their user interface, but their own hardware solution) – he did not respond. Their website made it impossible to find out details of their system, and when I went to search for places to purchase this system (MacMall or MacConnection – it’s on their website) – neither company listed 2degreesfrost. I am not saying this is not a wonderful, unique, teriffic SAN solution – it’s just that I cant get any information from the company.
This is why I chose Tiger Technology MetaLAN, and this is why if I had to make a second choice right now, I would definately choose Apace.
Bob Zelin
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Bob,
Interesting to hear you had a similar experience and found similar results from a customer service standpoint. I don’t see how the other companies sell anything to anyone if our experience was indicative of their general customer service practices. The customer service from Tiger Technology and Apace (and their reseller IEEE, inc.) weren’t just good…they were great.
It’s a shame they’ve not cornered a larger market share. If they keep it up…I hope they will.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
The price point of 35k and under includes Facilis Terrablock and they have a solution even in the under 25K ballpark. They answer the phone immediately and always are quick to work out any questions/problems. They work more through VARs now but still are quick and informative.
Don’t discount the obvious solutions. Terrablocks are really inexpensive if you use the already included connections(4?) and don’t need an external switch.
John McClary
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When I did research for our facility, I did literally scores of searches for shared storage solutions for video editing, and Facilis Terrablock never once came up in the searches. I probably used 25 different search terms and would go 8-10 pages deep within each search. These included using acronyms like SAN, shared storage for video editing and dozens more. I did research on and off for literally a month, usually spending several hours a week looking at web sites, reading brochures, calling companies, requesting demos, specs, price quotes etc.
During all that, I didn’t even know they existed. I also did searches on this list and I only recall one hit that listed their product…and it was when we were deep into the evaluation process.
By that time we had ruled out SAN solutions for a variety of reasons, notably, we’d need to add new fibre channel HBA’s to 5 workstations as well as new cabling, but the biggest one being the way SAN systems work. We wanted true file sharing from a common media pool and there were only a handful of products that met that criteria without requiring constant logging on/off of volumes and assigning read/write priveleges.
In my opinion, Facilis needs to do a better job optimizing their web site search terms…as well as marketing their product. We might have considered them, but we ended up spending under $15,000 for a solution that works great for our needs, including all cabling, a new switch, and installation and configuration. So I doubt they could’ve come close to that price considering we would’ve had to add fibre channel HBA’s and cabling..and that’s only if we had direct connected to the unit and foregone a fibre channel switch, which adds several thousand more to the cost.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
In response to Bob, Robin Frost is the CTO of 2 Degrees and very busy being CTO. If there is fault in getting answers it may be with me. I’m one of the reps at 2 Degrees Frost and I welcome any questions you may have. I know this is not a forum for relaying messages but you may get in touch with me and I’d be glad to pass them on.
wz2degrees
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What questions does Bob have of 2 Degrees Frost Storage Solutions. Please post and I’ll respond.
wz2degrees
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Chris – Can I ask which solution you ended up choosing? We are trying to find a low cost of entry option for multiple editing points sharing storage in a workgroup and we were intrigued by the LairdShare but Apace seems to be a good alternative and the price point you got is more inline with what we were looking to get.
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From the XSan forum, Robin writes –
everyone on this forum thread seems to be equating ‘Ethernet’ with ‘TCP/IP over Ethernet’ which SATA-SAN storage is not using.REPLY – please explain your connectivity – are you using Gig Ethernet, aggrigated 2 port Gig ethernet, 10 Gig E or Fibre channel with a fibre card in the host (and a fibre switch) ?
Robin writes –
With the 2Degrees SATA-SAN products we’re running a real SAN using raw ethernet – multi-GbE or 10GbE – as the storage fabric instead of fibre channel. SATA-SAN storage sends SATA disk commands and data over Ethernet using raw ethernet packets at full wire speed i.e. >100MB/sec, maxing out at ~110MB/s per Gigabit connection. No IP is involved which is chatty and slow.REPLY – this is confusing to me. You are using Tiger Technology MetaSAN or Charismac Fibre Jet as your interface (as per your website), but your connectivity is “raw ethernet” – is this aggrigated port ethernet, or 10Gig E ? The client edit computer has to have some way of plugging into your storage – how does it plug in ?
The SATA-over-Ethernet protocol used is a mature protocol which provides reliable and fast delivery using raw point-to-point ethernet transport. Device discovery is almost instant and plug-and-play without IP setup hassles or limitations.
REPLY – this is called AoE, correct ? again, when we plug the client workstation (FCP) into your “box”, is it a single Gig E cable, 2 Gig E cables, a CX4 10Gig cable ? Does it plug into a central switch ? Is the switch part of your product, that holds the drives ?
Robin writes –
We have 2x 1GbE ports on the SATA-SAN Dual GbE units and both of them can be used at the same time at wire speed to read and write from any raid set in the unit. So the Dual GbE SATA-SAN storage achieves >200MB/sec, maxing out at ~220MB/sec. With SATA-SAN 10GbE storage units we achieve >500MB/sec sustained throughput and ~800-900MB/sec out of the cache. That’s faster than 4Gb fibre channel…REPLY – I was told by several people (and all could be wrong, and I certainly am no expert) that running a dual aggrigated etherenet port on the client workstation would not increase the bandwidth to the server computer that runs the storage. Does running AoE resolve this issue, giving the ability to get over 200mb/sec from dual Gig E interface ?
SATA-SAN is an exciting cost-effective alternative to fibre channel with all the benefits of a simpler multi-GbE or 10GbE infrastructure.
REPLY – existing solutions use multi Gig E using link aggrigation protocol in managed switches (with multi port ethernet cards) to obtain larger “pipes”, but there is still limited bandwidth using ethernet to the CLIENT workstation. Does your solution resolve this issue ?
Bob mentioned MetaLAN – this uses TCP/IP to provide gatewayed access over the LAN to a SAN, so this will only run around 50MB/sec at usual LAN speeds. MetaLAN is similar to running iSCSI which is also slow. We often supply MetaLAN to gateway into our SATA-SAN storage networks running MetaSAN allowing some users to access SAN data at LAN speeds.
REPLY – doesn’t 2degreesfrost specify MetaSAN as their user interface on their website ? If I am wrong, what is your user interface – is it propriatary (unique to your company) ?
FROM THE 2DEGREESFROST WEBSITE –
With 2ºFrost’s proprietary SAN-Adapt™ software, SATA-SAN supports cross-platform SAN shared filesystems FibreJet and MetaSAN which provide complementary high-performance cross-platform approaches to SAN file and volume sharing for content creation, video and audio editing SAN workgroups and shared Server storage.We’ve worked with both of these companies to bring their software to the SATA-SAN platform and integrate it into our solution-level offerings.
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Bob,
I apologize for not answering this new post earlier, but I have been working on a CTO-level project and am not ‘always on the Cow’.
The ‘tough questions’ you say you asked were by posting somewhere on the Cow rather than emailing or calling us. They are not tough, but easy questions to answer and I will address these here in the forums shortly.
We pride ourselves on a quick response to customer inquiries by email or phone, neither of which you appear to have tried. There is also a customer inquiry form on our website that you are welcome to use and receive a quick response.
As an example, we received an inquiry from a previous poster on this thread and we responded to him within a couple of hours with a call and several Info PDFs. He managed to contact us…
Regarding PCMall, they recently updated their system and the link to our landing page is temporarily broken. But we are still there – just search under “SATA-SAN” or “2Degrees Frost” and you will find a long list of example SKUs. Their pricing is somewhat high compared to our current pricing because they have not yet updated their website.
All the SATA-SAN storage systems are BTO and available directly from us or via PC/Mac Mall on application.
Thanks for your interest and please feel free to call or email WalterZ regarding any questions you may have.
Robin Frost
CTO
2ºFrost Data Solutions
http://www.2degreesfrost.com“Seriously Cool Storage”
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