Oracle ignores clients of Sun

Lead attempts to get support of Oracle when using hardware or the software from Sun to disappointment, the IT analyst Paul Venezia writes. "Oracle does it purposely? Or all who knew or cared for beauty of hardware solutions of Sun left the company?", - it asks a rhetorical question. In the last several months Paul had problems with two Sun-servers of an integrated system of storage.

Most of them are connected with the mistakes made in new versions of software for the equipment (firmware - firmwares) - such as tens of thousands of false input-output operations of CIFS (Common Internet File System – is known also as SMB – the protocol intended for file sharing in a LAN), which were caused by one workstation simple opening of the Explorer window for determination of the general access to files of storage.

This mistake was made in the same software updating which corrected significant problems in the system of removal of pictures (snapshot) of data and recovered work of replication which was broken in the previous release. By the way, updating of a firmware also caused spontaneous reset of an array once during some time frame.

For the main storage system which should be available 24/7/365 it is not normal, Paul notes. "Coupons of support are open, phone calls are made, there were left without answer e-mails... Questions were turned to a binary patch (patch) which was obviously worked especially for the solution of this problem, but it brought with itself others. Became obvious that support does not know in what occurs", - he noted.

It is difficult to blame support personnel because they are exhausted and poor in the management decisions which followed Sun acquisition, the analyst considers. Feeling pity for souls with insufficient professional training and small information volume for the solution, not to change a situation. Something should cause a flow of complaints which will express contempt to the bosses bearing responsibility for this "the parody of support", the analyst writes. "There is no justification to such level of neglect by clients who generously paid contract support of the equipment", - concluded Venetsia.

Some time ago the analyst wrote about how the overloaded websites of support can entail much more problems, than solve. The new website of support of Oracle which integrated all products of Oracle and Sun on one portal is a fine example of how it is possible to be overzealous easily.

The portal for 100% is built using Flash-technology (the company claims that there is a version of HTML, but it could not find it) and did not allow it to get access to support resources within two weeks after switching. He even called and received the coupon of support of the solution of this problem – the coupon described under what conditions he could not get access to coupons of support. To it promised to resolve a question within an hour. On its real solution weeks left.

When Sun was Sun, and Oracle was Oracle, both the quality of support, and quality of the software were much better, than now. Now all this looks as a carrot and stick. It is necessary to hope that there will be improvements for some time, but you should not wait for them too quickly. Reality such is what to leave to other vendor will not turn out: invested too much money of the company in storage arrays. They should work, there is no other choice, the analyst writes.