I’ll make that decision thanks!

One of the things that often bugs me about computers, and Im sure it bugs loads of other people as well, is that they have an annoying habit of assuming that we are thick and they “know better” – in my case that’s usually true

This *feature* usually rears its head in the form of removing choice from users – very annoying and out of step in a world where freedom of choice is key to our society (thats my deep thought for the day).  

Sooooooo…. one thing that’s been causing rifts and difference of opinion recently in the storage world is the use of RAID6 or RAID 5 dual parity as its sometimes called.   

Anyway, earlier today I was reading an interesting post on storagezilla, where storagezilla announces the best way to get rid of EMC ………. Im going to paraphrase – “if people stopped heckling EMC, they will keel over and die”.  So as I don’t want to see EMC keel over and die I figure I’ll  do my bit and keep EMC ticking over by heckling them –  

Here goes - Why the hell were they so dumb, thick, stupid, behind the times, out of tune with the market, to not include RAID 6 capability in their recent refresh of their dated, aging slow and unreliable product line?  I mean all the *top* storage companies like NetApp, HP, HDS…… are doing it.  Why did Evil Machine Company decide they knew better than us and chose to remove our choice.  Hell, we live in a world of choice – unless you live in EMCs world of that is!!!!!!! Im thinking that bout of heckling should cause the blood to run in the veins of EMC keep their heart beating for a while longer  

Of course my babbling above was just for show and I have no major issues with EMC.  However, in all seriousness I would like to know why they made the decision to leave it out.  Do you guys out there working with EMC storage ever have needs for RAID 6?  After all, RAID6 is the only commonly deployed RAID technology that guarantees to protect your data in the event of dual drive failure.   

The only reason I could think (in the last 30 seconds)  for leaving it out was that RAID6 obviously incurs a significant performance hit due to the extra parity generation – but surely everybody knows that and will only be deploying RAID6 in suitable situations.   

Or is it may be because EMC are lagging behind with their development of RAID 6 and didn’t want to go to market with it before they have it running as efficiently as possible?   

I hope its not because EMC think that its not needed, after all, the storage world is moving away from the traditional approach where the vendors had all the know and made all the decisions for you.  I appreciate advice and guidence from vendors and people who know more than me but at the end of the day I like options. 

Nigel 

PS.  I don’t thrive on heckling so if you’re going to slate my glaring lack of EMC know – go easy on me