Nerhood Weblog

Today is the start of our NetApp installation, so I’d thought I’d document the process. The started to arrive a little over a week ago and I must admit that I’m currently not that impressed. I don’t know where the problems started (with NetApp directly or with our reseller), but we’ve had one issue after the other getting all the parts.

Our office building has no loading dock and the only access is via a very narrow alley, and across a cobblestone walkway. I specifically stated that we need to have a small truck with a lift gate deliver the equipment because of the issues. Well they got one part right, it was a truck with a lift gate.

Now part of our order was a new equipment rack to hold all the electronics. The bad part was that they shipped the rack already loaded with the filer heads. This made the rack weigh almost 1,000 lbs. It came all crated up in this really nice shipping container and a pallet jack to move it. There arose the first problem the crate was too big to enter the door, and it because the equipment was already installed we couldn’t turn it on its side to get it the building. Therefore we had to take it out of the crate, and roll it across the cobblestones with the tiny wheels on the rack. Not fun.

Getting back to the boxes, one of them was delivered completely opened. Now the receptionist was not supposed to sign for anything that was already opened, but she did. So that set off a couple of day’s worth of emails to get everything straightened out. We still are waiting for the last set of “missing” cables to arrive this morning before the tech gets here.

As a first time customer, I’m shocked at what we didn’t receive with our shipment. There were no manuals, no install CDs, and no slick Read Me First packs. We got a box that was labeled software licenses, we open it up and there is a laser printed sheet that tells you to log into their NOW site and download the information. I am not impressed one bit, especially considering what we paid for this equipment (a little less than one quarter of my yearly operating budget). Let’s hope the actual installation process goes better and the equipment lives up to it’s billing as being super reliable and easy to manage.

So far I rate this as 1 out of 5 stars.