1. Thanks to everyone commenting in the thread, it’s all great information.
2. It’s obvious that the original complaint, that the proposed 12 disk CML system was undersized for the customer’s workload.
3. I had the following experience, personally. I put out a request for bids earlier this year, and received responses from several vendors, among them Compellent, and Netapp. We were looking to replace an aged EVA 4000 that was hosting an Oracle RAC database with an array that could handle both the DBs, as well as our VMware load. We were using a newer EVA4400 for the VMware, some other DBs, and mail servers at the time. The Compellent engineers did in fact request very granular (3 second interval data for approximately 6 weeks of total time) performance numbers. Because this was the most granular data requested by any of the vendors, I offered to provide it to all of them. One vendor in particular (not Netapp) said their tools wouldn’t accept data that granular, and requested 30 second interval instead, so I provided that to them. 

Before I had even completed the capture of the performance data, I received a Netapp quote for a V-series array with 12 15k spindles and PAM2. They said that I could just use this to virtualize the existing EVA4400 for VMware, and use the spindles/PAM in the Netapp to host the Oracle RAC workload. While this was definitely an interesting proposal, and getting Netapp features on the EVA would have been nice, this wasn’t what I asked for to begin with. The data collection was completed and data provided to all interested vendors (Netapp reseller stood by their original quote and said they didn’t need the perf data.) From Compellent, and other vendors, I received a bid for 50-80 Tier 1 (15K) spindles, along with 10-30 Tier 3 (7.2K) spindles, along with well laid out documentation of the information gleaned from the perf data and what specific data points had driven their recommendations. I reiterated to the Netapp vendor that I was looking for a standalone array to host the required systems, and if they could reconfigure their bid to meet that requirement, the value add of being able to virtualize the EVA 4400 would be taken into account. The continued to stand by the assertion that 12 15K spindles and PAM would be as good as 50+ spindles from anyone else, and even had the gall to say, “If it’s not, you can just hang another disk shelf off the controller.” When this vendor was told we had selected someone else, they responded by trying to play the “First Hit is Free” game by knocking nearly 45% off their initial bid. 

The point is, bad recommendations sometimes get made regardless of whose storage is being sold. We ended up with a Compellent system with 63 (60 active, 3 spare) 15K spindles and 24 (22 active, 2 spare) 7.2K spindles. Everything works as advertised, and I’m getting outstanding performance. The system is easy to use and manage, and the service is top notch. Could I have been just as happy with a correctly architected NetApp system? I’m sure I could. It’s not a question of “Can you provide the performance I need?” with any of the vendors I worked with, and there were a lot of the features of the Netapp that I really liked. Unfortunately, sometimes the vendor/reseller gets in the way of providing a system that meets the customers requirements.

Just because, I want to say that I am not employed by, nor am I receiving any compensation from, any vendor mentioned or not mentioned. I wrote this completely to provide my own experience. 

HTH,
John

As for why IBM and Dell were fighting for 3Par and not Compellent?  Compellent was smart and waited.  Why get in the middle and reduce the value of your company…it’s about strategy.  They waited and received the amount that was acceptable and from a company that had their best interest and future at heart…Dell.

“Anyone downstream from Oracle that is consuming Solaris source code for their own distributions or amusement will continue to be able to do so, much as Oracle waits for Red Hat to finish its Enterprise Linux releases and versions, and then makes its own snapshots, replacing logos and such to make Oracle Enterprise Linux. So the OpenSolaris-based distros from Nexenta, Belenix, and SchilliX can continue to base themselves on CDDL-licensed Solaris code, but they are passive recipients of whatever Oracle cooks up, and not part of the development process as that Solaris code is being created.”

Considering the above, it is hard to say if Compellent (now Dell) will evaluate a different technology to power its future NAS heads…