Re: Supported configurations (was: Second ASP at a remote location)

["Lukas Beeler" <lukas.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Pete Massiello
<pmassiello-ml@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  We are talking about a tape drive?  Why should the vendor care what media
>  and how someone backs up their data?  I would be the first person to raise a

Well, in order to provide appropriate customer support, an application
vendor has to make sure that everything works.

For example, our software uses journalling and commitment control.
This requires some special considerations when backing up data. Our
integrated backup routines take care of this - if the customer uses
his own routines he will have to make sure that he does exactly what
we consider a "supported configuration". Of course for media, we just
rely on IBM - if IBM supports it, it should work with our application.
If it doesn't, then it's our applications fault.

I do not know why said application vendor said that they don't support
tape encryption. It could be that they have never tested it - so it'd
be a good idea to say it's an unstested configuration. We usually have
three categories - supported, untested and unsupported. Untested are
configurations that we have never put through QA, but should work. For
example, we have never tested running our software on a model 595 -
but it should work - so it's an untested configuration.

Unsupported means that we have figured out that a given component does
not work smoothly with our application. Maybe they tested drive
encryption and noticed problems (though that seems improbable).

>  vendor, he said unsupported hardware (I don't even remember if those were
>  his words) by the application vendor.

There's a huge variety of printers that we don't support because they
don't work right with our application. I don't see this as something
impossible.

>         Now, you are biased as you are an application vendor.  Should the
>  application vendor worry about the supported hardware attached to the system
>  or their application.

For many things we rely on IBM to provide proper infrastructure to
build on. That usually works out perfectly. But not always - see the
above note for printers.

>         Are these the same application vendors who recommend 8MM tape
>  drives, which are write many and read never?  Please do not get me started.

We recommend LTO tapedrives. Many customers go for the
as-cheap-as-possible route, though.