In early January, I wrote an article about how unimpressed I was with VMware’s Remote CLI, the tool released along with ESX Server 3i and—at the time—the only way to perform a Storage VMotion operation. Since that time, of course, a Storage VMotion plugin for the VI Client has been released.
About a month later, I joined with Bob Plankers of LoneSysAdmin in expressing some disappointment about VMware Infrastructure 3.5. I also vented some frustration about issues trying to import the Remote CLI appliance into VirtualCenter from an OVF file, and problems with jumbo frames and iSCSI/NFS.
Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve expressed concerns about VMware’s products, despite claims that I am a VMware fanboy. (I do admit to being a Mac fanboy. I’m currently receiving professional help.)
The point of this story—and yes, there is a point—is what happened after those posts. Within just a few days, VMware contacted me. No, not to hound me for speaking out against them, but to thank me for “keeping them honest” (their words) and to offer assistance in working with me to resolve these issues. Since that time, I’ve spoken with several Product Managers and Sr. Product Managers within VMware, all of whom seem genuine in their desire to make sure that the issues I experienced aren’t the results of bugs in the product or, if they are bugs, to identify them and fix them.
I have to say that’s pretty impressive. It’s highly doubtful that VMware can or does respond to every customer in the same fashion, although I wish they did, but it does occur to me that at least they’re trying. I suppose I could be cynical and say that they’re only behaving this way because they don’t want to look bad, but who am I to question their motivations? I’ve said before there’s nothing wrong with a company that’s out to make money—it does make the economy run, after all—but what really matters is the means by which the company seeks that goal.
Tags: ESX, Networking, Storage, Virtualization, VMware
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
http://blog.scottlowe.org/2008/02/25/vendor-responsiveness/trackback/
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 8:44 am
william bishop
I’ve heard the same type of thing several times from other companies that vmware sells to. It’s certainly peculiar, but it seems not unique to you or them. I pretty much blew it off until one of their SE’s came to us about two months ago to ask about a SR that we had put in a long time ago, which was resolved, and was looking to see if there was a way they could have improved upon the experience, or if we had any suggestions.
An offhand remark we made once about something we didn’t love in 3.0(can’t even remember what it was) to another engineer ended up resulting in several calls that seemed to be aimed at improving their product. I don’t know what’s up with this company, it’s certainly offputting though. I expect a questionaire(which I’m almost positive is discarded) after an event, I don’t expect people to show up for lunch and a tete a tete! I know actual customers whose requests have been incorporated into the product. I’ve never seen such as this, but I think I will remain a loyal customer from here on.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 9:18 am
Kevin
Did they give you any idea when they would support Jumbo frames with iSCSI HBA’s?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 10:20 am
slowe
Kevin,
No, they didn’t share any of that information. Some of the conversations I’ve had seem to imply that (with regular NICs at least) jumbo frames will work, but aren’t supported. I haven’t been able to actually confirm that via testing yet.
Friday, February 29, 2008 at 1:25 pm
william bishop
It does work, but is not technically supported yet. You will not notice improvements in anything except databases(possibility).
W.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Randy Robertson
Jumbo frame support in vmkernel is there as of 3.5. I wouldn’t knock a feature or not try it just because it is no “officially supported”, we wouldn’t put the code out there unless were were reasonably confident that it works.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 7:16 pm
slowe
Randy,
Thanks for your response. Understandably, customers are a bit uncomfortable building mission-critical solutions based on technologies or functionality that is not officially supported. I have had problems with jumbo frame support in vmkernel (I’m working with a Product Manager now to recreate the problem), so apparently it’s not as rock-solid as it needs to be. When it is, I’m confident VMware will provide official support and customers will begin embracing it.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 10:52 am
Cisco Home Lab
I’ve had some exposure to CMMi’s Software Development Life Cycle and from I’ve seen, actively seeking feedback from your customers is a sign of a mature software development company. I get the impression that VMWare has done a good job of building this design philosophy into their company culture.
As for “I suppose I could be cynical and say that they’re only behaving this way because they don’t want to look bad…”, I have a different take.
Anyone in IT knows what a pain it is to deal with someone who is always complaining about a problem, but will not take the time to actually let you fix it. I find these people to be the worst type of customers to support.
But what if you had a customer who not only points out issues, but is more than willing to go that extra mile with you to try to identify and solve those problems?
These are the type of customers you want because not only can they find value in your product, but you gain value from their willingness to work with you. I’d say you fit into this category.
I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with several VM reps and they always seemed willing and eager to take what you are telling them back to the design teams. For us, it was a Multicast issue that was preventing us from fully utilizing our VMWare environment for application testing. Not only did this issue was this issue conveyed back to the design team, it was put in the 3.5 roadmap and we were apprised of 3.5’s status.
And we are just a small SMB application developer in a niche market.