HP Users Ring My Phone Off The Hook

End users at HP's Tech Forum, underway this week in Las Vegas, have contacted me regarding my last blog post, Inflated Vendor Claims, to share some of their concerns regarding Brocade's HBAs as they relate to HP environments.These HP end users pointed out to me that Brocade HBAs don't support HP ProLiant G6, DL120 G5, DL 320 G5p and DL785 G5 servers. In fact, there is no support for any HP servers prior to G5. In terms of storage, the Brocade HBAs don't even support HP EVA6400, EVA 8400 or any of the Hitachi-sourced XP high-end disk arrays. And with no support for HP's BladeSystem Matrix, tape offerings, or Integrity or HP9000 servers, I am astounded that Brocade refers to these HBAs as "Enterprise-Class."I was surprised to learn from these HP users that the HBAs don't support VMware, MS HyperV, or Citrix. In the age of the Virtual Data Center, how can you sell an HBA that doesn't support these environments? And oddly, Brocade doesn't support HP's operating system, HP-UX. Is this an "Enterprise-Class" HBA? In my opinion, this seems like some type of bizarre experiment by Brocade where they are seeking to gain market share by not only giving their product away, but by potentially putting customers' data centers in jeopardy in the process.I understand that others feel Brocade has a lot of sales "feet-on-the-street" to sell directly into enterprise data centers, and that Emulex and QLogic sell mainly through resellers -- and some feel that this difference could enable Brocade to gain market share through sheer brute force selling. Okay, I get that, but gaining market share at what cost? Brocade does Fibre Channel switching exceptionally well, there is no doubt -- they have a long history in this area and are even considered pioneers. HBAs? Why now? To those anonymous folks who like to comment about blogs, bloggers, shills, advertising, and analysts, I say we are not on anyone's payroll but the firms we work for, our own. Step away from your anonymous shield and converse in the open where we are -- it's sunny here and the weather is warm ... come on out. Don't worry; we will not insult you as you have us. If you have some real data to share ... share it.As I said before, I believe some acts need to be cleaned up.Now on to SSD's and the controllers that they are installed behind. I expect a lot of comments on my next blog as well.