[Users] RIDICULOUS!!!! NetApp pulls back FREE Downloadable VSC Plugin from Community !!!

[Matt .]

Hi All,

In the past we have tested the NetApp VSC plugin that was available for
beta testing on the forum of NetApp which seems to be vanished.

While doing some tests on an Ovirt installation I saw that the certificate
of the VSC module was incorrect and I invested this further and came to
this place again:

http://captainkvm.com/2014/02/vsc-for-rhev-is-ga-today/

So I did what was asked for, created an account and tried to download this
free software, which was also mentioned here:

http://lists.ovirt.org/pipermail/users/2013-June/015021.html

And no free download possible, it's just a NetApp Point of Sales Hoax it
seems as I asked on the CaptainKVM blog (which is actually a sales person
from NetApp or so following his email in the maillinglist but writes as a
representative of Redhat it seems.

So I asked on the blog of CaptainKVM:

"Hi,

Is it possible that I cannot download it as it's activated following my
account ?"

And the repsone came:

"

Hello Yamakasi,

I am very happy to see that you've commented on my blog. I was forwarded
the email where you expressed your frustration with NetApp over "pulling"
the free VSC plugin.

We have not pulled the plugin. It is still available and it is still free
for customers. The communities site that we used to offer the beta program
for testing happened to be the most convenient place to host the beta. The
GA release is available at support.netapp.com with all of the other fully
supported software from NetApp, including both free and paid software.

If you have 1 supported system associated with your login and 20
unsupported systems, there is nothing stopping you from downloading the
plugin and using it with any of your systems, even the unsupported ones.
The reason we had to be so strict about the officially supported versions
of ONTAP is the QA resources it takes to do it properly. We take QA very
seriously at NetApp. Each minor release (8.1.1, 8.2.0, etc) requires it's
own test. We simply don't have the resources to go back and test 7.3.1 and
such. It may work with the older releases, it might not.

Again, if you have a supported NetApp system associated with your login,
you can download the VSC for RHEV software.

thanks again for reaching out, and I hope this helped. If you need further
clarification, reply to me here and I will reach out to you via email.

Captain KVM
"

Now this is strange as I wrote this email to the lists and some people got
it forwared but it never arrived at the list, so I just make this write up
a little buit more detailed as you can read.

My response to Captain KVM's response is the following that is still under
moderation it seems:

"Hi Jon,
Thank you for your reply, I'm not satisfied with this.
As people, as I do, test oVirt against system using Ontap Simulator a
customer can give you the Simulator but cannot give you SN/s where you can
register with or the needed information to get a customer account. The same
for evaluation. You as tester don't own the system and the Simulator is
just a test devide that cannot make any damage so is great for testing.
What you say about QA is really out of range in this issue. oVirt is
upstream to RHEV and you want to tackle things there first, RHEV-M is just
finetuning where RedHat can add support on their small changes so they can
support it.
So if you want to have a POS as NetApp this software should be free for
download so people can actually test upfront.
Waht you say "If you have 1 supported system associated with your login and
20 unsupported systems" is 100% against the policy of NetApp so it's just a
vague reason not to release it to the public where you actually say to your
customers... hey protect our property by doing something we say that's
illegal on a Discommesed system.
If you want to have a decent tested system, let oVirt users test it. At the
other side, they already helped you guys out on the forum and with emails,
irc, so on to get this small piece of software right... they also dind't
charge you for that.
It's bad in the name for NetApp so I hope you guys het it right again!
Cheers,
Matt"



The original email to the mailinglist:

On older systems it's quite nice to test this out, you don't need a support
contract on systems you cannot upgrade over OnTap 7.x as it's not that
supported anymore.

What I have seen is that people got the experience that the VSC Certificate
that was generated for VSC4RHEVbeta2 has ended on 22-02-14 16:00 and their
release of the stable version was on 27-02-14
http://captainkvm.com/2014/02/vsc-for-rhev-is-ga-today/

How come ??

It's nice of NetApp that they actually use people to test their software,
also on Ovirt, to the public and pull it back when they have it stable and
say "thank you", it's really ridiculous and rude!

People who have older NetApp without support contracts because it's not
worth it, as NetApp forces you to upgrade to system with at least OnTap
8.x, have an issue on this. Even people that use Evaluation software on
OnTap and do release checks on oVirt, the upstream to RHEV-M cannot
download it anymore.

I think this is a direct message from NetApp to say, MOVE to GlusterFS and
leave us... I think people will more and more with such kind of rude
behaviours!

It's time to put more testing into GlusterFS and don't help NetApp out with
their pre-sales!

I say Hooray GlusterFS, spread out the word!

Regards,

Matt



So it seems that the oVirt community is used by other companies. The oVirt
community puts lots of effort in bugtracing and have the guts to run large
systems on softtware that RedHat sales in the end after upstreaming to RHEV
(thanks RedHat for this nice and piece of software and the devs in the IRC
channel and mailing lists!)

It's not done in my opinion that NetApp takes advantage of this. oVirt
users are the first ones that want to try it out and we finally get this
situation.

Call it frustration if you want, I would call it bad faith.

Bummer.
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