Blade Watch

One of the things I love to do is ask users what they think of the technology, at the same time understanding concepts of preference and brand loyalty, I have always been careful about doing an open ’scientific’ survey as the results could be debated and discussed until the end of time, those prepared surveys I feel are often not done by the people that are busy ‘doing stuff’ they just don’t bother providing feedback, life is too short.

I am the first to say, that the process was completely open, unplanned, it was in no way scientific, it was done in about 10 minutes on a per user basis and involved asking them five questions, in the fashion how’s life oh and by the way…

1. Which servers do you use and which do you use the Lights out features the most on?
2. What aspects of the lights out features do you like the most and why?
3. What aspects of the lights out features do you like least?
4. What fixes/enhancements would you request?
5. Is there an order of preference when it comes to usability in reference to lights out?

As you can see, all off the top of the head, conducted at random tho ten of my colleagues. I took those, put them into a readable format, and each vendor will be receiving an email from Bladewatch.com with feedback on their individual lights out card. The results will not be published, they are for the vendors themselves, not for marketing or comparisons “who’s got the best lights out” and we don’t necessarily ask feedback, though we promise to forward it on. It was a vehicle to highlight issues that the vendors might be aware of or not, as ever it’s not as a vehicle to be negative, more a discussion on where we are and where we would like to be.

At this point I must highlight that the results were random, and did not take account of box type, firmware/drivers, I wanted a real answer, Giles you use Dell’s DRAC, what do you like and what don’t you like, and from that we can see what his issues are, site, user or platform specific as they might be.

Example feedback:

• Issues relating to java versions – client issues
• Issues around mounting multiple types of media for remote software installation/server deployment
• Identification/systems management

If you have any comments, do get in touch and we will pass them on.

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