Ask HN: Why is there no mention of VxRail on HN?

2 points by ekiara 9 years ago | 3 comments

I've consulted at a two places in my country that have upgraded their adhoc VMWare setups to VxRail (converged storage and compute or something).

Looking at the vendor costs and what benefits an organization seems to get from a VxRail appliance I didn't really see it as a justified purchase for any organization. So I've started research on VxRail and reading case studies etc. One thing I've noticed is that there are zero mentions of VxRail in HN (I tried searching both with Google and Algolia). Why is that?

With Docker, Kubernetes or just KVM and a decent clustered storage solution (Ceph?) can I achieve basically the same level of service but with open solutions?

patio11 9 years ago |

Largely as a function of demographics, HN tends to discuss technologies which are either big with the Cool Kids in Silicon Valley (e.g. Docker), the publicly-discussable inventions of AppAmaGooBookSoft (e.g. Kubernetes), and things that small tech-forward businesses worldwide would reasonably choose to adopt (e.g. PHP/MySQL).

The significant parts of technology which the userbase doesn't cover nearly so much are Big Freaking Enterprises (Oracle databases, SAP, etc) and technologies primarily used in non-tech-forward companies (e.g. some parts of the Microsoft stack).

If you think the view might be a little lopsided, my best advice is "be the change you want to see in it."

NikolaNovak 9 years ago | |

Agreed; by design and by emergence, there is a self-reinforcing audience on Hacker News with occasionally fairly homogenous set of interests and preferences.

I've spent my entire career working with Big Freaking Enterprises, but understand and accept that likes of IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, etc will never be perceived as anything but uncool useless dinosaurs on HN. VMWare is being commoditized, and either entering or entered firmly into that category.

[I find it somewhat amusing to occasionally dig out one of the "Big Cool Kids" still uses "Big Ol' Dinosaurs" for HCM, Financials, etc - any back-office work:]

wmf 9 years ago |

Besides what patio11 said, I don't know how much there is to discuss about that kind of stuff. You pay a ton of money, they handhold you to install/operate it, and over time you come to realize that it isn't as great as they promised. And if you criticize it in public the vendor may reduce your discount.