EMC Greenplum Drawbacks

■ Reportedly inconsistent HA/DR. EMC's reference customers were less appreciative of its
resource queue management in relation to the overall operation of its DBMS — several
commented that this made setting up HA an issue. Some also reported problems due to the
absence of incremental backup capability, with large databases specifically affected. EMC's
resource management also attracted criticism, with some noting that hardware balancing is the
user's job and not managed well by the DBMS. EMC acquired Israeli
company More IT Resources with a view to using its flagship MoreVRP product to improve its
performance monitoring, historical playback of issues and real-time resource allocation. This
indicates that EMC is fully aware of the situation and determined to address it. EMC has
incremental backup capabilities on its road map , which is also likely to include userconfigured
data retention policies.

■ Compatibility and loading issues. Customers report that loading issues exist in relation to
data type compatibility and extraction, transformation and loading tool compatibility.

■ EMC's support for its DBMS. Greenplum customers reported some difficulty in moving to
EMC as the supporting vendor, due to a loss of intimacy and a lack of product understanding,
especially from low-level support staff. Recent indications are that EMC's support model is
improving, but, given the additional HA/DR, compatibility and loading issues, this remains a
factor that prospective clients should treat with low level but insistent concern. It is here that the
real challenge of combining the capabilities of EMC and Greenplum lies.