5 ms·

Why would you not want to try to inform people who don't already know that they want your service that your service might actually be useful to them?

alphager 6y ago
If you don't know what ZFS and zfs-snapshots are, you are not the target audience of the service. No sense in trying to explain it. If you have even the slightest knowledge about zfs-snapshots, the product is self-explanatory.
m0zg 6y ago
Because such an explanation will lead to: 1. Near-zero conversions. If you aren't already using ZFS, you aren't going to start just to use this service. And If you do use ZFS, you likely know what `zfs send` does. 2. The few conversions that do happen are almost certain to be high-maintenance.
Aldipower 6y ago
I think it is not the purpose of this site to explain somebody how ZFS works, because this is simply just not done in 2 sentences. You need some hours and days to get the idea of ZFS.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  I'm not asking for that, I am asking for a short, clear description of what their service is good for and why I might want it.
  - jsjohnst 6y ago
    If you don’t understand it, maybe that was intentional on their part to not do business with you. It’s not a successful path in all cases, but if you have a niche product targeting a small audience, I can see value in what they did.
  - nix23 6y ago
    It's a 8TB ZFS-formated Drive in a Data-center which you can access over ssh...is everything written. But if you like Marketing-Sites..please read that: https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul And now explain to me what it is please...
    - gen220 6y ago
      It’s funny how “DNS” doesn’t appear anywhere on that page. In case you're actually fishing for an explanation, Consul is basically a Very Nice™ DNS server for your service infrastructure.
      - znpy 6y ago
        Hashicorp is great but should really start adding some real-world-sysadmin language to their websites. Every piece of tech is generally worth the time investment, but you have to trust them and start learning the tool before you can realise what it actually does. Consul is one such case... Consul is much more than DNS of course, but at the core it's DNS. Unless you describe it as fancy DNS with extra features, it's description page doesn't make much sense.
        nix23 6y ago
        >Hashicorp is great but should really start adding some real-world-sysadmin language to their websites. Oh yes Hashicorp is great please don't get me wrong, but if you just read that landing-page it's like WTF. But if you know what Hashi is doing and read the Documentation just a little bit everything becomes clear...but that page alone just sounds like pure Marketing blabla cloud stuff.
        gen220 6y ago
        I'm sure it was A/B tested for sales purposes. I think engineers know the reputation of hashicorp products at this point. The marketing site is for the C-suite people, documentation is for the technical people. FWIW, their documentation pages [1] are actually a great landing page for technical readers. The comparison to other software is pretty good for "grounding" consul into your other infra. [1]: https://www.consul.io/docs/intro https://www.consul.io/docs/intro [2]: https://www.consul.io/docs/intro/vs https://www.consul.io/docs/intro/vs
  - PKop 6y ago
    They did that. You're not their target market.
  - HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
    In the same way UI/UX can be used to get novice/ non-technical users into something it can also be used to filter them out.
  - croon 6y ago
    It's axiomatic. If you don't understand how you may need their service, you do not need their service. I'd welcome being proven wrong, but I would bet money there's not a single customer they're missing by their current front page. The only way you, as a person not knowing what ZFS is, would have any use of their service is if you, after explanation, are so motivated to pay them money that you change your own data hosting to match a service you previously didn't know you needed even if stumbling over it.
PKop 6y ago
Because it's an alpha product and they do not want those types of users right now. They're literally trying to filter out uninformed users. Customer discrimination is a perfectly valid tactic in certain scenarios. Do you dispute this?
roywiggins 6y ago
I don't think they want to have to spend time doing tech support for people who don't already know what ZFS is.
- radious_co 6y ago
  Bingo haha. That's exactly it. I'm not trying to hide ZFS or simplify it for the end-user. At least not yet. It's all about creating products that we would want to use. So that's exactly what we did.
oarsinsync 6y ago
If you actually want to learn about ZFS and how it works, there's a submission today on the front page that you should spend some time on https://www.servethehome.com/an-introduction-to-zfs-a-place-to-start/ https://www.servethehome.com/an-introduction-to-zfs-a-place-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25157491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25157491

alphager 6y ago

If you don't know what ZFS and zfs-snapshots are, you are not the target audience of the service. No sense in trying to explain it. If you have even the slightest knowledge about zfs-snapshots, the product is self-explanatory.

m0zg 6y ago

Because such an explanation will lead to: 1. Near-zero conversions. If you aren't already using ZFS, you aren't going to start just to use this service. And If you do use ZFS, you likely know what `zfs send` does. 2. The few conversions that do happen are almost certain to be high-maintenance.

Aldipower 6y ago

I think it is not the purpose of this site to explain somebody how ZFS works, because this is simply just not done in 2 sentences. You need some hours and days to get the idea of ZFS.

user-the-name 6y ago
I'm not asking for that, I am asking for a short, clear description of what their service is good for and why I might want it.
- jsjohnst 6y ago
  If you don’t understand it, maybe that was intentional on their part to not do business with you. It’s not a successful path in all cases, but if you have a niche product targeting a small audience, I can see value in what they did.
- nix23 6y ago
  It's a 8TB ZFS-formated Drive in a Data-center which you can access over ssh...is everything written. But if you like Marketing-Sites..please read that: https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul And now explain to me what it is please...
  - gen220 6y ago
    It’s funny how “DNS” doesn’t appear anywhere on that page. In case you're actually fishing for an explanation, Consul is basically a Very Nice™ DNS server for your service infrastructure.
    - znpy 6y ago
      Hashicorp is great but should really start adding some real-world-sysadmin language to their websites. Every piece of tech is generally worth the time investment, but you have to trust them and start learning the tool before you can realise what it actually does. Consul is one such case... Consul is much more than DNS of course, but at the core it's DNS. Unless you describe it as fancy DNS with extra features, it's description page doesn't make much sense.
      - nix23 6y ago
        >Hashicorp is great but should really start adding some real-world-sysadmin language to their websites. Oh yes Hashicorp is great please don't get me wrong, but if you just read that landing-page it's like WTF. But if you know what Hashi is doing and read the Documentation just a little bit everything becomes clear...but that page alone just sounds like pure Marketing blabla cloud stuff.
        gen220 6y ago
        I'm sure it was A/B tested for sales purposes. I think engineers know the reputation of hashicorp products at this point. The marketing site is for the C-suite people, documentation is for the technical people. FWIW, their documentation pages [1] are actually a great landing page for technical readers. The comparison to other software is pretty good for "grounding" consul into your other infra. [1]: https://www.consul.io/docs/intro https://www.consul.io/docs/intro [2]: https://www.consul.io/docs/intro/vs https://www.consul.io/docs/intro/vs
- PKop 6y ago
  They did that. You're not their target market.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  In the same way UI/UX can be used to get novice/ non-technical users into something it can also be used to filter them out.
- croon 6y ago
  It's axiomatic. If you don't understand how you may need their service, you do not need their service. I'd welcome being proven wrong, but I would bet money there's not a single customer they're missing by their current front page. The only way you, as a person not knowing what ZFS is, would have any use of their service is if you, after explanation, are so motivated to pay them money that you change your own data hosting to match a service you previously didn't know you needed even if stumbling over it.

PKop 6y ago

Because it's an alpha product and they do not want those types of users right now. They're literally trying to filter out uninformed users. Customer discrimination is a perfectly valid tactic in certain scenarios. Do you dispute this?

roywiggins 6y ago

I don't think they want to have to spend time doing tech support for people who don't already know what ZFS is.

radious_co 6y ago
Bingo haha. That's exactly it. I'm not trying to hide ZFS or simplify it for the end-user. At least not yet. It's all about creating products that we would want to use. So that's exactly what we did.

oarsinsync 6y ago

If you actually want to learn about ZFS and how it works, there's a submission today on the front page that you should spend some time on https://www.servethehome.com/an-introduction-to-zfs-a-place-to-start/ https://www.servethehome.com/an-introduction-to-zfs-a-place-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25157491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25157491