"What major [resellers] do not like is when customers go on their own and begin including bits and pieces spontaneously into their fabrics," Clark says. "When they have issues, they call the [vendor], but it is not the [reseller's] issue because the customer has gone beyond the recommendations or guidelines."

Clark says that these kind rogue customer confrontations are far less common today than they were five or more years ago.

In fact, Clark says, almost all the major problems relating to interoperability have been well tested and resolved. After all, each supplier wants to make sure that when it brings a product to market, it is qualified and has proven interoperability in its marketplace. It's more likely that a server will lose the path to a storage target due to pathing software than significant hardware interoperability problems.

It is important for users to remember that meeting microcode requirements is not a one-time event, because those requirements change with technology upgrades. Shops that fall two or three revisions behind may find that in addition to losing partial compatibility, they will also be deprived of feature functionality that has been introduced since their last microcode upgrade.

A dispute breaks out