ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE. By Chuck Cook and Ken Clipperton. The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays

Transcription

1 The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE By Chuck Cook and Ken Clipperton EMPOWERING THE IT INDUSTRY WITH ACTIONABLE ANALYSIS

2 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE Table of Contents The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays 1 Introduction 2 Executive Summary How to Use this Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide 5 Disclosures 5 Enterprise Midrange Array Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria 6 The 8-Step Process Used to Score and Rank Enterprise Midrange Arrays 7 DCIG Comments and Thoughts 7 Non-Disruptive Upgrades 7 Self-healing Techniques 7 Automation 8 Multi-vendor Virtualization 8 8 Value of Included Software 8 Performance and Pricing 8 Individual Models vs. Model Series 9 DCIG Observations & Recommendations 9 Best-in-Class Ranking 9 Recommended Ranking 10 Excellent Ranking 11 Good Ranking 11 Basic Ranking 12 Enterprise Midrange Array Scores and Rankings 1 Overall Scores and Rankings 15 Enterprise Midrange Array Products 16 Aberdeen LLC AberSAN ZXP2 High Availability ZFS SAN 17 Aberdeen LLC Petarack 18 Dell Compellent SC Dell EqualLogic PS6100 Series (PS6100E) 20 Dell EqualLogic PS6500 Series (PS6510E) 21 Dot Hill Systems AssuredSAN Pro 000 Series 22 Dot Hill Systems AssuredSAN Pro 000 Series (8c) 2 Dot Hill Systems AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series 2 EMC VNX Series (VNX8000) 25 EMC VNXe000 Series (VNXe00) 26 FUJITSU Limited ETERNUS DX S Series (DX600) 27 Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Unified Storage 100 Series (HUS 150) 28 Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Unified Storage VM 29 HP PAR StoreServ 700 Series (70c) 0 Huawei OceanStor S2600T 1 Huawei OceanStor S5800T 2 Huawei OceanStor S6800T IBM Storwize V7000 (V7000 Unified) 9 Product Rankings Dashboard Appendices A-1 Appendix A Definitions, Explanations and Terminology B-1 Appendix B Vendor Contact Information C-1 Appendix C Author Contact Information Imation Nexsan E-Series (E60VT) 5 Imation Nexsan NST000 Hybrid Storage (NST000) 6 Imation Nexsan NST5000 Hybrid Storage (NST500) 7 Imation Nexsan NST6000 Hybrid Storage (NST650) 8 Infortrend EonStor DS B2F-R2800 Series 9 Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-R2200 Series 0 Infortrend EonStor DS S8F-R2800 Series 1 Infortrend ESVA F Series (F75-280) 2 NEC Storage M500 NEC Storage M700 NetApp FAS8000 Series (FAS800) 5 Oracle FS1 Series (FS1-2 Performance Controller) 6 Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance (ZS-) 7 Overland Storage SnapSAN S Tegile T000 Series (T00) 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. i

3 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays Introduction The information technology function in many organizations is experiencing overwhelming success. For years technologists asserted that information technology could transform business processes to improve decision-making, increase revenue and reduce costs. Businesses believed that message and now rely on their technology infrastructure for critical business functions; and data that once was used only by employees is now also used by suppliers and customers. In many businesses the results of this overwhelming success include an expectation that business applications and their rapidly growing data will be available 2x7x65. Consequently, their storage systems must go beyond traditional expectations for scalable capacity, performance, reliability and availability. For example, not only must the storage system scale, it must scale without application downtime. These expectations are not new to the large enterprise and the high end storage systems that serve them. What is new is that these expectations are now held by many mid-sized organizations. A class of storage systems known as Enterprise Midrange Arrays has emerged that offers key enterprise-class features at prices suitable for mid-sized budgets has emerged. Most of these arrays scale well beyond one petabyte of raw storage capacity. All these arrays can store at least 200 terabytes of raw data in a dual-controller configuration--a minimum capacity requirement that resulted in some products being excluded that are targeted at mid-sized organizations. In every case those products fit the criteria for DCIG s Unified, Hybrid, Private Cloud or Flash Memory Storage Array Buyer s Guides. This Buyer s Guide provides clear and concise feature and functionality comparisons of midrange storage area network arrays through the creation of standardized data sheets for arrays from 16 providers. Many of these data sheets are for an array series, and together represent a total of more than 70 specific array models, with the features of the most robust model in the family represented on the data sheet. With these features, the DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide gives organizations the opportunity to drive time and cost out of the product research process by enabling them to do at-a-glance comparisons between many different arrays and quickly identify a short list of products with features that meet their requirements. Prospective purchasers can focus their product evaluation energies on those selected arrays and move more quickly to the competitive bid process. As one considers the information, opinions and conclusions presented in this Buyer s Guide, please note that this Buyer s Guide is not intended to be a substitute for bringing individual products in-house for testing. That function should still be done, if possible, by each enterprise since every array will have its own specific hardware and software configuration and, as such, will perform differently when subjected to environment-specific application workloads. We hope you find that this Buyer s Guide meets its intended purpose in your environment. Chuck and Ken 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 1

4 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays Executive Summary Whether or not you believe in Noah's global flood, we are in the midst of a new global deluge, a flood of data. According to a recent IBM study, 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, 1 and this data deluge affects more than just the Facebooks of the world. A January 201 IDG Enterprise study 2 found that the average enterprise expects its data to grow by over 75% in the next 12 to 18 months, with 1% of enterprises expecting to manage more than 1 petabyte by late 201. This data growth is one of several trends driving the adoption of midrange storage arrays. The midrange array category is quite large and is usually broken down into several additional categories. The most basic breakdown is by how the storage is accessed: Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Unified Storage (SAN + NAS). This Buyer s Guide focuses on SAN arrays designed for the enterprise data center. The DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide provides organizations with a valuable tool to cut time and cost from the product research and purchase process. The 2015 edition brings an up-to-date look at the current market for enterprise midrange SAN array products. Although a number of these products support both SAN and NAS protocols, and the data sheets reflect some data about NAS features, the products were evaluated on the basis of their SAN features. The DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide consolidates arrays into a Series where applicable. Data sheets reflect the most robust model in the series in order to show the upper end of the scalability and other features for that array series. Because these models are the top of the line, they typically carry a higher price tag than other models. Therefore a Series notation should alert the user that a more affordable model in the series is available; generally only differing from the highest model in terms of the hardware configuration. Specific data about other models in the series may be available in the DCIG Analysis Portal. As the market grows and matures, some notable improvements and enhancements to the arrays featured in this guide have been observed. In particular, more enterprise midrange arrays now include self-healing technologies and automated provisioning than in years past. Those arrays that support self-healing technologies gain a compelling advantage over those that do not. They can monitor themselves for such issues as a failing hard drive, and automatically integrate an idle hot spare in its place. Vendors and enterprises alike, are increasingly relying on self-monitoring and healing capabilities as a first line of defense against failures. This Buyer s Guide includes vendor data in response to five different selfhealing technologies. Another key improvement in this year s products is the increased support for automated provisioning features that had typically been found only in high-end arrays. Automated provisioning reduces storage management overhead by eliminating tedious and error-prone manual storage provisioning activities, while increasing the speed with which new storage requests can be fulfilled. This Buyer s Guide measures nine common automated provisioning capabilities including SDK for integration with management software, exposes API's for use by rd party storage automation tools and policy-based storage selection. 1. IBM. "Apply New Analytics Tools to Reveal New Opportunities." IBM Analytics IT Business Intelligence. IBM, n.d. Web. 1 Aug < 2. IDG Enterprise "Big Data: Growing Trends and Emerging Opportunities." IDG Enterprise, Jan Web. 1 Aug < 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 2

5 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE Executive Summary (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays Executive Summary (continued) There is also a growing expectation among enterprises for continuous application availability. Meeting this expectation requires that storage systems go beyond the old standard availability features like hot swap drives and redundant controllers to provide for uninterrupted operations even during storage system software and hardware upgrades. Consequently, this year s guide puts non-disruptive operations features literally at the top of the list on our data sheets. Management capabilities and support for advanced features of virtualization platforms is embedded in software; but these capabilities are broken out into separate categories in this Buyer s Guide because of their special importance to many enterprises. It is in this context that DCIG presents its DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide. As prior Buyer s Guides have done, it puts at the fingertips of organizations a resource that provides them with a comprehensive list of enterprise midrange arrays that can assist them in this all-important buying decision while removing much of the mystery around how enterprise midrange arrays are configured and which ones are suitable for which purposes. This DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide accomplishes the following objectives: Provides an objective, third party evaluation of enterprise midrange arrays that evaluates and scores their features from an end user s viewpoint Includes recommendations on how to best use this Buyer s Guide Scores and ranks the features on each enterprise midrange array based upon the criteria that matter most to end users so they can quickly know which enterprise midrange arrays are the most appropriate for them to use and under what conditions Provides data sheets for enterprise midrange arrays from 16 different storage providers so end users can do quick comparisons of the features that are supported and not supported on each midrange array Provides insight into which features on an enterprise midrange array will result in improved performance Provide insights into what features an enterprise midrange arrays offer to optimize their virtualization integration Gives any organization the ability to request competitive bids from different providers of enterprise midrange arrays based on apples-to-apples comparisons If you would like to more closely examine the models presented in this guide, the data is broken out by individual array in the DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Interactive Buyer s Guide (IBG) module which users may access with a subscription to the DCIG Analysis Portal at DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

6 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays How to Use this Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide In determining how to best use the information contained in this DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide, it is important to note that it is intended to help enterprise organizations in their purchase of a midrange array. The purpose of this Buyer s Guide is NOT to tell users exactly which midrange array to purchase. Rather, it is to help guide them in coming up with a short list of competitive products that have comparable features that meet their specific needs. It is also important for users to note that just because a product scored the highest in a particular category or is ranked a certain way does not automatically mean that it is the right product for their organization. If anything, because of the scope of the enterprise midrange array models evaluated and analyzed, it may have features that are too robust for the needs of an individual department or organization. However, what this Buyer s Guide does is give users some sense of how each array compares to others classified as enterprise midrange arrays for enterprise organizations, as well as offers additional insight into what product offerings are available on the market. DCIG recommends that you use this DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide in the following seven ways: Eliminate the painstaking research required to come up with a short list of products to explore in depth. This Buyer s Guide ranks, scores and contains data sheets for different arrays or array series from 16 different providers. Each array is scored and then ranked as Best-in-Class, Recommended, Excellent, Good and Basic based upon its score. On each array, over 100 different features were evaluated, weighted, scored and then ranked. All an organization has to do is look at the scores and features of each product in order to come up with a short list of products for consideration. Quickly compare products. Data sheets provided by vendors vary widely in the data that is included and in the terminology used to describe various features even for different products from the same vendor. This makes it difficult and time-consuming to do product comparisons. In contrast, DCIG s standardized data sheets enable organizations to quickly compare models from the same or different vendors and see exactly which features are supported. The DCIG standardized data sheets attempt to normalize these different approaches for the purposes of evaluation while still exposing the differences. Using these standardized data sheets, organizations may now more easily identify which models are applesto-apples comparisons and which ones are apples-tooranges comparisons. A DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide data sheet can also serve as an attractive cover sheet that supplements a company s own internal discussions and research. Separate the apples from the oranges. Just as important as doing apples-to-apples comparisons is identifying when an orange is thrown into the mix. Sometimes it is very difficult for an organization to know if it is truly getting a good deal when bids come in from multiple midrange array providers that include different models. Now organizations can refer to the scores and rankings of each enterprise midrange array in this guide so they know when they are getting a good deal, a great deal or just a so-so one. Understand specialized terminology. Every technology tends to accumulate terminology that is specific to it and not readily understood by outsiders. The midrange array industry is no exception. The glossary included as Appendix A of this Buyer s Guide explains the terminology used on the data sheets in this Buyer s Guide. Terms are presented in the same order they appear on the data sheets. The glossary contains a list of 95 features that organizations look for when evaluating an enterprise midrange array. This list provides an excellent place to start when an organization creates its own list of features that it may need or want, enhancing the quality and productivity of the discussions around the technology. Get competitive bids on comparable products from multiple vendors. In today s competitive market, it behooves organization to get bids from multiple vendors. After all, when they compete, the buyer wins. But that tactic only works well when organizations know they are receiving bids on roughly comparable products. By using this Buyer s Guide, organizations can do a better job of accomplishing that objective. Help justify technical buying recommendations to business folks. Nothing is easier for those on the business side to understand than a number. To help in this area, product scores and rankings are included on 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

7 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays each data sheet so that those on the business side of the house can quickly see how a particular model and its features score and compare with others. The Buyer s Guide also includes summary sheets that provide high-level scores and rankings for the products contained therein. Disclosures Over the last few years the general trend in the US has been for both large and boutique analyst firms to receive some or all of their revenue from storage providers. DCIG is no different in this respect as it also receives payment for the different services it performs for storage providers. The services that DCIG provides include blogging, case studies, product reviews, executive white papers, full-length white papers and special reports. For more information on DCIG, visit In the interest of being fully transparent, a number of the storage providers included in this DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide are or have been DCIG clients. This is not to imply that they were given preferential treatment in the Buyer s Guide. All it meant was that DCIG had more knowledge of their enterprise midrange arrays and that DCIG was aware that they offered arrays that might qualify for inclusion in this Buyer s Guide. In that vein, there are a number of important facts to keep in mind when considering the information contained in this DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide and its merit. No storage provider paid DCIG any fee to develop this Buyer s Guide DCIG did not guarantee any storage provider that its enterprise midrange array(s) would be included in this Buyer s Guide DCIG did not imply or guarantee that a specific enterprise midrange array model would receive a good score on this Buyer s Guide ahead of time All research was based upon publicly available information, information provided by the storage provider and the expertise of those evaluating the information Because of the number of features analyzed, how these features were weighted and then how these enterprise midrange array models were scored and then ranked, there was no way for DCIG to predict at the outset how individual enterprise midrange array models would end up scoring or ranking DCIG would like to emphasize that no storage provider was privy to how DCIG did the scoring and ranking of the enterprise midrange arrays. In every case the storage providers only found out the scores and rankings of its midrange array model(s) after the analysis was complete. Enterprise Midrange Array Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria DCIG relied on the judgment of its analysts as well as input from key users and vendors in defining the criteria we would use to decide what arrays belonged or did not belong in this Buyer s Guide. This Buyer s Guide attempts to take into consideration as many of these variables as possible, but likely failed to account for all of them. While this may have resulted in a specific model not being covered in this Buyer s Guide when it rightfully may have belonged, DCIG believes the following criteria were consistently applied as we did our research and made our decisions. The rationale that was used to determine the inclusion and exclusion of specific models in this Buyer s Guide is as follows: The product must support Fibre Channel (FC) and or iscsi block-based connectivity to hosts or to storage networks. Support for additional network storage protocols is permissible, but FC or iscsi must be supported to be included in the Buyer s Guide. Most enterprises have invested in a separate storage network built on block-based technology. It had to scale to support at least 200 TBs of raw capacity in a dual-controller configuration. As in prior editions of this guide, DCIG specifically wanted to exclude products that only support a single drawer of HDDs. With the emergence of 6TB HDDs the minimum raw capacity for inclusion was raised to 200 TBs. This capacity may be reached through the use of storage shelves attached to the primary storage controller. It must support dual controllers in an Active-Passive, Dual-Active, or Active-Active failover configuration. This approach to redundancy is foundational to DCIG s concept of an enterprise midrange array. There are other approaches to redundancy and availability, such as scale-out or grid. Those approaches represent a different 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 5

8 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays storage purchase decision and are covered in other DCIG Buyer s Guides. Configurations where the data is asynchronously replicated by the primary controller to a second controller for use in case of a failover were excluded from the DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide. It must have a starting list price under $200,000 or the list price for a typical shipping configuration must be below $750,000. These limits help to define the boundary between mid-range and high-end arrays. There had to be sufficient information available to DCIG to make meaningful decisions. DCIG made a good faith effort to reach out and obtain information from as many enterprise midrange array providers as possible by providing analyst-completed surveys and data sheets to them for their review. However, in a few cases models may have been excluded because of a lack of reliable data. The model must be generally available as of January 0, A cutoff date had to be put in place or this Buyer s Guide would never be published. The 8-Step Process Used to Score and Rank Enterprise Midrange Arrays To score and rank each enterprise midrange array model, DCIG went through an eight-step process to come to the most objective conclusion possible. 1. DCIG listed out all of the features available on all of the enterprise midrange arrays. Prior to selecting the features that were included in the final evaluation in the Buyer s Guide, DCIG went through and quantified what features enterprise midrange arrays possessed. As part of this process, DCIG normalized the list of features available on enterprise midrange arrays such that a common name for each feature was established. 2. DCIG established which features would be included in the Buyer s Guide and which ones would not. One of the goals of this Buyer s Guide was to try to only include features on each enterprise midrange array model that could be objectively and authoritatively analyzed. For example, Maximum was evaluated as a feature instead of Maximum Usable Storage Capacity. While usable storage capacity is what users ultimately care about, a consistent objective answer cannot be arrived at as most midrange arrays offer multiple RAID options. So Maximum was selected as the feature to be evaluated since an objective answer could be ascertained and supported.. Each feature had a weighting associated with it. The weightings were used to reflect if a feature was supported and potentially how useful andor important the feature was. For example, Active-Active controller configurations were given a higher weighting than Active-Passive.. DCIG completed a survey for each vendor s product(s) and then sent the survey(s) to each vendor for verification. Each vendor was invited to review their data and respond with any corrections or edits to the DCIG-completed survey(s). 5. All the features were scored based on the data captured in the surveys. Scoring was finalized after the updates received from vendors had been entered into the survey system. 6. All vendors were given the opportunity to review their data sheets before the final scores and rankings were determined. To ensure the information presented in this Buyer s Guide is up-to-date and reliable, DCIG provided each vendor a copy or copies of their data sheets that appeared in this Buyer s Guide without the scores and rankings on them. In this way they had the opportunity to validate the information and correct it before it was publicly released. 7. The features were broken down into five general categories. The features included in this Buyer s Guide broke down into a total of five broad categories that are reflected on each midrange array data sheet. These five categories include Management, Software, Virtualization, Hardware, and Support. 8. The enterprise midrange arrays were ranked using standard scoring techniques. One of the goals of this Buyer s Guide is to establish clear lines of differentiation between enterprise midrange arrays with conclusions that are arrived at objectively. To accomplish this goal, the mean or average score for each classification was first determined and then the standard deviation. Using the mean of the scores from all of the enterprise midrange arrays from which the standard deviation was 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 6

9 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays calculated, DCIG developed a ranking for each enterprise midrange array model based upon the following in each classification: Those models that were.5 or greater standard deviations below the mean were given the rank of Basic Those models that were.5± standard deviations above or below the mean were ranked as Good Those models that were standard deviations above the mean were ranked as Excellent Those models that were greater than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean were ranked as Recommended The model(s) with the highest score were given the designation of Best-in-Class It is for this reason that in each classification the number of models that achieved a certain ranking varied. Using this scoring and ranking method, DCIG feels confident that all of the models included in this report could be reasonably classified as enterprise midrange arrays suited for enterprise organizations. DCIG Comments and Thoughts Non-Disruptive Upgrades Today s enterprises expect midrange arrays to provide continuous availability. Thus, as part of the purchasing decision, it is critical to consider various upgrade scenarios. Non-disruptive upgrades (NDU) have become part of the storage lexicon but can often have different meanings and assumptions depending on the audience andor vendor. To eliminate some of this ambiguity, DCIG surveyed vendors in regard to their support of seven different NDU procedures. We asked specifically about controller, network port, HDD and SSD firmware upgrades, controller or storage shelf additions as well as controller replacements. Two-thirds of the arrays support at least one NDU procedure, while one-third support at least two NDU procedures. Self-healing Techniques Self-healing features are relatively new to midrange storage. These technologies enable some problems to be resolved quickly and without human intervention. Although some self-healing techniques have been implemented by storage vendors, these are seldom disclosed on product specification sheets. Because these self-healing capabilities are of growing importance to businesses, DCIG attempted to discover which arrays have implemented the following self-healing techniques: bad block repair, failed disk isolation, low-level formatting and power cycling of individual drives. While implementation of these features is still relatively low among midrange storage arrays less than 25% of the arrays indicated support for these self-healing techniques DCIG expects wide-spread adoption in coming years. Automation Data center automation is an area of growing emphasis for many organizations because it promises to facilitate efficient management of data center infrastructures and enables a more agile response from IT to changing business requirements. Ultimately, automation means more staff time can be spent addressing business requirements rather than managing routine tasks. Organizations can implement automation in their environment through management interfaces that are scriptable and offer additional enhancements with API and SDK support. Last year s Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide prediction that support for automated provisioning would improve in the near future proved correct. While less than 20% of midrange arrays featured in the previous year s Buyer s Guide exposed an API for third-party automation tools, the percentage has increased to 9% in this year s guide. Also, provision of an SDK for integration with management platforms rose from 11% to 2%. (AST) places data on the appropriate tier of storage (SSD, SAS, or SATA). This automated tiering capability is important for achieving maximum benefits from flash memory when using flash for more than just a large cache. Support for AST increased from 5% in last year s guide to 67% of arrays. Native support for the reclamation of freed blocks of thinly provisioned storage increased from 0% of arrays in last year s guide to 65% today. These freed blocks are then available for reuse. Native support for this capability eliminates the cost and additional infrastructure complexity associated with licensing a third party product or the inefficiency associated with manual reclamation processes. Support for third party software that automatically reclaims 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 7

10 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays freed blocks showed an equally impressive increase, going from 21% last year to % today. Multi-vendor Virtualization Support for Microsoft virtualization technologies is gaining ground on VMware. The percentage of arrays that can be managed from within Microsoft s System Center Virtual Machine Manager now matches vspherevcenter support at %. Support for Microsoft Windows Offloaded Data Transfer (ODX), a Windows Server 2012 technology that reduces latency and enhances array throughput, is also offered on 19% of the arrays. Support for VMware storage integrations also continues to grow. VAAI.1 is supported by 90% of the arrays, while SIOC, VASA and VASRM are supported by over 50% of the arrays. of data is of growing importance to enterprises. In some industries, such as healthcare and financial institutions, encryption is a matter of regulatory compliance. Other businesses seek data encryption as a way of reducing the risk of accidental disclosure of sensitive customer information. Approximately 27% of the arrays in this Buyer s Guide provide array-based encryption, while 6% support selfencrypting drives (SED). Value of Included Software Vendors that include all software features fully licensed as part of the standard array package create extra value for purchasers by reducing the number of decision points in the purchasing process and by smoothing the path to full utilization of the array s capabilities. Separate license fees for features can reduce the agility of the IT department in responding to changing business requirements because the ordering and purchasing process, as well as implementation, may take several weeks or even months. Separate licensing fees may be minor, or they can have a noticeable impact on the overall cost of ownership for an enterprise midrange array. Therefore, the annual cost of software licenses and associated support contracts should be incorporated into TCO (total cost of ownership) and ROI (return on investment) calculations. This Buyer s Guide acknowledges the value of included licenses by awarding a significant number of points to those arrays that ship with features already licensed. In particular, we give attention to licensing for performance monitoring, snapshots, replication and thin provisioning features. Performance and Pricing Two factors that strongly influence buying decisions are performance and cost. So it may come as a surprise to those who look at this DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide to see no performance benchmarks as to how any of the enterprise midrange arrays performed and only high-level pricing information. There are two core reasons why performance or detailed pricing information were not included in this Buyer s Guide. Performance will vary according to data center environment, the data being stored, and implementation decisions. So to introduce any type of performance metric would only result in the analysis and evaluations of the enterprise midrange arrays included in this Buyer s Guide becoming more subjective, not less. The intent of this Buyer s Guide is to provide a near real time snapshot of the enterprise midrange arrays currently available in the marketplace. If DCIG had tried to test and establish performance benchmarks for all of these midrange arrays, the next generation of arrays from all of these storage providers could well be available before the testing was completed, making this Buyer s Guide obsolete before it ever saw the light of day. As for pricing, each enterprise midrange array data sheet provides only a starting list price for that array. These list prices had no bearing in the scoring of any enterprise midrange array and are provided for reference purposes only. DCIG recognizes that features like price and performance are relevant and even key considerations when buying an Enterprise Midrange Array. However, it is also almost impossible for a third party like DCIG to objectively measure these features on a large scale. Therefore, evaluating these factors is a part of the buying process that is still best left to end users. Individual Models vs. Model Series The DCIG Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer s Guide consolidates arrays into a Series where applicable. Data sheets reflect the most robust model in the series in order to show the upper end of the scalability and other features for the enterprise midrange arrays in that series. For example, the NetApp FAS8000 Series (FAS800) 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 8

11 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays data sheet presents the features of the NetApp FAS800. The other member of that series is the FAS8020. If specific data about other models in the series is available in the DCIG Analysis Portal, the model number is included in the vendor s listing in Appendix B. It should also be noted that because these products are the top of the line, they typically carry a higher associated cost. This should not immediately eliminate a particular product from consideration, but rather alert the user that a more affordable model with a similar feature set is available from the vendor. DCIG Observations & Recommendations Best-in-Class Ranking Observations For the second year in a row, the HP PAR StoreServ 700 Series earned the Best-in-Class ranking among the enterprise midrange storage arrays evaluated. In comparison to its counterparts, the StoreServ 70c array stood out in the following ways: The best balance of strengths across all of the scoring categories Achieved the highest score in the Management and Virtualization categories Robust virtualization support including all.x and 5.x and storage-related API s, plus support for Hyper-V environments Recommendations The HP PAR StoreServ 700 Series is highly regarded for its scalability and mesh active controller architecture to meet the ever increasing performance and storage demands that enterprises require. The HP PAR StoreServ 70c supports both block and file-based protocols. It scales up to four SAN controller nodes, 96 GB of DRAM and a raw storage capacity of 2,000 TB. As such, the HP PAR StoreServ 700 Series delivers scalable performance and capacity to meet the demands of mid-size enterprises. HP PAR StoreServ 700 s versatile architecture enables it to concurrently support storage area network (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) protocols, as well as data migration software with PAR Online Import which virtualizes other storage arrays (HP EVA Storage or EMC VNX, EMC CLARiiON CX or EMC Symmetrix V) to migrate data off of them. The 700 Series offers multiple configuration options including a quad controller, all-flash array, and configurations combining flash memory solid-state disks (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs) that allow aging data to be moved to less expensive spinning media. PAR's Adaptive Flash Caching accelerates application IO requests by extending DRAM to SSDs. This functionality allows SSDs to be used as a secondary caching layer when DRAM is heavily loaded. The HP PAR StorServ also optimizes performance through use of its wide-striping technology. Wide-striping places small chunks of data across all drives in a system to harness their collective throughput. Additionally, its Adaptive Optimization software provides sub-lun tiering which ensures the chunks of data are on the right tier of storage, placing frequently accessed data on the most responsive tier of storage while moving infrequently accessed data to slower drives. HP also recently announced the PAR File Persona software which enables convergence of file and block protocols on the PAR node. DCIG expects to evaluate it in other upcoming DCIG Buyer's Guides. The array further supports an extensive suite of automated policy-based provisioning capabilities. Storage templates can be created to include SLAQoS requirements or use policies to automatically select the appropriate storage location. Furthermore, APIs are available for use by rd party automation tools and a SDK is available for integrating with management software. These and other HP PAR StoreServ capabilities minimize or eliminate redundant tasks and free data center experts to focus on other business priorities. Recommended Ranking Observations The EMC VNX Series (VNX8000), NetApp FAS8000 Series (FAS800) and the Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Unified Storage VM share the Recommended ranking. The enterprise midrange storage arrays ranked as Recommended in this Buyer s Guide generally shared the following characteristics: 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 9

12 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays Scored at least 1.5 standard deviations above the mean overall score Each achieved the highest score in one of the five categories Comprehensive high-availability features including non-disruptive upgrade options, redundant andor hot-swappable components and self-healing technologies Remote monitoring and proactive remediation is available from the vendor to ensure maximum uptime. Scale up to at least PB of raw storage, 16 processor cores and 0 Fibre Channel ports Provide concurrent FC and iscsi connections Provide concurrent support of SAN and NAS Support.x and 5.x features and nearly all of the other VMware integration options surveyed including VASA, VASRM, VADP, SIOC, and Storage DRS Recommendations Like the Best-in-Class HP PAR StoreServ 70c, these arrays scored well across all five scoring categories. The EMC VNX Series (VNX8000) scored Recommended in four of the five categories, while scoring the highest of any array in the Software category. It supports all five snapshot methods surveyed. These arrays also support array-based encryption and self-encrypting drives rounding out a thorough suite of software features. The NetApp FAS8000 Series (FAS800) scored particularly well in the Hardware category primarily due to its non-disruptive upgrade and self-healing capabilities. The FAS8000 Series concurrently supports both Ethernet (2 x 10Gb) and FC (0 x 8Gb or 2 x 16Gb) ports and scales to a very respectable,20 TB of raw storage capacity while featuring one of the most dense configurations at 72 TB per rack unit. The Hitachi Unified Storage VM distinguished itself with consistently high marks, also scoring Recommended in four of the five categories. It provides exceptional support for both VMware and Microsoft virtualization. The array also boasts the best overall Support score. Excellent Ranking Observations Five arrays earned an Excellent ranking. Five vendors are represented, including one that also has an array in the Recommended category Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). The arrays ranked as Excellent generally shared the following characteristics: Scored 0.5 standard deviations above the mean in overall score Scored Excellent in at least two of the five scoring categories Provide concurrent support of SAN and NAS Support multiple snapshot and storage capacity optimization methods Recommendations The FUJITSU Limited and Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance were the two high scorers in the Hardware category. Both arrays scale to over,000 TB of raw storage, support multiple non-disruptive upgrade procedures and use flashbased caching to improve performance. The Hitachi Unified Storage 100 Series (HUS 150) stood out in the Virtualization category, supporting all VAAI.x and 5.x features. VMware integration features also supported include SIOC, VASA, VASRM, and VADP. The IBM Storwize V7000 (V7000 Unified) scored well in both the Hardware and Software categories, but only achieved a Good ranking in Management, Virtualization and Support. A relative newcomer to the storage industry, Tegile rounds out the Excellent group with its T000 Series (T00). Tegile s beginnings as a hybrid storage array provider may explain the T00 s superior support for flash memory optimization techniques. Unlike arrays from other startups, the T000 Series can scale up to at least 298 TB of hybrid or all-flash raw storage capacity in a dual-controller configuration. The Excellent or higher ranked arrays surveyed in this Buyer s Guide represent the cream of the midrange SAN crop. Some arrays scale better while others provide more advanced software features. However, all offer a breadth of features that make these arrays a good fit for a wide range of enterprises. 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 10

13 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays Good Ranking Observations The enterprise midrange arrays ranked as Good in this Buyer s Guide generally shared the following characteristics: All support the big three data management tools of snapshots, replication and thin provisioning Support concurrent use of storage protocols Support multi-tenancy Limited or no support for v5 features and other virtualization features Recommendation Arrays achieving a Good overall ranking are still suitable for many enterprise data centers. Twelve of the fourteen arrays scored in the Excellent range in at least one scoring category, yet are less feature-rich than the arrays that achieved a Recommended or Excellent ranking. The Good arrays include the Dell Compellent SC8000 scored excellent in the Hardware and Software categories, and the newly released Oracle FS1-2 scoring excellent in the Hardware, Software and Management categories. Depending on business requirements, data center technologies and vendor relationships, any of these may be suitable for a given organization. Basic Ranking Observations The 11 enterprise midrange arrays ranked as Basic in each classification of this Buyer s Guide generally shared the following characteristics: Support only a single SAN protocol (FC or iscsi) at a time Limited Management capabilities Very limited or non-existent Virtualization integration No multi-tenancy No integration with Data Center Operations Management Software Recommendation When choosing an array ranked as Basic an organization must understand its needs, and then let those needs determine which solutions are the best for its data center. A Basic array may address the need that prompted the organization to begin looking at enterprise midrange arrays in the first place. However, most of the Basic arrays provide significantly less feature functionality and scalability than their higher scoring competitors. On the upside, in many cases these limitations are accompanied by a lower purchase price. 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 11

14 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY SCORES AND RANKINGS The scores and rankings for the enterprise midrange arrays contain the following information: A chart that includes the scores and rankings for all of the products The mean and the standard deviation that were used to establish how enterprise midrange arrays were ranked A summary of the primary findings 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 12

15 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE SCORES AND RANKINGS The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAYS SCORES RANKING 1. HP PAR StoreServ 700 Series (70c) 17.0 Best-in-Class 2. EMC VNX Series (VNX8000) Recommended. NetApp FAS8000 Series (FAS800) Recommended. Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Unified Storage VM Recommended 5. FUJITSU Limited ETERNUS DX S Series (DX600) Excellent 6. Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance (ZS-) Excellent 7. Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Unified Storage 100 Series (HUS 150) Excellent 8. IBM Storwize V7000 (V7000 Unified) Excellent 9. Tegile T000 Series (T00) Excellent 10. Dell Compellent SC Good 11. Oracle FS1 Series (FS1-2 Performance Controller) Good 12. EMC VNXe000 Series (VNXe00) Good 1. Imation Nexsan NST6000 Hybrid Storage (NST650) Good 1. Dell EqualLogic PS6100 Series (PS6100E) Good 15. Imation Nexsan NST000 Hybrid Storage (NST000) Good 16. Huawei OceanStor S5800T 9.05 Good 17. Huawei OceanStor S6800T Good 18. Dell EqualLogic PS6500 Series (PS6510E) 92.5 Good 19. Overland Storage SnapSAN S Good 20. Imation Nexsan E-Series (E60VT) Good 21. Imation Nexsan NST5000 Hybrid Storage (NST500) Good 22. Huawei OceanStor S2600T Good 2. Dot Hill Systems AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series Basic 2. NEC Storage M Basic 25. Dot Hill Systems AssuredSAN Pro 000 Series (8c) Basic 26. Aberdeen LLC AberSAN ZXP2 High Availability ZFS SAN Basic 27. Aberdeen LLC Petarack 71.5 Basic 28. Infortrend ESVA F Series (F75-280) Basic continued on next page 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 1

16 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE SCORES AND RANKINGS (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAYS SCORES RANKING 29. Dot Hill Systems AssuredSAN Pro 000 series Basic 0. Infortrend EonStor DS B2F-R2800 Series 6.25 Basic 1. NEC Storage M Basic 2. Infortrend EonStor DS S8F-R2800 Series Basic. Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-R2200 Series Basic Total Number of Products Highest Score 17.0 Lowest Score Average (Mean) 96.2 Standard Deviation Rankings Recommended Excellent Good Basic DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 1

17 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Midrange Arrays ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY PRODUCTS 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 15

18 Aberdeen LLC AberSAN ZXP2 High Availability ZFS SAN Approximate Starting List Price: $25, BASIC GOOD GOOD BASIC BASIC BASIC Non-Disruptive Operations 2 Controller Addition Replacement Storage ShelfNode Addition RedundantHot-swap Components 6 Storage Networking Ports 2 Ethernet Ports 1 10 Gb 16 8 FC Ports 8 16 Gb 8, 2 CONTROLLERS Unlimited 22.5 TB 512 GB, 2 CONTROLLERS 16 READ WRITE ACTIVE-ACTIVE DUAL-ACTIVE Management Methods 2 vsphere SCVMM OpenStack SMI-S 2 Software Policy-based Provisioning Wear Leveling Write Coalescing Performance Monitoring Snapshots Thin Provisioning ClientHypervisor Host OS Microsoft Hyper-V Oracle VM RHEV VMware Block Zeroing Full Copy HAL Dead Space Reclamation Full File Clone Out-of-space Reserve Space Extended Statistics SIOC VASA AQDT VADP VASRM PSA vmsc ALUA Storage DRS vsphere 2 2 CONTINUOUS PERIODIC IMMEDIATELY SCHEDULED INLINE POST-PROCESS INLINE POST-PROCESS Thin Provisioning Eager Zero Thick NATIVE RD PARTY ARRAY-BASED SELF-ENCRYPTING DRIVES Business Day 1 Remote Monitoring 5 Years SCHEDULED DYNAMIC Mix Disk Types andor All information on this data sheet is based entirely on publicly available information and DCIG's own knowledge of the product. This information reflects DCIG's opinion about this product as no information was provided by the vendor. 201 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. The information, 16