UNDER $100K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE By Charley McMaster and Tim Anderson

Transcription

1 The Insider's Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE By Charley McMaster and Tim Anderson EMPOWERING THE IT INDUSTRY WITH ACTIONABLE ANALYSIS

2 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE Table of Contents The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Introduction Executive Summary 6 How to Use this 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide 7 Disclosures 7 Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria 7 The Eight-Step Process Used to Score and Rank the Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Solutions 8 DCIG Comments and Thoughts on 8 Virtual Appliances 9 Scale-up and Scale-out Architectures 0 Pricing 0 Observations and Recommendations Under $00K 0 General Observations About All Deduplicating Backup Appliances Under $00K 0 Recommended Ranking Excellent Ranking Good Ranking Basic Ranking Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Scores and Rankings Overall Scores and Rankings Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Models 6 Dell DR00 Disk Backup Appliance 7 Dell DR6000 Disk Backup Appliance 8 EMC Data Domain DD60 9 EMC Data Domain DD00 0 EMC Data Domain DD00 ExaGrid EX000 ExaGrid EX000 ExaGrid EX000 ExaGrid EX000 ExaGrid EX000 6 ExaGrid EX ExaGrid EX0000E 8 ExaGrid EX000E 9 ExaGrid EX000E 0 ExaGrid EX000E FalconStor FDS SA0 FalconStor FDS SA0 FalconStor FDS SA6 FalconStor VTL SAM6 FalconStor VTL SAP6 6 HP StoreOnce HP StoreOnce 00 8 HP StoreOnce IBM Storage System TS760 ProtecTIER Deduplication Appliance Express 0 NEC HYDRAstor HS-0 Quantum DXi670 DXi670 Product Rankings Dashboard Appendices A- Appendix A Definitions, Explanations and Terminology B- Appendix B Vendor Contact Information C- Appendix C Author Contact Information 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. i

3 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Introduction Ever-increasing data volumes driven by the constant growth in both structured and unstructured data coupled with the ever decreasing costs of storage capacity on a per GB basis are continuing to put a strain on corporate backup abilities. While other backup and data optimization technologies offer some relief, deduplicating backup appliances have become the go to solution. They provide a quick, largely non-disruptive plug-and-play solution that alleviates backup pain, reduces storage consumption by up to 0x and have become a proven frontrunner in the ongoing battle to improve the backup experience. DCIG once again looks at deduplication in its 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide refreshing last year s guide on this same topic. The introduction of new technologies and updating existing technologies in these appliances over the past year have again served to shift the deduplicating backup appliance landscape as many previously available deduplication appliances are now gone as vendors continually refresh their product lines and bring out new models. However, it is also possible that the growth of deduplicating backup appliances is at a tipping point. After rapid growth for years to become a multi-billion segment of the broader data protection and recovery industry, in the most quarter for which numbers are available, revenue in this market slipped. According to the IDC analyst firm, Q 0 revenue of worldwide purpose-built backup appliances (PBBAs) declined. percent from a year ago to $66. million. Anticipating a maturing of this market, new options have emerged to set themselves apart. These include: Archiving. Some providers have modified their deduplicating backup appliances to give organizations more flexibility to use these appliances for data archiving, whether that be for production data or long term retention of backup data. Controller heads. After discontinuing is controller-only option of its Data Domain product line years ago, EMC re-introduced this as an option which frees organizations to acquire the controller head apart from the back end storage. Fewer appliance models. Consolidating the number of appliance models that they make available for a particular market, whether that be for small, midsized or large enterprises, to simplify the buying decision for these organizations. Improved management and monitoring. Almost without exception every vendor has enhanced the core technologies found on its appliances to make their ongoing management and monitoring simpler and more effective. Deduplicating backup appliances also continue to set themselves apart from backup software that offers deduplication. As these appliances have always done, they offload the overhead associated with deduplicating data from the client or media server to the appliance. What is new are some of the ways in which they are accelerating backup. Technologies such as Data Domain Boost and Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) have been available for a number of years. These options use proprietary protocols to accelerate backup traffic over LAN connections between the media server and the attached deduplicating backup appliance. However, some providers such as Dell now offer Rapid CIFS and Rapid NFS technology that accelerate backup traffic to its backup appliances using existing. RTT Staff Writer. "IDC: Worldwide PBBA Market Revenue Drops.% In Q - Quick Facts." Quick Facts. RTT News, 0 June 0. Web. Nov DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

4 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE Introduction (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less file sharing protocols. Technologies such as these two eliminate the need for organizations to deploy proprietary protocols and may, in theory, be used with any backup software without additional software licensing required (though many organizations may want to wait until Dell has certified and officially supports this technology with their specific backup software.) It is in this context that DCIG presents its 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide. The level of detail in this Buyer s Guide, combined with DCIG s consistent scoring and ranking system, helps organizations in two key ways: First, it provides a powerful yet concise method to evaluate each deduplicating backup appliance so organizations can understand the overall strengths and weaknesses of each one. Using this information, they can better align the specific needs of their environment with the features available on each appliance. Second, this Buyer s Guide provides a set of scores and rankings across the multiple features on each product as well as a data sheet for each deduplicating backup appliance. The data sheets drill down into the specifics of each product to provide information on backup technology, management, restore and support features. They also examine supported features and implementation. These areas contribute to specific category scores as well as an overall score for each deduplicating backup appliance. Please note that this Buyer s Guide is NOT intended to be a substitute for internal testing. DCIG encourages any organization that is considering the purchase of a deduplicating backup solution to do its own in-house testing if at all possible as it is impossible for DCIG to predict how well the appliance will perform in every environment. As a supplement to the downloadable Buyer s Guides, DCIG makes all the data collected for the guides available in the DCIG Analysis Portal. This powerful online data visualization tool enables subscribers to quickly develop side-by-side comparisons of the products and the specific features that matter most to them and gives subscribers access to all DCIG Buyer s Guides. See to learn more about the DCIG Analysis Portal. We hope this Buyer s Guide meets its intended purposes in your environments and serves as a helpful aid in supplementing and expediting your organization s normal decision making and product evaluation process. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

5 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Executive Summary The only constant is change and, in the area of deduplicating backup appliances, the constant of change is certainly in play. While deduplicating backup appliances still do what they always do deduplicate backup data change is certainly evident in these appliances. In this third release of the DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide, DCIG tracks and highlights these changes while continuing to provide visibility into the core technologies that make these deduplicating backup appliances tick. The beauty of deduplicating backup appliances is that they largely ship as plug-and-play solutions. By installing directly into corporate LANs with minimal or no changes to the existing environments, organizations may need to do as little as plug them into the wall, connect them to the corporate LAN, configure the backup software to use the appliance as a backup target and start backing up and deduplicating data. In this respect, nearly every one if not all of the appliances covered in this Buyer s Guide delivers on this ideal. Of course, as with all technologies, the devil is in the details and once you can go beyond the baseline plug-n-play setup, differences in feature functionality in deduplicating backup appliances emerge that determine their suitability for deployment in enterprises of all sizes. These differences include: Backup acceleration software. Today s standard file sharing protocols make it very easy for any size organization to quickly and easily deploy one of these appliances into their environment and start backing up to it. However, standard file sharing protocols are NOT optimized for moving large amounts of data quickly. This shortcoming of existing file sharing protocols has led to almost every deduplicating backup appliance to minimally support third party backup software accelerators such as Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) as well as deliver their own proprietary backup software acceleration software that accelerates backup data movement to and from their own deduplicating backup appliance. Deduplicating algorithms. When deduplicating backup appliances first shipped, ideological wars raged over which approach to deduplicating data was better inline or post-process. While these wars have largely since abated as it is now recognized that certain types of application data deduplicate better using different deduplication algorithms, few if any appliances may offer all of the deduplicating algorithms that they need to optimally deduplicate their application data. This behooves organizations to first understand what deduplicating algorithm option or options each deduplicating backup appliance offers, how it is implemented and if they can live with the trade-offs, if any, that this implementation method may mean for their environment. Public storage cloud connectivity. After data is backed up and deduplicated, many if not most organizations want to automate getting a copy of it offsite on a regular basis (maybe weekly or monthly.) Achieving this ideal makes a deduplicating backup appliance s connectivity to a public storage cloud provider highly desirable since copies of data can be scheduled to be automatically sent offsite without manual intervention or the need for a secondary data center. Replication. Most organizations of any size have multiple sites that each have data that they need to backup. Further, most organizations of this size want to centralize backup and bring all data in remote sites back to one central data central. To accommodate this objective, many deduplicating backup appliances offer replication software that replicates data from remote sites back to their main data center. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

6 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE Executive Summary (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Executive Summary (continued) However how replication software is implemented varies widely from appliance to appliance. Some charge extra for this software while others include it with the purchase price of the appliance. The number of replication configurations supported by each appliance also varies. While most support : and N: fan-in replication configurations, not all appliances support fan-out replication configurations which organizations may want to leverage to prepopulate remote sites with previously deduplicated data. Organizations should also verify how many remote sites that want to setup to replicate back to one central sites as the maximum N in the N: part of the equation can vary by appliance. Finally, organizations should verify how both the appliance and its replication software handles deduplicated data. In almost all cases, replication software can only replicate data after the data is deduplicated which may delay how quickly data can be replicated, especially if the appliance uses post-process deduplication. Also, organizations should verify if the replication software only transmits new, unique chunks of deduplicated data as opposed to all data. By only transmitting new, unique chunks of data, organizations can generally use lower bandwidth, lower cost WAN links to remote offices. Scale-out versus scale-up architectures. In today s environment of rapid and unpredictable data growth, deduplicating backup appliances provide two architectures to add more storage capacity scale-up and scale-out with some appliances supporting both options. Appliances that support scale-up architectures are largely self-contained and either offer room to add more shelves for more internal hard disk drives (HDDs) or, in some cases, they provide the flexibility to use either FC or SCSI connections to external HDDs. Appliances that use a scale-out architecture grow by adding nodes that come preconfigured with fixed amounts of processor, memory and storage and are then collectively configured and managed as one logical appliance. Virtual appliances. As organizations virtualize small and remote offices, they also want to virtualize any appliances deployed into them. This has given rise in the past year for the need for vendors to make their deduplicating backup appliances as virtual appliances to eliminate the need to deploy a new physical machine into offices are now entirely or mostly virtualized. It is in this context that DCIG presents its 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide. As prior Buyer s Guides have done, it puts at the fingertips of organizations a comprehensive list of deduplicating backup appliances and the features they offer in the form of detailed, standardized data sheets to assist in this important buying decision. This Buyer s Guide is the result of several months of communication with multiple providers and evaluation of over one hundred features nearly 0 deduplicating backup appliances. Each provider was given the opportunity to complete a survey with over 00 questions that examined how its solution delivered on features associated with deduplication, management, hardware, scalability and support. In instances where vendors did not respond, DCIG completed the surveys on the vendor s behalf and then gave the vendor the opportunity to review it before any material about its appliance(s) were published. In each case, every vendor had the opportunity to review and respond to the survey and the information regarding their product displayed on the data sheets included in this Buyer s Guide. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

7 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE Executive Summary (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less The DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide accomplishes the following objectives: Provides an objective, third-party evaluation of deduplicating backup appliances that evaluates and scores their features from an end user s perspective; Scores and ranks the features of each deduplicating backup appliance based upon criteria that matter most to end users; Presents results in easy-to-read tables with product scores and rankings so users can quickly ascertain which appliance best suits their needs; Provides a standardized data sheet for each of the 6 deduplicating backup appliance solutions from eight different deduplicating backup appliance providers, allowing quick comparison of features that are or are not supported with each product; and Gives any organization a solid foundation for getting competitive bids from different deduplicating backup appliance vendors. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

8 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less How to Use this 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide In determining how best to use the information contained in this Buyer s Guide, it should be noted that it is intended to help users in their purchase process. It is NOT intended to tell users exactly which product(s) to purchase. Rather, it is to help guide them in coming up with a list of competitive products that have comparable features that meet their specific needs. It is also important to note that the highest score or ranking does not automatically mean that it is the right product for every organization. If anything, due to the scope of products evaluated and analyzed, some models may have features that are too robust for the needs of an individual department or organization. Features as displayed on each product data sheet represent the opinion of DCIG. DCIG encourages and strongly recommends every organization verify the functionality of the features that are of particular interest to them before making a buying decision. To help in that decision, this Buyer s Guide gives organizations a sense of how included products compare with each other, as well as giving additional insight into what other product offerings are available on the market and the specific features they offer. DCIG recommends that companies use this Buyer s Guide in the following seven ways:. Eliminate the painstaking research associated with coming up with a short list of products that meet their needs. This Buyer s Guide ranks, scores and contains data sheets for 6 different products from eight different providers. Each product is scored and then ranked as Recommended, Excellent, Good and Basic based upon its score. In each product, over 00 different features were evaluated, weighted, scored and then ranked. All an organization has to do is look at the scores and features of each solution in order to come up with a short list for consideration.. Do apples-to-apples comparisons of products from different vendors. In today s crowded deduplicating backup appliance market, it behooves organization to get competitive bids from multiple vendors. After all, when they compete, you win! But that tactic only works well when organizations know that they are receiving competitive bids on products that are roughly comparable. Using this Buyer s Guide, organizations can do a better job of accomplishing that objective.. 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 vendors that include different products. Now organizations can refer to the scores and rankings of each product on this guide so they know when they are getting it a good deal, a great deal or just a so-so one.. Gain perspective on how products from less well known vendors compare against established and better known brands. Anyone involved with backup at all has probably at least heard of Dell, EMC, HP, or IBM. This creates a certain built-in level of comfort when buying products from these vendors and a corresponding built-in resistance to buying products from vendors that are perceived as unknown quantities. This Buyer s Guide helps to remove some of that apprehension about buying from a less well known vendor or even a less well known model from an established vendor. Using this Buyer s Guide, organizations can see how these products from lesser known vendors as well as lesser known products from established vendors stack up.. Normalize complex terminology. Every industry has a proclivity to adopt acronyms and jargon that is specific to it but the technology industry seems to go out of its way to use unfamiliar terms as well as refer to the same technology in different ways. This Buyer s Guide sifts through the acronyms and jargons and terms and normalizes them. This minimizes or even eliminates the need for users to try to understand all of the different technology terms. 6. Take advantage of standardized data sheets. Product data sheets available from different vendors are rarely laid out in the same way or contain the same information. Some vendors even have data sheet formats that vary from product to product within their own portfolio. This Buyer s Guide tackles this problem by creating a standard, easy to read data sheet for every product. In this way, product data sheets for individual products can be printed 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 6

9 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less out, laid down side by side and then the features on them quickly compared. 7. Help justify buying recommendations to business teams. Nothing is easier for those on the business side to understand than a number when doing comparisons. At the top of every product data sheet, a product score is included so the business side of the house can quickly see how the different product models compare. 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 vendors. DCIG is no different in that respect as it also receives payment for the different services it performs for vendors. The services that DCIG provides include blogging, case studies, product reviews, executive white papers and special reports. In the interest of being transparent, a number of the vendors included in this DCIG 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. It simply means DCIG may have had more knowledge of their products and that DCIG would consider their product 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 Buyer s Guide and its merit. No vendor paid DCIG any fee to develop this Buyer s Guide. DCIG did not guarantee any vendor that its product would be included in this Buyer s Guide. DCIG did not imply or guarantee that a specific product would receive a good score on this Buyer s Guide, before or after completion. All research was based upon one or more of the following: publicly available information, information provided by the vendor and/or the expertise of those evaluating the information. Because of the number of features analyzed, how these features were weighted and then how these products were scored and then ranked, there was no way for DCIG to predict at the outset how individual products would end up scoring or ranking. DCIG wants to emphasize that no vendor was privy to how DCIG did the scoring and ranking of the products and that the information presented in this Buyer s Guide reflects the opinion of DCIG. In every case, the vendor only found out the scores and rankings of its product after the analysis was complete. Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria As DCIG prepared this release of its 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide, numerous variables were taken into account to determine which solutions to include and exclude. The criteria for inclusion in DCIG guides, much like the deduplicating backup appliance market itself, are constantly evolving. An appliance that may seem to rightfully belong in this guide might have just barely fallen outside of the parameters for inclusion. For the purposes of this Buyer s Guide, the following criteria were used when determining whether or not to include specific deduplicating backup appliance products: The solution s main purpose is for the deduplication of backup data Its primary function is target-based deduplication of backup data It includes a NAS (network attached storage) interface and supports the CIFS (Common Internet File System) or NFS (Network File System) protocols It supports a minimum of two () hard disk drives and/or a minimum raw capacity of eight terabytes It ships prior to September 0, 0 Some providers elected not to respond to DCIG s inquiries or requests. While those products are still covered in this Buyer s Guide, the information may be incomplete or not represent all of the product s capabilities. In such cases, a notation is included at the bottom of the data sheet of those products indicating that all information is drawn from publicly available sources and the knowledge and expertise of the analyst. The Eight-Step Process Used to Score and Rank the Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Solutions To score and rank each appliance included in this Buyer s Guide, DCIG went through an eight-step process to come to the most objective conclusion possible. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 7

10 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less. A list of products that met the DCIG definition for Deduplicating Backup Appliance was created. This list was used to determine which vendors to contact for inclusion of their products in this Buyer s Guide.. A list of features to be evaluated was established. The terms on this list were then normalized so a common name for each feature included in the Buyer s Guide could be established. In cases where a feature could not be objectively defined or understood, it was excluded from consideration.. Each feature had a weighting associated with it. The weightings were used to reflect if a feature was supported and potentially how useful and/or important the feature was to end users. As an example, based on experience from previous Buyer s Guides and through monitoring user preferences, DCIG now assigns more weight to those products that support virtual deduplication appliance deployment than those that do not.. The features were broken into four () general categories. The features included in this Buyer s Guide were broken down into four general categories: Deduplication, Hardware, Management and Support. These categories reflect the general features that organizations evaluate when seeking out deduplicating backup appliance solutions.. A survey for each solution was sent to each vendor to complete. DCIG contacted representatives of the vendors included in this Buyer s Guide to enlist their support in completing it. In those instances where vendors did not complete the survey, DCIG completed the survey on their behalf, sent it to them and gave them the opportunity to respond with any corrections or edits to the DCIG-completed survey. In every case, every provider had the opportunity to review and respond to any DCIG-completed survey. 6. Features were scored based on the information gathered from the surveys. Features were marked as either supported or unsupported and then scored accordingly. In some cases, additional points were awarded for how the feature was supported or implemented. 7. Product data sheets were created and sent out to the vendors for review before publication. Due to the large number of product features that DCIG evaluated, all information could not be included on the data sheets. Only the features deemed most important are included in the published version. The full list of product features may be accessed in the DCIG Interactive Buyer s Guide available through DCIG s website: However, all information on each data sheet (minus their scores and rankings) included in this published version of the Buyer s Guide was sent to the vendors prior to publication for their review and feedback. In every case, each provider had a chance to review the content included on its respective data sheet. 8. Each deduplicating solution was awarded one of four () different designations. One of the goals of this Buyer s Guide was to make clear, objective distinctions between different deduplicating backup appliances. To accomplish this goal, the mean (or average) score for each category was determined as well as the standard deviation. The mean and standard deviation were calculated from the scores of all deduplicating appliances. DCIG then developed a ranking for each appliance using these calculations as a guide: The deduplicating appliance scores that were 0. or greater standard deviations below the mean were given the rank of Basic. The deduplicating appliance scores that were 0. standard deviations above or below the mean were assigned the rank of Good. The deduplicating appliance scores that were 0.. standard deviations above the mean were ranked as Excellent. The deduplicating appliance scores that were greater than. standard deviations above the mean were ranked as Recommended. For these reasons, the number of deduplicating backup appliances that achieved a certain ranking varied between categories. DCIG Comments and Thoughts on Virtual Appliances Deduplicating backup appliances come in two forms: physical and virtual. While this Buyer s Guide covers physical deduplicating backup appliances which offer hardware and software as one SKU, virtual appliances utilized for deduplication represent a growing trend. This year, DCIG chose to examine which physical deduplicating appliances are also available as virtual appliances as part of the overall survey. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 8

11 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Three of the vendors in this release of the Buyer s Guide sell virtual appliances: Quantum in its DXi V000 and V000; HP with HP StoreOnce VSA; and Dell sells the DR000v. Some virtual appliances geared for deduplication may operate as a standalone solutions while others can only be deployed with a physical deduplicating backup appliance. For example, Dell s DR000v may only be used when it is deployed in conjunction with either its DR00 or DR600 models. In every case where a vendor offers a virtual appliance option, it can interact with physical deduplicating backup appliances in that vendor s family of products, providing most if not all of the same deduplication and management capabilities as the physical appliance. Small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) often have remote and small offices that are now highly virtualized and require an easy to deploy, easy to manage and cost effective deduplication target. This is where virtual appliances comes into play. When the last DCIG Buyer s Guide on deduplicating backup appliances was produced, the only option remote and small offices had, with the exception of Quantum, was to use smaller, physical deduplicating backup appliances (which are still available and are covered in this Guide.) Now, instead of purchasing a physical appliance for these offices, they can purchase a virtual appliance which are generally available at a lower cost. At time of publication, the Dell DR000v virtual appliance listed for $,00 which includes one terabyte of licensed storage capacity, $7,00 for two terabytes of licensed storage capacity and $,00 for four terabytes of licensed storage capacity. The HP StoreOnce virtual appliance with four terabytes and ten terabytes of licensed, usable capacity is priced at about $,000 and $,000, respectively. One benefit of the virtual appliance is it removes the need for any additional physical hardware. Virtual appliances support the leading hypervisors such as VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V and may be installed on existing hypervisor servers. Scale-up and Scale-out Architectures Two methods for adding storage capacity to a deduplicating backup appliance exist: scale-up and scale-out. Some appliances are even capable of both which give organizations the flexibility to scale up by adding internal storage and then adding more nodes to scale-out while remaining in a single logical configuration for simplified administration. Deduplicating backup appliances that only offer a scale-up architecture have a wide range of usable capacity going from single or low double-digit terabytes of capacity to more than 00 terabytes. This compares to deduplicating backup appliances that only offer a scale-out architecture where nodes with preconfigured amounts of storage capacity are added to the existing configuration. Each architecture has its benefits and limitations. Using a scale-out architecture, organizations purchase nodes as they need them. Each time they add a node to the solution, it provides more storage capacity, network interfaces and processing power. In a scale-up configuration, each component (processing, networking ports and capacity) are scaled incrementally. As such, the number of processors does not necessarily increase as more storage capacity is added. One benefit of using a scale-out architectures is that the nodes are viewed and treated as one single logical entity by the solution. However just because they are all managed as a single, logical solution does not necessarily mean all of the nodes work together as one. Organizations need to verify that a deduplicating backup appliance that uses a scale-out architecture also offers global deduplication which deduplicates data across all of the nodes in a multi-node system. If it does not offer this feature, data is still deduplicated but only on each node so data deduplication is not optimized. Another potential drawback to using a scale out architecture is the possibility of node sprawl as adding nodes is easy to do but it may not be the most optimal way to grow. To counter this, organizations may want to purchase individual nodes with more capacity and processing power. ExaGrid and NEC are two notable providers that offer a scale-out architecture as part of their solution. ExaGrid recently increased the number of appliances available in a grid format from ten to with its.7 software release, which increased its limits across its product line. Instead of ten ExaGrid EX000E appliances in a single grid for 70 terabyte raw capacity, it can combine ExaGrid EX000E appliances for 008 terabytes (.008 PB) of raw capacity. NEC, which sells its products in blocks under set SKUs depending on the market segment, uses hybrid and storage nodes in various configurations to scale from as little as terabytes to 7.9 petabytes. With the consolidation of vendor lineups, a similar change is happening to models with scale-up architecture. For example, instead of selling several appliances into the mid-market datacenter market, Quantum now just sells one model for the midrange and another for the enterprise by providing a wide range of scale-up options. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 9

12 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Pricing DCIG purposely does not provide in-depth analysis on appliance pricing and software licensing due to the intricacies and ever changing models. However, several recent changes are hard to miss. EMC revamped its Data Domain lineup by introducing the DD00 and DD00 appliances. Each of these is based on a data-less head where the controller is sold with minimal to no storage. Existing or new storage shelves can be connected to the controller purchased, detaching the pricing of the storage from the controller. Licensing has always been tricky when it comes to deduplicating backup appliances. Fortunately, vendors are aware and have simplified the models. Many now have an all-inclusive software licensing model where deduplication and all needed software is included in the base cost of the system. However, some only loosely adhere to this model charging more for replication, various forms of encryption and new features such as archiving. When figuring a software pricing model, another big question is this: Is software licensing based on front- or back-end capacity? With some models capable of data reductions of more than 0:, this can make a sizable difference. If the system does not achieve anticipated results, you may pay more. Not including all software licenses in the base cost of the appliance can also lead to unexpected charges down the road as administrators look to use features such as replication, archiving and encryption. Some include all software licenses but tie these to the amount of storage capacity in the appliance. Quantum recently introduced software key licensing, where systems are sold with set capacities. Then, using a software key, administrators can access additional onboard capacity to move from, say, four to eight or more terabytes. Observations and Recommendations Under $00K General Observations About All Deduplicating Backup Appliances Under $00K General observations on all products in the DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer s Guide include the following: 00% of all deduplication appliances use variable block deduplication. Most in fact, use several deduplication algorithms. Variable Length Block, Pattern Matching and Delta Differences is a frequent combination. With little exception, 7% can be configured to deduplicate only certain data while letting other data bypass the deduplication process. 00% verify data integrity after the data is deduplicated The vast majority use RAID 6 00% offer Symantec s OST backup acceleration software All provide capacity performance, and replication reporting Recommended Ranking Observations ExaGrid and EMC both ranked at the top of this year s Buyer s Guide. products out of 6 earned the Recommended ranking. The products that achieved Recommended ranking in the DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide share the following characteristics: 7% of those in the Recommended category deduplicate at the byte level, breaking streams into 8MB zones Majority, 7%, do global deduplication Three-quarters carry out a form of post process deduplication. In this case however, replication can begin while deduplicating 7% offer a scale-grid architecture Sizable Raw Capacity with most scaling to multiple hundred TBs. The three largest scale to 8TBs, 67TBs and.0pbs All support hot swap drives Several use SAS drives for storage capacity with 0% using TBs 7.K RPM drives All can recognize and break apart backup software streams Good range to start out low and scale high into the enterprise Recommendations ExaGrid had a strong presence in the Recommended category, with of the products earning the top ranking. The ExaGrid EX000E, EX000E, and EX000E joined EMC Data Domain 00 as the category winners. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 0

13 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less It may stand to reason that ExaGrid noted for its scaleout architecture ranked in the top grouping. All the Recommended ExaGrid models scale to hundreds of TBs with 8TBs, 67TBs and.0pbs for three largest models along with the needed related hardware, deduplication and management components. Helping it to achieve customer acceptance, customer can build their backup storage as they go. Each model is a selfcontained node,so scaling out customers can start low and scale high. Looking at the ExaGrid EX000E for example, each node starts with TBs in Raw Capacity. With a grid configuration supporting nodes the same appliance can scale to 8TBs. All ExaGrid appliances scale in this way. Over the past year ExaGrid increased its grid scalability from a maximum of 0 nodes to. This alone makes a sizable difference as customers look to scale further into the high end. Instead of scaling to 0TBs with the node grid configuration it now scale to 8TBs, for a 8TB or 0% increase. The ExaGrid EX000E is the newest of its appliances with Raw Capacity going from 7TBs to.08pbs, a system that meets the needs of most midsized to large data center backup needs. The two companies, ExaGrid and EMC, each revamped and revised their product line. The EMC Data Domain 00 appliance uses a data less head where the controller is sold with minimal to no storage. In doing so, EMC separates the controller from storage capacity. Customers can use existing storage shelves, saving on cost, or purchase new ones to connect to the controller. The EMC Data Domain 00 competes with ExaGrid in the under $00K category. The EMC Data Domain 00 scales to an estimated TBs as compared to ExaGrid s 8TBs, 67TBs, and.08pbs for the EX000E, EX000E, and EX000E, respectively. So when it comes to building and growing a data center, customers may want to look for scalability and management features needed for continued growth in midsized to enterprise datacenter backup. Excellent Ranking Observations Seven (7) deduplication backup appliances earned the Excellent ranking in this year's Under $00K Buyer s Guide. The products that achieved an Excellent ranking in the DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide share the following features: Nearly 90% have more than 00TBs in Raw Capacity when fully scaled. Even split between those that have global deduplication capability and those that do not High availability is a feature prevalent in the Excellent category at 0% 00% support more than 00 concurrent backup streams /rds offer the deduplication appliance as a virtual appliance Recommendation Options abound in the Excellent grouping. These backup appliances can easily scale to more than 00TBs in Raw Capacity often a key threshold in the midsized and the enterprise datacenter market. Customers looking for enterprise level features will be happy to find a myriad of capabilities including global deduplication, high availability all backed by the hardware and management strength to support hundreds of concurrent backup streams. Several revamped product lines helped the companies earn the Excellent ranking in this year s guide. Exagrid, Dell and HP all have been investing heavily in the backup appliance market. Dell and ExaGrid have new top end appliances. HP introduced several new models to its lineup including the 700 system geared for the midrange business deduplication scaling from TBs to 9 TBs in Raw Capacity. Like others in HP s lineup, the appliance provides links to virtual appliance functionality. Dell is another that offers virtual editions of its deduplication appliances. These offer the same features as the hardware based appliances and can be used in combination with the hardware appliances. This ability helped both HP and Dell in their Excellent ranking. Customers looking to extend deduplication to remote offices may choose a software virtual deduplication appliance with the benefit of lower costs and simplified management. There are a few disadvantages though. These may require a dedicated server or at least space on a server for installation that can bring the price up. If the customer chooses not to use a dedicated server, the server may slow other operations as it is tasked with deduplication and storage. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

14 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less Good Ranking Observations Eight (8) backup appliances ranked the Good category in this year s guide. The products that earned a Good ranking in the DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide share the following common features: 7% use inline deduplication Majority use TB 7.K RPM SATA HDDs for storage capacity Nearly 90% support IPMI or Remote Access port for Console level access 0% offer both in-transit and at-rest encryption % support the Instant Recovery of virtual machines. Percentages increase in levels above. Encryption solution remain "on" in multi-streamed database backup environments Nearly all down through the Good level can configure network ports for certain tasks Recommendation Top end raw capacity begins to taper off a bit with some scaling only in the single digits and teens. Others go into the midrange and even the enterprise backup market with some scaling close to 00TBs in Raw Capacity and more. A fair number are in the low and high teens with scalability starting to become an issue. Hewlett Packard, IBM, ExaGrid, NEC and EMC all have appliances in this category. There is still a good mix of capabilities at the Good level. Those choosing a virtual edition for backup will be pleased to know that % of those in this ranking offer the feature. Others that prefer to go with the all in one hardware deduplication appliance still have options. A smaller sized hardware deduplication appliance can also easily operate in remote and branch offices carrying out deduplication at that location and then send the changed data to a central data center location for additional deduplication checks. In this grouping, those that offer the virtual edition may have trade-offs in management or scalability. Some also listed may better serve as single controller systems with scalability typical of remote and backup office locations. Basic Ranking Observations The products that achieved a Basic ranking in the DCIG 0- Under $00K Deduplicating Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide generally shared the following characteristics: 00% are single controller systems All use a scale up architecture. Going up a level, % have scale out capabilities All go by an all-inclusive licensing model where the core deduplication features and sometimes replication, encryption and backup acceleration are included at the base cost Recommendation Scalability becomes an issue for those in the Basic grouping. All of these are single controller systems with % having top end Raw Capacity in the single digit TBs range. Another 7%, however, scale into the midrange. There is a trade-off. What one forgoes in scalability is made up on management capabilities. Those with single digit Raw Capacity levels are best used in remote and backup office applications where deduplication starts to make a difference. The good news is that some of those in the Basic level still have scalability for midrange environments. Here customers have to look closely at the feature sets and capabilities. Many of the appliances vendors have similar deduplication features throughout their lineup. However, when it comes to management this may change moving up a family line up. Needless to say these appliances do not have global deduplication, high availability and fewer management features like IPMI, encryption during multistreaming, or network port configuration. As with all the appliances it is also good to see what licenses cost extra. Some may charge for OST, replication, and encryption. 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

15 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE SCORES AND RANKINGS The scores and rankings for the deduplicating backup appliances under $00K 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 each deduplicating backup appliance was ranked A summary of the primary findings 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

16 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE OVERALL SCORES AND RANKINGS The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCES SCORE RANKING. EMC Data Domain Recommended. ExaGrid EX000E Recommended. ExaGrid EX000E 77.8 Recommended. ExaGrid EX000E Recommended. ExaGrid EX0000E 7.7 Excellent 6. Dell DR Excellent 7. Hewlett Packard StoreOnce Excellent 8. ExaGrid EX Excellent 9. ExaGrid EX Excellent 0. ExaGrid EX Excellent. ExaGrid EX Excellent. Dell DR Good. EMC Data Domain Good. Hewlett Packard StoreOnce Good. Quantum DXi670/DXi Good 6. IBM Storage System TS760 ProtecTIER Deduplication Appliance Express Good 7. ExaGrid EX Good 8. ExaGrid EX Good 9. NEC HYDRAstor HS Good 0. EMC Data Domain Good. FalconStor VTL SAM6 6.6 Basic. FalconStor VTL SAP Basic. FalconStor FDS SA Basic. FalconStor FDS SA0 7. Basic. Hewlett Packard StoreOnce Basic 6. FalconStor FDS SA0.9 Basic Total Number of Products 6 Rankings Highest Score 78. Lowest Score.9 Average (Mean) 66.9 Standard Deviation.9 Recommended Excellent Good Basic DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

17 0- UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Deduplicating Backup Appliances with a List Price of $00K or Less UNDER $00K DEDUPLICATING BACKUP APPLIANCE MODELS 0 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.