PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER S GUIDE THE INSIDER S GUIDE TO EVALUATING PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAYS. By Jerome Wendt and Ben Maas.

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www.dcig.com

2013

PRIVATE CLOUD

STORAGE ARRAY

BUYER’S GUIDE

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO EVALUATING

PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAYS

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO EVALUATING PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAYS

Table of Contents

1

Introduction

4

Executive Summary

6

How to Use This Guide

7

Disclosures

8

Private Cloud Storage Array

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

8

The Seven-Step Process Used to Score

and Rank Private Cloud Storage Arrays

9

Comments and Thoughts On…

9 The Private Cloud Storage Category 10 The Defining Line between Midrange Unified

and Private Cloud Storage Solutions 10 Snapshot Implementation

11 Power Consumption and Cooling 11 Feature Areas Where DCIG Expects

to See Continued Improvement

11

Observations and Recommendations

Regarding Each Private Cloud Storage

Array Ranking

11 “Best-in-Class” and “Recommended” Rankings 12 “Excellent” Ranking 13 “Good” Ranking 13 “Basic” Ranking

14

Scores and Rankings

15 Overall Scores and Rankings

16 vSphere Integration Scores and Rankings 17 Hardware Scores and Rankings

18

Buyer’s Guide Models

19 Cleversafe dsNet 20 Coraid EtherDrive

21 Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN + FS8600 NAS 22 DirectData Networks Web Object Scaler (WOS) 23 EMC Isilon NL-Series

24 EMC Isilon S-Series 25 EMC Isilon X-Series 26 Gridstore GS-1000-2 27 Gridstore GS-1100-4 28 HP StoreAll 9320 29 HP StoreAll 9730 30 HP StoreVirtual 4330 Storage 31 HP StoreVirtual 4530 Storage 32 HP StoreVirtual 4630 Storage 33 HP StoreVirtual 4730 Storage 34 IBM SONAS 35 IceWEB 6500 Series 36 NEC HYDRAstor 37 NetApp FAS3220 38 NetApp FAS3250

39 Nimbus Data E-Class Flash Memory 40 Overland Storage SnapScale X2 41 Pivot3 vSTAC Data

42 Pivot3 vSTAC Watch

43 Scale Computing SCr Storage Node

44

Product Rankings Dashboard

Appendix

A-1 Appendix A—Definitions, Explanations and Terminology B-1 Appendix B—Storage Provider Contact Information C-1 Appendix C—Author Contact Information

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Introduction

Around two years ago the DCIG 2011 Enterprise Scale-Out Storage Buyer’s Guide was released. At the time we mentioned that scale-out systems were being used to store “Big Data” and create private storage clouds. Since then scale-out storage systems have become the foundation for building out private storage clouds which prompted DCIG to change the name of this Buyer’s Guide to better reflect the intended use case for these storage arrays. While the term “private storage cloud” is certainly hip and may be used a bit too liberally in today’s culture, this label is actually much more descriptive of what scale-out means for an end user rather than what it does technically for storage engineers.

In the last few years “the cloud” has moved from being a quasi-technical term to going main stream. A CFO’s executive assistant probably does not know what a “scale-out storage system” is or does. However she has probably heard of the term “storage cloud” and grasps at a high level what it can do for her company. By renaming this Buyer’s Guide to “Private Cloud Storage Array,” DCIG helps to better communicate how scale-out storage arrays are best deployed and leveraged in businesses.

It is important to note that the term “cloud storage” as used in the context of this Buyer’s Guide is NOT referring to the same types of storage clouds where you may store all of your images, documents and emails which may then be accessed from anywhere by any device. While the private cloud storage arrays covered in this Buyer’s Guide may in some cases be used behind the scenes in support of these types of clouds, private cloud storage arrays are generally used for many more roles within organizations.

The growing appeal of private cloud storage arrays is attributable to three main factors. 1. Organizations can start small with as much capacity and performance as they

initially need and then scale them as needed according to their changing requirements. 2. As private cloud storage arrays scale out they remain fairly simple

to configure and manage.

3. They offer non-disruptive operations such that organizations can maintain and upgrade these arrays with minimal or no disruption to production operations. One of the most interesting developments in this space has been the emergence of private cloud storage arrays optimized for specific applications or roles. A number of the models found in this Buyer’s Guide with lower scores and ranks have sacrificed some features in order to better deliver specific features.

For instance, Nimbus Data delivers an all flash memory array. Scale Computing produces a hybrid private cloud storage solution with compute and storage nodes for virtualized environ-ments. Cleversafe continues to deliver an object-based private cloud storage array. Pivot3 focuses its arrays on video and media storage.

However many of the vendors provide arrays for general purpose business needs. Dell, EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp all offer products that may be configured to fulfill a variety of

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

Introduction

continued

roles within organizations ranging from hosting large amounts of data to meeting application specific performance requirements to delivering both the capacity and performance that an organization may need.

We believe that this Buyer’s Guide will provide the context to find the right solution for your problem set in your size business. One system (Gridstore) starts at around $5,000 scaling to support approximately one (1) petabyte of capacity. Others have starting list prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and theoretically scale to support exabytes of storage capacity. In that sense, this Buyer’s Guide maybe more so than any other one that DCIG produces offers a solution for nearly any size business regardless of its requirements. This Buyer’s Guide is intended to help organizations accelerate the decisions about what solutions they need to further investigate during the research phase of the procurement process. This Guide represents months of rigorous research that your organization can leverage to kick start its evaluation process.

This Buyer’s Guide provides a standardized data sheet for each model so organizations will be able to compare diverse models in an intuitive fashion. By pairing these data sheets and the scorings and rankings of these models with your own company’s requirements, you should be able to quickly create a short list of models that meet your needs and either move to an evaluation phase or even directly to purchase.

The level of detail in this Buyer’s Guide combined with its scoring and ranking methodology helps organizations in two key ways.

First, it provides a powerful yet concise method to evaluate each private cloud storage array so organizations can understand the overall strengths and weaknesses of each solution. Using that information they can then understand how well each solution is positioned to meet the specific needs of their environment.

Second, the data sheets in this Buyer’s Guide drill down into the specifics of each product that provide information on how well it supports array management and replication, how well it integrates with vSphere, what hardware capabilities it offers, and what type of technical support companies might expect. The data sheets also reveal how specific features are supported and, in some cases, how they are implemented.

Organizations that are in the process of virtualizing their environments may find private cloud storage arrays particularly appealing as they can contribute to improved hardware densities, simplified management, reduced costs and non-disruptive storage operations. To highlight which private cloud storage arrays are best suited to meet this end, this Buyer’s Guide includes a vSphere Integration category that highlights an array’s ability to support VMware vSphere. While other hypervisors exist, VMware is the market leader and offers an accepted and established set of storage APIs that are supported by a number of the arrays in this Guide.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

Introduction

continued

What remains the same as in prior DCIG Buyer’s Guides is the decision not to overtly evaluate performance. Performance is determined and influenced by many controllable and uncon-trollable variables that makes it almost impossible for a third party to evaluate any product’s performance and arrive at an objective conclusion as to how well it performs.

DCIG encourage organizations to use this Buyer’s Guide to create a short list of private cloud storage arrays that will potentially meet their needs and then test each array's perfor-mance in their environment.

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 private cloud storage array to do in-house testing if at all possible as each solution may react differently to your particular workloads.

We hope this Buyer’s Guide meets its intended purposes in your environment and serves as a helpful aid in supplementing your organization’s normal decision making and evaluation process for new technology purchases.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

In October 2011 IDC estimated that the total amount that enterprises spent for on-premise storage in 2010 was around $30.8 billion. In that same interview IDC also forecast that expen-ditures on cloud storage solutions (both public and private) would explode to $11.7 billion by 2015. In other words, in just five (5) short years organizations would reallocate anywhere from 25 to 33 percent of their total storage budget and invest it in cloud storage technologies.1

While no one yet knows precisely what percentage that companies will spend on either public or private cloud storage solutions, DCIG anticipates that in the near term (0-5 years) organizations will invest the majority of this new line item in their storage budget in private cloud storage arrays.

ApplicationContinuity.org found in a survey of 3,300 midmarket companies that 90 percent of IT managers felt it was critical to keep their key applications and data in-house and out of the <public> cloud.2_{Yet these organizations still want the benefits that public storage}

clouds offer, they just do not want the inherent risks and uncertainties that they perceive public storage clouds still present.

This is where private cloud storage arrays enter the picture. They provide the key features that organizations need today more than ever as they enable organizations to:

• Achieve high levels of availability

• Easily configure and manage these systems so that as the private cloud storage array grows larger the management of it does not become more complex • Non-disruptively perform routine maintenance and upgrades

• Perform reliably • Scale predictably

• Start small with only the capacity and performance that they need with the flexibility to grow larger

The ability of private cloud storage arrays to deliver on all of these features is particularly important for those organizations that opt to implement private cloud storage arrays to host many or all of their production applications. When deployed into these environments, any planned or unplanned downtime or disruption in service at any time for any reason can have potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire business.

Even in situations where organizations deploy these private cloud storage arrays to support Big Data applications or specific applications such as archiving or backup where downtime may not have such dire consequences, these private cloud storage arrays features still come into play.

Executive Summary

1. Fulton, Scott M. "IDC: Business Spending for Cloud Storage to Triple by 2015." ReadWrite. Say Media Inc., 20 Oct. 2011. Web. 21 July 2013.

2. Wendt, Jerome M. "90 Percent of Small and Midmarket Companies Want to Keep Their Critical Apps and Data Out of the Cloud; Scale Computing Interview Part II." DCIG. DCIG, LLC., 20 June 2013. Web. 21 July 2013.

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Organizations are tired of having to pull their IT staff off of other critical projects to maintain storage solutions that should work with minimal IT staff intervention. Using private cloud storage arrays, they can begin to realize this ideal as every private cloud storage array covered in this Buyer’s Guide should be able to deliver on that requirement so long as it is used in support of the appropriate application(s).

The DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide assists organizations in making this decision about which is the right solution to host a specific application or even poten-tially all of an organization's applications. This Buyer’s Guide covers private cloud storage arrays with capacities that have maximum capacities in the hundreds of terabytes to those that have the potential to scale into the exabytes of storage capacity.

This DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Buyer’s Guide achieves the following objectives: • Provides an objective, third-party evaluation of currently available private cloud storage arrays • Evaluates, scores and ranks private cloud storage arrays from an end-user’s perspective • Includes recommendations on how to best utilize this Buyer’s Guide

• Provides data sheets on 25 private cloud storage arrays from fifteen (15) different providers so organizations may do a quick comparison of features while having sufficient detail at their fingertips to make an informed decision

• Provides insight into each private cloud storage array’s support for various applications, the robustness of its hardware, its management and replication capabilities, its integration with VMware vSphere and what levels of support it offers

This Buyer’s Guide cannot tell you the “right” vendor and/or solution to select for your partic-ular requirements. Rather this Buyer’s Guide should be viewed as a handbook to help jump start your normal research and decision-making processes. It will help organizations identify and prioritize features and capabilities in private cloud storage arrays that are shipping today so organizations may more quickly move to the next stage of evaluating and even potentially purchasing the right solution for their environment.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

How to Use This Guide

This DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide functions as an important tool for any organization that is starting or already in the process of purchasing a private cloud storage array. The result of months of intense research, this Buyer’s Guide does much of the heavy lift-ing for organizations in terms of helplift-ing them to vet what private cloud storage arrays are currently available and what features they possess.

Solutions in the private cloud storage market are very diverse and serve the needs of multiple application types. Therefore in preparing this Buyer’s Guide it was DCIG’s goal to evaluate, score and rank each solution based upon a comprehensive list of features that reflects the needs of the widest range of organizations.

How an organization leverages this Buyer’s Guide will some-what depend on the organization’s size. Large enterprises looking for a solution to meet their data consolidation and retention needs will find that those solutions with the high-est scores and rankings will meet the widhigh-est range of their application requirements.

Conversely small and midsize organizations as well as departments looking for cost savings while retaining the potential for expansion of a private cloud solution should consider those solutions that rank as “Good” or “Basic.” These solutions will have a more limited set of features as they are intended to solve a particular challenge or set of challenges (such as storing large amounts of archiving data, backup data or infrequently accessed data such as that which is gathered by video surveillance systems) at a lower price.

DCIG’s rankings of “Best-In-Class,” “Recommended,” “Excellent,” “Good,” and “Basic” are a measure of how well the functionality and capability of each private cloud stor-age array compares to the other models evaluated in this particular Buyer’s Guide.

As DCIG scores and ranks the overall capabilities of each solution, organizations need to verify that the features and capabilities that they require are included in the specific solutions they are considering. However the higher the score, the greater the likelihood that the product contains the features they need.

DCIG encourages good stewardship in all purchasing decisions and has attempted to pack as much detail as possible about each solution into each product’s data sheet. Organizations should use this Buyer’s Guide as a handbook to understand:

• Who the private cloud storage array providers are • What products they offer

• What features and functions are available on each model • How these solutions scale

• What networking and storage protocols they offer • How organizations might manage any solution

they purchase

DCIG recommends that you use this Private Cloud Storage Buyer’s Guide in the following seven ways:

1. Jumpstart the painstaking research associated with identifying desired features in private cloud storage arrays. The Buyer’s Guide contains an exhaustive list of over 70 individual features that organizations look for when evaluating a private cloud storage array. This list provides an excellent place to start when an organization creates its own list of features that it may need or want.

2. Provide prospective on the overall state of the private cloud storage array market. DCIG has identified vendors beyond recognizable names such as Dell, EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp to better portray the overall state of the market. The inclusion of less well known providers is done to encourage familiarity and help highlight where innovation may be occurring.

3. Create a standardized data sheet to compare diverse solution lines. Storage vendors tend to use their own templates that make it difficult to compare different models from the same or different vendors. By DCIG creating a standardized data sheet template, organizations can more easily compare models from the same or different vendors and see exactly which features are supported and, in some cases, how the features are implemented.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

4. The standardized data sheet attempts 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 apples-to-apples comparisons and which ones are apples-to-oranges comparisons.

5. Use the standardized data sheet to aid your own investigation. The standardized DCIG data sheet should be used as a starting point for your own investi-gation. The list of features can be used as a starting point in discussions with vendors and as an audit trail during your investigation. A DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Buyer’s Guide data sheet can also serve as an attractive cover sheet that supplements your own internal discussions and research.

6. 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, at the top of every private cloud storage array data sheet, product scores and rankings are listed 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 an aggregate score sheet that provide the high-level scores and rankings for all of the private cloud storage solutions evaluated in this Guide.

7. Normalize complex storage terminology. Every computing industry has a proclivity to adopt acronyms and jargon that is specific to it. However the data storage industry seems to go out of its way to not only use unfamiliar terms but to refer to the same technol-ogy in different ways. This complicates any evaluation of a technology. This Buyer’s Guide explains and normalizes the jargon specific to these technologies, enhancing the quality and productivity of the discus-sions around the technology.

Disclosures

Over the last few years the general trend in the US has been for both large analyst firms and boutique analyst firms to receive some or all of their revenue from storage vendors.

DCIG is no different in that respect as it also receives payment for the different services it performs for storage vendors. The services that DCIG provides include blog-ging, case studies, executive white papers, full-length white papers and special reports. For more information on DCIG, visit www.dcig.com.

In the interest of transparency, a number of the storage providers included in this Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide are or have been DCIG clients. No vendors, however, whether clients or not, have been afforded any preferential treatment in this Buyer’s Guide.

Where a client relationship does exist DCIG may have had more complete knowledge of specific vendor’s products and features. However DCIG sought to include all relevant products in this Buyer’s Guide, and existing relationships played no part in inclusion or ranking.

In that vein there are a number of important facts to keep in mind when considering the information contained in this Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide and its merit.

• No storage vendor paid DCIG any fee to develop this Buyer’s Guide

• DCIG did not guarantee any storage provider that its private cloud storage array would be included in this Buyer’s Guide

• Previous relationships did not influence the research, scoring or ranking of features and products evaluated in this Buyer’s Guide

• All research was based upon publicly available informa-tion as well as informainforma-tion provided by the storage vendors themselves

• Because of the number of features analyzed, how these features were weighted and how each private cloud storage array was scored and ranked, there was no way for DCIG to predict at the outset how the product or product family would end up scoring or ranking at the end DCIG would like to emphasize that no storage provider was privy to how DCIG did the scoring and ranking of the private cloud storage features. In every case, the stor-age provider only found out the scores and rankings of its respective private cloud storage array model(s) after the analysis and research was complete.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

As DCIG prepared this Buyer’s Guide, it had to take an important first step: develop a working definition of a “private cloud storage array.” The definition needed to be sufficiently broad so as to encompass what comes to mind when organizations hear the term “private cloud storage array” while still making the definition sufficiently narrow to keep it down to a manageable set of vendors and solutions.

To that end the following definition of “private cloud storage array” was arrived at and was used as a means to deter-mine whether or not a solution should be included in this Buyer’s Guide.

Each private cloud storage array must:

• Be available as an appliance that is available as a single SKU and includes its own hardware and software • Contains nodes that are independently configurable for

processing, storage or both. Each node may include its own processor, power, network interface, and optional disk controllers

• Supports horizontal scaling of drive capacity and throughput through the addition of nodes

• Supports the vertical scaling of drive capacity and throughput by way of the independent upgrading of components within individual nodes

• Supports Ethernet connectivity

• Supports one or more of the following storage networking protocols:

· CIFS and NFS · REST/Object storage · iSCSI

· Fibre Channel and/or FCoE · ATA over Ethernet (AoE)

• Supports storage of data across multiple nodes • Supports the hot insertion and removal

of individual nodes

• Primarily functions using storage local to the device and/or its direct peers (more than a private cloud storage gateway)

The Seven-Step Process Used to Score

and Rank Private Cloud Storage Arrays

1. A long list of features that met the DCIG definition for “private cloud storage array” was created.

Prior to selecting the features ultimately included in this Buyer’s Guide a larger, longer list of features was compiled. The terms on this list were then “normalized” such that 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.

2. A list of features to be included in the Buyer’s Guide was established.

3. 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. For example, based on experience from previous Buyer’s Guides, allocate-on-write snapshot capabilities were given a higher weighting than other snapshot types based on space-efficiency and performance expectations. As such, private cloud storage arrays that included an allocate-on-write snapshot capability scored higher than those that supported other snapshot types.

4. The features were broken into five (5) general categories. The features included in this Buyer’s Guide were broken down into five general categories: Management & Replication Software, Application Layer, vSphere Integration, Hardware and Support. These categories reflect the general features that DCIG believes organizations evaluate when seeking out private storage cloud storage arrays.

5. 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.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

6. All the features were scored based on the information gathered from surveys.

7. Each private cloud storage solution was ranked and scored according to five (5) different desig-nations. One of the goals of this Buyer’s Guide was to make clear, objective distinctions between different private cloud storage solutions. 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 the private cloud storage arrays. DCIG then assigned a ranking to each private cloud storage array using these calculations as a guide.

• Those private cloud storage array scores that were a 0.5 standard deviation or greater below the mean were given the rank of “Basic”

• Those private cloud storage array scores that were 0.5 standard deviations above to 0.5 standard deviations below the mean were assigned the rank of “Good”

• Those private cloud storage array scores that were 0.51 – 1.5 standard deviations above the mean were ranked as “Excellent”

• Those private cloud storage array scores that were

greater than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean were ranked as “Recommended”

• The private cloud storage array that had the top score was given the designation “Best-in-Class” It is for this reason that in each classification the

number of private cloud storage arrays that achieved a certain ranking varied. In every instance all private cloud storage array scores came within two (2) standard deviations of the mean.

Comments and Thoughts On…

The Private Cloud Storage Category

A lot has changed in two years. When DCIG released the DCIG 2011 Enterprise Scale-Out Storage Buyer’s Guide the category felt like it was not yet mature. A good indicator of that sentiment is that one third of the models included in the DCIG 2011 Enterprise Scale-out Storage Array Buyer’s Guide are not included in this Buyer’s Guide.

Part of the impetus in changing the name of this Buyer’s Guide from “Enterprise Scale-out Storage” to “Private Cloud Storage Array” is that DCIG wanted to better capture the multitude of ways in which providers are delivering this type of storage. This enabled us to capture and cover providers like Coraid and Gridstore which might be viewed by some as more unorthodox ways to implement private storage clouds.

For instance, Coraid is the only vendor to offer support for the ATA over Ethernet (AoE) protocol to complement its support for the CIFS, iSCSI and NFS protocols. Coraid uses this AoE protocol to get FC-like or better perfor-mance at Ethernet prices. Gridstore meanwhile uses virtual controller software that is installed on virtual and physical machines alike. This serves to drive down the cost of its private cloud storage array (its storage nodes start at under $5,000) which brings this technology to a class of users which might not otherwise be able to afford it.

DCIG did put a much greater focus on VMware vSphere integration in this Buyer’s Guide than it did in the previ-ous one. While DCIG started out with the expectation that private cloud storage arrays should be primarily used to support archiving, backup and Big Data applications where ease-of-management and scale-out are king and perfor-mance is more of a secondary concern, advancements in private cloud storage arrays convinced us that some of these systems are ready to handle the variety of workloads that inevitably come when hosting virtualized applications. As a result an entire category is devoted to integration with VMware vSphere in recognition of the increased use of virtualization by all size organizations. While other virtualiza-tion hypervisors are available, VMware provides a number of APIs that can dramatically improve performance when implemented by hardware vendors. Given the wide adop-tion of VMware in small, midsize and large enterprises it follows that they seek out and want hardware that utilizes the “force multiplier” effect that these APIs offer for their existing and future VMware deployments.

A second area of emphasis is solid state drives (SSDs) and other Flash RAM based technologies. Intelligent use of these technologies can provide significant performance improvements over traditional spinning magnetic media. In particular, solutions that utilize flash-based write journaling ranked higher than other solutions.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

In looking at how the various solutions placed, in some respects little has changed in terms of the ranking of models that appeared in the DCIG 2011 Enterprise Scale-out Storage Buyer’s Guide and in this Guide. Offerings from EMC, IBM, Cleversafe and Scale Computing ranked roughly the same as they did before.

Some of the more notable changes since the last Guide’s publication involve the rankings of the HP and NetApp private cloud storage arrays. The increased focus that this Guide put on management over capacity benefited NetApp more than HP as the HP IBRIX/StoreAll’s management soft-ware came up short on these feature when compared to a number of other products evaluated in this Guide.

The significant improvements that NetApp has made to its ONTAP clustering and management software were also clearly evident in DCIG’s evaluation of the various private cloud storage arrays. Tom Georgens, NetApp’s CEO, recently made the comment at the NetApp 2013 Industry Analyst Event that, “as clustered ONTAP goes, so goes NetApp.” Based upon NetApp’s stellar results in this Buyer’s Guide, it appears NetApp is off to the races in delivering on this critical aspect of enterprise storage for the foreseeable future.

The Defining Line between Midrange Unified and Private Cloud Storage Solutions

Careful observers of DCIG Buyer’s Guides may identify several solutions that appeared in the DCIG 2013 Midrange Unified Storage Buyer’s Guide also show up in this guide. This is natural as many if not most scale-out solutions combine NAS and SAN connectivity into the same device to function as a private storage cloud.

However “unified storage” and “private cloud storage” have distinct connotations in the storage industry. “Unified storage” most often connotes a dual-controller configura-tion with predefined limits on networking, performance and storage capacities. These systems do not lend themselves well to maintaining a state of non-disruptive operations that is becoming increasingly important to organizations of all sizes. Performing maintenance and upgrades on unified storage systems typically result in at least degraded storage system performance if not outright application and storage system outages.

On the other hand “private cloud storage” delivers the higher levels of availability, reliability, and scalability that

today’s organizations demand. Of the three, scalability distinguishes private cloud storage arrays from unified storage arrays.

Organizations need storage solutions that give them the flexibility to granularly add more capacity and performance as they need it without requiring huge upfront capital costs. The scale-out architecture of private storage clouds also lends itself well to replacing aging components with new ones without necessitating downtime or time-consuming data migrations from the old to the new system. Using private storage clouds these data migrations should occur as a function of the storage array with minimal or no impact to system availability or performance.

Snapshot Implementation

Another scoring decision that had to be made was to make a determination as to which snapshot type was the “Best.” This determination was needed in order to properly weight and score each snapshot type on each respective enter-prise scale-out storage solution.

In general DCIG followed the precedents it established in storage Buyer’s Guide. The snapshot methodology deter-mined to be the “Best” was based on the following criteria:

• Uses the least amount of storage capacity when a snapshot was taken

• Incurs the least amount of performance overhead to complete the snapshot

• Was the least likely to impact performance after the snapshot was complete

It was when these three factors were taken into consider-ation that it becomes clear “allocate-on-write” is generally the best snapshot type. It should be noted there is at least one implementation of “copy-on-write” that DCIG considers to be as good if not better than “allocate-on-write.”

While DCIG still gives precedence to “allocate-on-write” snap-shots it recognizes the enhancements to some implementa-tions of “copy-on-write” features. DCIG has given additional weight to these implementations as it has also done in previous Buyer’s Guides. As a result the private cloud storage arrays that support the “allocate-on- write” and “copy-on-write” snapshot feature received higher scores than those that supported some other snapshot methodology.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

Power Consumption and Cooling

Although DCIG is unable to include power consumption and cooling data it is encouraged to see vendors providing more visibility into the power consumption and cooling data of their arrays. Power and cooling are two of the largest factors in ongoing maintenance costs of storage and computing resources. The fact that vendors are increasingly including this data in their technical data reaffirms DCIG’s belief that end users are evaluating this information as part of their purchasing decisions.

Feature Areas Where DCIG Expects to See Continued Improvement

Nearly two years have passed since the predecessor to this Guide, the DCIG 2011 Enterprise Scale-Out Storage Buyer’s Guide, was published. Here’s a passage from this same section in that Guide:

“DCIG expects that a common use case for enterprise scale-out storage solutions will be as archival and backup solutions. This led DCIG to expect more vendors would include support for deduplication to their solutions.” At the time the previous Guide was published, only two vendors, NetApp and Symantec, offered deduplication options. This Buyer’s Guide now includes seven vendors and ten models that support deduplication while Symantec no longer has a qualifying product. We further note that many of the vendors who do not offer deduplication are not positioning their private cloud storage arrays for the purpose of archiving. DCIG is encouraged by this trend. DCIG expects continued integration of flash-based tech-nologies into products in this category. Many of the models included in this Guide that offer flash are also accompanied by a hefty price tag. As such, it is no surprise to see a number of models that offer flash-based technologies such as SSDs (Solid State Disks) use it primarily as cache. We were pleasantly surprised to have one pure flash model, the Nimbus Data E-Class Flash Memory System, rank so highly in this Guide. DCIG expects to see more wide spread implementation of flash-based caching and storage in the coming years.

The last area DCIG expects to see growth is in integration with public cloud storage providers. DCIG is encouraged that in both this Guide and the recent DCIG 2013 Midrange Unified Storage Array Buyer’s Guide a number of models

support standardized cloud storage solutions such as Amazon, Atmos and Open Stack.

Finally, DCIG is disappointed to note that a handful of models, from prominent vendors, have remained nearly unchanged in the past two years. In one sense this can be a good thing. Stability and maturity are features this category seemed to lack two years ago though in most cases the hardware in these models has aged well. However as young as this class of storage arrays is, as rapidly as this market is developing and the potential that this market holds for growth, DCIG generally views this lack of development with a certain degree of concern. It communicates that a handful of vendors either lack commitment to developing these particular product lines or lag their competitors in delivering them.

Observations and Recommendations

Regarding Each Private Cloud Storage

Array Ranking

“Best-in-Class” and

“Recommended” Rankings

Observations

The NetApp FAS3250 achieved the “Best-in-Class” ranking among the private cloud storage arrays that DCIG evalu-ated with its companion FAS3220 close on its heels. In comparing these solutions to their counterparts they stood out in the following ways:

• NetApp’s ONTAP management software continues to rank among the most feature-rich storage system operating system suites in the industry

• Full integration with VMware vSphere

• Support for both deduplication and SSD provides the ability for these arrays to fulfill roles ranging from archive and backup to production support of virtualized applications

Recommendations

NetApp’s Data ONTAP management software continues to evolve to stay at the forefront of storage operating systems. Its Data ONTAP previously contributed to NetApp earning the top marks in the DCIG 2013 Midrange Unified Storage Array Buyer’s Guide. Those capabilities again came into play

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

as they, coupled with the enhanced clustering features found in NetApp’s latest Data ONTAP 8.1 release, propelled the NetApp FAS3250 and FAS3220 to earning the top two spots in the DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide. The NetApp FAS3250 and FAS3220 successfully deliver the broadest range of features for those organizations looking for a single array that may be used in multiple roles. Small and midsize enterprises will find that the FAS3250 and FAS3220 offers the breadth of features in a single system to meet their various application needs ranging from data-intensive, cost-sensitive applications to performance-intensive, highly available ones with the only measurable differences between the two models being the FAS3250 offering more capacity and performance.

By way of example, few other models in this Buyer’s Guide can match their ability to deliver deduplication, flash-based caching, SSDs and multiple storage networking proto-cols in a single system. Most other private cloud storage arrays in this class target specific application requirements (archive, backup, Big Data, virtualization) and remain rooted as pure NAS or SAN plays. Even in those few cases where other systems support both NAS and SAN protocols, their protocol support is usually limited to just Ethernet with no support provided for Fibre Channel.

Organizations should be aware that NetApp is one of the few providers that licenses features of management software individually. This means organizations may need to pay extra for some features they want such as deduplica-tion. However it should also be noted that when acquiring a NetApp FAS3250 or FAS3220, organizations usually get the flexibility to choose at least some of the core features they need for their environment at no extra cost.

Bottom line, NetApp has truly separated itself from the pack for those organizations who want to get a single private cloud storage solution that meets the widest range of their needs today while positioning them to adapt and scale into whatever needs may emerge in the future.

“Excellent” Ranking

Observations

Private cloud storage arrays ranked as “Excellent” in general shared the following characteristics:

• Most models scaled to support petabytes (PBs) of raw storage capacity

• Ranked in the upper range of the management category • Ranked in the upper end of vSphere integration

Recommendations

All three of the EMC Isilon series covered in the Buyer’s Guide achieved the ranking of “Excellent.” The EMC Isilon models merit strong consideration for their ability to deliver the exact type of private cloud storage solution that an orga-nization needs as EMC Isilon, with its NL-Series, S-Series and X-Series, can be configured to handle capacity intensive applications, performance intensive applications and general purpose workloads in Ethernet only environments.

A newcomer to this Buyer’s Guide which achieved an Excellent Ranking is the Nimbus Data E-Class Flash Memory Array. Nimbus has the only all flash-memory private cloud storage array in this Buyer’s Guide. Its combi-nation of a unified NAS/SAN architecture combined with strong management software and nearly complete vSphere integration drove Nimbus high in the overall rankings. Making this solution particularly notably is that its unique all-flash memory architecture should result in it outper-forming nearly any other solution covered in this Buyer’s Guide for those applications that need scalability and are particularly performance sensitive. However a word of caution: DCIG has received some feedback from end-users who express concerns about Nimbus Data’s support so that aspect should be investigated before proceeding with this solution.

Another unique product that appears in this group is the Coraid EtherDrive. Coraid is the only vendor in this Guide to utilize ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) as its transport protocol of choice. Coraid offers AoE based on the high levels of perfor-mance that it offers in Ethernet environments that require high-resiliency or multi-pathing. DCIG does encourage any users considering this solution to first familiarize themselves with the AoE protocol as well as recognize that no other major storage provider formally supports this protocol. Rounding out this group is the Dell Compellent Storage Center. Dell posted strong scores in the vSphere Integration and Hardware, achieving “Excellent” and “Recommended” rankings in these respective categories.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

However Dell’s management software still lags manage-ment suites from other providers and the Compellent Storage Center does not support any cloud storage providers and leverages what is in essence a NAS Gateway (the FS8600 NAS) to deliver file sharing.

“Good” Ranking

Observations

Private cloud storage arrays ranked as “Good” in general shared the following characteristics:

• Lack high levels of VMware vSphere integration • Offer block and file services using Ethernet protocols • Rank in the upper half of the “Hardware” and

“Management & Replication” categories • Scale to PBs of raw storage capacity

Recommendations

Models with a “Good” ratings are where the transition offi-cially occurs as these models are for the most part intended to be deployed on in support of specific application work-loads as opposed to general purpose application workwork-loads that private cloud storage arrays with “Recommended” and even “Excellent” rankings can generally support.

For instance, the HP StoreVirtual models as well as the IBM SONAS, IceWEB 6500 Series and NEC HYDRAstor arrays focus most squarely on the archiving and backup use cases. These all scale to offer high levels of storage capacity with all (except the IBM SONAS) offering dedupli-cation to optimize storage capacity and leverage asyn-chronous replication as a means to regularly move archival and backup data stores to another location for heightened levels of data availability and protection.

The HP StoreAll 9000 series, formerly known as the HP IBRIX X9000 and which took top honors in the prior DCIG 2011 Enterprise Scale-Out Storage Buyer’s Guide, fell to the middle of the pack along with its HP StoreVirtual 4000 series of private cloud storage arrays.

The HP offerings as well as the offering from IBM were both heavily affected by this Buyer’s Guide heightened focus on virtualization. This refresh of the Buyer’s Guide also placed additional emphasis on management and flash memory

technologies which also contributed somewhat to their lower scores and rankings in this Buyer’s Guide release.

“Basic” Ranking

Observations

Private cloud storage arrays ranked as “Basic” in general shared the following characteristics:

• Offer fewer management features

• Support less than 1 PB of raw storage capacity • Support lower amounts of RAM

Recommendations

Solutions ranked as “Basic” are generally targeted for small to medium sized organizations. Management features such as application aware snapshots, deduplica-tion, storage tiering and VMware vSphere integration are generally NOT supported.

On the hardware side these solutions have limited system RAM compared to other solutions that were evaluated and lack advanced features such as flash-based caching and Fibre Channel support.

The potential for this group should not be understated however. Most models are geared to specific application needs and should perform and scale well if deployed within the environments for which they are intended.

• Cleversafe’s and DataDirect Network’s solutions focus primarily on object storage

• Gridstore focuses on providing a cost-effective, easy to deploy scale-out solution for small and midsize enter-prises. It is being used with great success for backup and as a storage target in virtualized environments. • Scale Computing focuses on highly integrated

comput-ing environment for turnkey virtualization installations and provides a solid starting pointing for companies to implement a converged infrastructure.

These models, when properly deployed, are impressive products that merit investigation by the right organizations.

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

PRIVATE CLOUD

STORAGE ARRAY

SCORES AND RANKINGS

The scores and rankings for the private cloud storage

arrays contain the following information:

• Charts that list the Overall scores and rankings for

all of the products as well as how each product did

in the Hardware and vSphere Integration categories

• The mean and the standard deviation that was

used to establish how each private cloud storage

array model was ranked

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OVERALL SCORES AND RANKINGS

Total Number of Products 25

PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY SCORE RANKING

1. NetApp FAS3250 87.51 BEST-IN-CLASS

2. NetApp FAS3220 86.80 Recommended

3. EMC Isilon S-Series 80.32 Excellent

4. Nimbus Data E-Class Flash Memory 80.27 Excellent

5. EMC Isilon X-Series 79.02 Excellent

6. EMC Isilon NL-Series 76.05 Excellent

7. Coraid EtherDrive 70.54 Excellent

8. Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN + FS8600 NAS 68.21 Excellent

9. IBM SONAS 66.90 Good

10. IceWEB 6500 Series 66.70 Good

11. HP StoreVirtual 4730 Storage 63.68 Good

15. HP StoreAll 9730 56.42 Good

17. NEC HYDRAstor 53.55 Good

18. Pivot3 vSTAC Watch 48.22 Basic

19. DataDirect Networks Web Object Scaler (WOS) 42.03 Basic

20. Pivot3 vSTAC Data 41.83 Basic

21. Scale Computing SCr Storage Node 40.58 Basic

22. CleverSafe dsNet 38.27 Basic

23. Overland Storage SnapScale X2 36.95 Basic

24. Gridstore GS-1100-4 29.93 Basic 25. Gridstore GS-1000-2 28.82 Basic Highest Score 87.51 Lowest Score 28.82 Average (Mean) 59.39 Standard Deviation 17.50 Recommended 85.64 – 87.51 Excellent 68.15 – 85.63 Good 50.64 – 68.14 Basic 28.82 – 50.63 Rankings

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

vSPHERE INTEGRATION SCORES AND RANKINGS

PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY SCORE RANKING

3. Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN + FS8600 NAS 10.50 Excellent

4. Nimbus Data E-Class Flash Memory 10.00 Excellent

6. EMC Isilon NL-Series 9.00 Excellent

8. HP StoreVirtual 4730 Storage 7.50 Excellent

12. Coraid EtherDrive 2.00 Basic

13. Pivot3 vSTAC Watch 1.50 Basic

14. IBM SONAS 1.00 Basic

15. Pivot3 vSTAC Data 0.50 Basic

16. Cleversafe dsNet 0.00 Basic

17. DataDirect Networks Web Object Scaler (WOS) 0.00 Basic

18. Gridstore GS-1000-2 0.00 Basic

20. HP StoreAll 9320 0.00 Basic

21. HP StoreAll 9730 0.00 Basic

22. IceWEB 6500 Series 0.00 Basic

23. NEC HYDRAstor 0.00 Basic

24. Overland Storage SnapScale X2 0.00 Basic

25. Scale Computing SCr Storage Node 0.00 Basic

Highest Score 13.50 Lowest Score 0.00 Average (Mean) 4.54 Standard Deviation 4.87 Recommended 11.86 – 13.50 Excellent 6.99 – 11.85 Good 2.10 – 6.98 Basic 0.00 – 2.09 Rankings

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

HARDWARE SCORES AND RANKINGS

Highest Score 25.76 Lowest Score 5.57 Average (Mean) 16.74 Standard Deviation 5.13 Recommended 21.37 – 25.76 Excellent 16.24 – 21.36 Good 11.61 – 16.23 Basic 5.57 – 11.60

PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY SCORE RANKING

1. NetApp FAS3250 25.76 BEST-IN-CLASS

3. Coraid EtherDrive 23.54 Recommended

4. Nimbus Data E-Class Flash Memory 23.02 Recommended

5. Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN + FS8600 NAS 22.96 Recommended

6. IBM SONAS 20.40 Excellent

7. IceWEB 6500 Series 19.45 Excellent

15. Pivot3 vSTAC Watch 14.97 Good

16. Scale Computing SCr Storage Node 14.83 Good

17. EMC Isilon NL-Series 14.80 Good

18. Overland Storage SnapScale X2 14.20 Good

19. DataDirect Networks Web Object Scaler (WOS) 13.53 Good

21. Cleversafe dsNet 13.27 Good

22. NEC HYDRAstor 13.05 Good

23. Pivot3 vSTAC Data 12.83 Good

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DCIG 2013 PRIVATE CLOUD STORAGE ARRAY BUYER’S GUIDE

PRIVATE CLOUD

STORAGE ARRAY

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HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces SATA

Raw Storage Capacity

per Node (Max) 139.6 TB Storage Nodes (Min/Max) 8 / 56,448

SSD Concurrent HDD Mix

Storage Node FLASH Based Caching Caching (Read/Write)

/

Write Journaling

IO Acceleration (Block / NAS)

/

Storage Node Cache

(Max RAM/Max) 32 GB / 32 GB

DCIG Scores and Rankings

MANAGEMENT & REPLICATION

Mgt Software Capacity-based Licensing

Asynch Replication Snapshots Application Aware Snapshots Provisioning (Thin/Eager-Zeroed Thick)

/

Automated Storage Reclaimation Zero Reclaimation API

Quotas 2 Threshold Alerts Deduplication Sub-volume Tiering (Type/Level) Mgt Interface 1 Unified Device Mgt SNMP v2, v3

Notification and Logging 2

NDMP

Cloud Storage Support 1

NAS Virtualization

APPLICATION LAYER

Network File Systems Proprietary

Concurrent NFS/CIFS Mix REST Other Data Transfer Protocols

Authentication 3

SUPPORT

Hardware Warranty 3 Years

Contract

Support Availability 24x7x365 Contract Support Options 3

Non-Contract

Support Availability 24x7x365 Non-Contract

Support Options 3

VMWARE vSPHERE INTEGRATION

VAAI Full Copy

Hardware Assisted Locking Block Zeroing

Dead Space Reclaimation Full File Clone Out of Space Conditions Reserve Space Fast File Clone/ Native Snapshot

iSCSI Hardware Offloading SCSI UNMAP

Plug-ins (SMART/SATP)

/

VASA/SIOC

/

HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces SATA

Raw Storage Capacity

per Node (Max) 139.6 TB Storage Nodes (Min/Max) 8 / 56,448

/

Cleversafe dsNet

Approximate Starting List Price: $300/TB

HARDWARE (CONTINUED)

Storage Node

Controller Config Active-Active Controller Node FLASH Based Caching Caching (Read/Write)

/

Controller Cache

(Max RAM/Max) 128 GB / 128 GB 1 /10Gb Ethernet Ports (Max) 2 / 2

8Gb Fibre Channel 0

iSCSI Concurrent FC/iSCSI Mix

FCoE / AoE

/

Concurrent NAS/SAN Mix

Power Supplies

(Redundant/Hot Swap)

/

Fans (Redundant/Hot Swap)

/

Hot Swap Drives Managed UPS/ Battery Backup RoHS Compliant OVERALL

SCORE & ReplicationManagement ApplicationLayer IntegrationvSphere Hardware Support

38.27

11.50

3.50

0.00

13.27

10.00

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DCIG Scores and Rankings

HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces 6 Gb SAS, SATA

Raw Storage Capacity

per Node (Max) 144 TB Storage Nodes (Min/Max) 1 / 200

/

MANAGEMENT & REPLICATION

Mgt Software All Features Included

Asynch Replication

Snapshots CoW, Split-Mirror, _{Full Copy} Application Aware Snapshots Provisioning (Thin/Eager-Zeroed Thick)

/

Quotas 4

Threshold Alerts Deduplication Sub-volume Tiering

(Type/Level) Scheduled / Block, Directory

Mgt Interface 6

Unified Device Mgt

SNMP v2

NDMP

NAS Virtualization

APPLICATION LAYER

Network File Systems NFS v3/v4, CIFS/SMB

Concurrent NFS/CIFS Mix REST Other Data

Transfer Protocols ftp, sftp Authentication 5

SUPPORT

Contract

Non-Contract

iSCSI Hardware Offloading SCSI UNMAP

/

VASA/SIOC

/

Coraid EtherDrive

Approximate Starting List Price: N/A

Storage Node

/

(Max RAM/Max) 512 GB / 16 TB 1 /10Gb Ethernet Ports (Max) 8 / 8

FCoE / AoE

/

Power Supplies

/

70.54

23.50

8.50

2.00

23.54

13.00

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DCIG Scores and Rankings

HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces FC-SW, 6 Gb SAS, _SATA Raw Storage Capacity

SSD Concurrent HDD Mix

/

Asynch Replication Snapshots AoW Application Aware Snapshots Provisioning (Thin/Eager-Zeroed Thick)

/

Quotas 2

Threshold Alerts Deduplication Sub-volume Tiering

(Type/Level) Scheduled, Automatic Mgt Interface 4

Unified Device Mgt

SNMP v2

NDMP Cloud Storage Support NAS Virtualization

APPLICATION LAYER

Network File Systems NFS v3, CIFS/SMB

Concurrent NFS/CIFS Mix REST Other Data Transfer Protocols

SUPPORT

Contract

Non-Contract

iSCSI Hardware Offloading SCSI UNMAP

/

VASA/SIOC

/

Dell Compellent Storage Center

SAN + FS8600 NAS

Storage Node

/

(Max RAM/Max) 24 GB / 24 GB 1 /10Gb Ethernet Ports (Max) 4 / 2

FCoE / AoE

/

Power Supplies

/

68.21

20.75

5.00

10.50

22.96

9.00

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DCIG Scores and Rankings

HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces 6 Gb SAS, SATA

Raw Storage Capacity

/

(Max RAM/Max) N/A

Asynch Replication Snapshots Application Aware Snapshots Provisioning (Thin/Eager-Zeroed Thick)

/

Quotas 4 Threshold Alerts Deduplication Sub-volume Tiering (Type/Level) Mgt Interface 1 Unified Device Mgt SNMP

NDMP

NAS Virtualization

APPLICATION LAYER

Concurrent NFS/CIFS Mix REST Other Data Transfer Protocols

SUPPORT

Hardware Warranty 1 Year

Contract

Non-Contract

iSCSI Hardware Offloading SCSI UNMAP

/

VASA/SIOC

/

DirectData Networks

Web Object Scaler (WOS)

Storage Node

Controller Config Active-Active Controller Node FLASH Based Caching Caching (Read/Write) N/A

Write Journaling N/A

IO Acceleration (Block / NAS) N/A

(Max RAM/Max) N/A 1 /10Gb Ethernet Ports (Max) 8 / 8

FCoE / AoE

/

Power Supplies

/

SCORE & ReplicationManagement ApplicationLayer IntegrationvSphere Hardware Support

42.03

16.50

7.00

0.00

13.53

5.00

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DCIG Scores and Rankings

HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces 6 Gb SAS

Raw Storage Capacity

/

Mgt Software Additional Features _Available Asynch Replication

Snapshots AoW, CoW

Application Aware Snapshots Provisioning (Thin/Eager-Zeroed Thick)

/

Quotas 4 Threshold Alerts Deduplication Post-process Sub-volume Tiering (Type/Level) Automatic Mgt Interface 4 Unified Device Mgt SNMP v2, v3

NDMP

NAS Virtualization

APPLICATION LAYER

Concurrent NFS/CIFS Mix REST Other Data

Transfer Protocols ftp Authentication 6

SUPPORT

Contract

Non-Contract

iSCSI Hardware Offloading SCSI UNMAP

/

VASA/SIOC

/

EMC Isilon NL-Series

Approximate Starting List Price: $123,500

Storage Node

Controller Config Scale-out Controller Node FLASH Based Caching Caching (Read/Write) N/A

Write Journaling N/A

IO Acceleration (Block / NAS) N/A

(Max RAM/Max) N/A 1 /10Gb Ethernet Ports (Max) 8 / 4

FCoE / AoE

/

Power Supplies

/

SCORE & ReplicationManagement ApplicationLayer IntegrationvSphere Hardware Support

76.05

34.25

9.00

14.80

9.00

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DCIG Scores and Rankings

HARDWARE

Controller Interfaces 6 Gb SAS

Raw Storage Capacity

per Node (Max) 21.6 TB Storage Nodes (Min/Max) 3 / 144

/

(Max RAM/Max) 96 GB / 1.2 TB

Mgt Software Additional Features _Available Asynch Replication

Snapshots AoW, CoW

Application Aware Snapshots Provisioning (Thin/Eager-Zeroed Thick)

/

Quotas 4 Threshold Alerts Deduplication Post-process Sub-volume Tiering (Type/Level) Automatic Mgt Interface 4 Unified Device Mgt SNMP v2, v3

NDMP

NAS Virtualization

APPLICATION LAYER

Concurrent NFS/CIFS Mix REST Other Data

Transfer Protocols ftp Authentication 6

SUPPORT

Contract

Non-Contract

Support Avail