Array Review 2013

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2014

ENTERPRISE

MIDRANGE ARRAY

BUYER’S GUIDE

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO EVALUATING

ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAYS

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO EVALUATING ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAYS

Introduction

3

Executive Summary

5

How to Use this Enterprise

Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide

6

Disclosures

6

Enterprise Midrange Array

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

7

The 8-Step Process Used to Score

and Rank Enterprise Midrange Arrays

8

DCIG Comments and Thoughts

on Enterprise Midrange Array…

8 Value of Included Software 8 Automation

9 VMware Integration 9 Flash Memory Support 9 Reliability

9 Performance and Pricing

10

Observations and Recommendations

Regarding Each Midrange Array Ranking

10 "Best-In-Class" Ranking 11 “Recommended” Ranking 11 “Excellent” Ranking 12 “Good” Ranking 12 “Basic” Ranking

13

Enterprise Midrange Array

Scores and Rankings

14 Overall Scores and Rankings

18

Enterprise Midrange Array Models

19 Aberdeen AberSAN ZXP2 HA High Availability ZFS SAN 20 Aberdeen XDAS D42F7 8GB FC 21 Aberdeen XDAS iSD41 22 Aberdeen XDAS iXD32 10G 23 Aberdeen XDAS T42F 24 Celeros SmartSAN XT23S-FC 25 Celeros SmartSAN XT235-iSCSI 26 Dell Compellent SC8000 27 Dell EqualLogic

PS6100/PS6110 Series 28 Dell EqualLogic

PS6500/PS6510 Series 29 Dot Hill AssuredSAN 3000 Series 30 Dot Hill AssuredSAN 4000 Series 31 Dot Hill AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series 32 EMC VNX5700

33 EMC VNX7500 34 EMC VNXe3300

35 Hitachi Data Systems HUS 150 36 Hitachi Data Systems HUS VM 37 HP EVA P6550 38 HP StoreEasy 5000 39 HP StoreVirtual 4730 Storage 40 HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 41 Huawei OceanStor S2600T 42 Huawei OceanStor S5800T 43 IBM DCS3700 44 IBM DS5300 45 IBM Storwize V7000U 46 IBM XIV Gen 3

69

Product Rankings Dashboard

47 IceWEB Unified Storage Appliance Model 7000 48 Imation Nexsan E60 49 Imation Nexsan NST5500 50 Infortrend EonStor DS B24F-R2852 51 Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-R2152-6 1GBE 52 Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-R2251 10GbE 53 Infortrend EonStor DS S16F-R2852-6 8G FC 54 Infortrend EonStor DS S48F-R2652-4 16Gb FC 55 Infortrend ESVA E60-2230 56 Infortrend ESVA F75-2830 57 NEC M500

58 NetApp E2600-12 59 NetApp E5460 60 NetApp FAS3250 61 Oracle Pillar Data Systems

Axiom 600

62 Oracle Sun ZFS Storage ZS3 63 Overland Storage

SnapSAN S5000 64 Overland Storage

SnapScale X2 65 Scale Computing

ICOS Storage Nodes M Series 66 Starboard AC4500

67 X-IO Hyper ISE 7-Series 68 X-IO ISE 200 Series

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Introduction

Amid the ever-changing nature of technology and the advancements continually showing up throughout the data storage industry, one important aspect is unchanging: corporate data is being created at in ever greater quantities, and the pace is increasing in unpredictable ways. According to one recent multi-university study of 26 corporations and large nonprofits, the volume of data is expanding by 35% to 50% every year in most organizations, which essen-tially doubles the volume of data stored every two years. The highest rate observed was 150% growth. Additionally, the researchers observed that in every organization studied, data growth far exceeded revenue growth.1

Because of this accelerating data growth, many organizations are evaluating storage purchases. There are many enterprise midrange storage arrays available to meet this data explosion. This Buyer’s Guide includes standardized data sheets for 50 arrays from 19 providers. In most cases, each data sheet represents an array series. As a result, the 50 data sheets actually represent well over 100 specific array models.2

The word “Enterprise” is new in the title for this year’s refresh of the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide. The term “Enterprise Midrange Array” is intended to reflect busi-ness expectations regarding continuous availability, comprehensive features, and storage capacity. The arrays highlighted in this Buyer’s Guide offer organizations the redundancy they are looking for along with data protection features like snapshots and replication capabilities. Although there is no official maximum on storage capacity for the arrays included in the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide, those products included generally scale to less than one petabyte.

Although the word “Enterprise” is often associated with high costs, it is notable that both new entrants and dominant vendors now make enterprise features available in arrays at prices within reach for mid-sized organizations. Illustrating this price shift, the overall top scoring array in the 2014 Buyer's Guide has a starting list price under $50,000.

Like all prior DCIG Buyer’s Guides, this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide does the heavy lifting for organizations as they look to purchase a midrange array by:

• Listing each individual midrange array model by storage provider

• Listing different midrange array features, whether or not they are supported and, where appropriate, how they are implemented

• Weighting these features according to what organizations consider most important • Scoring these features

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Introduction

continued

The end result is that this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide gives organi-zations the opportunity to do “at-a-glance” comparisons between many different arrays. This will enable them to more quickly sort through the many arrays to identify a short list of prod-ucts that meet their specific needs. Prospective purchasers can focus their product evaluation energies on those selected arrays and move more quickly to the competitive bid process. Note that this Buyer’s Guide is not intended to be a substitute for bringing individual midrange arrays models in-house for testing. That function should still be done, if possible, since every array will perform differently under different application workloads and data center environments.

We hope you find that this Buyer’s Guide meets its intended purpose in your environment. Ken & Jerome

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

The DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide is a tool designed to cut time and cost from the product research process. DCIG invested hundreds of hours design-ing a survey that would capture the data that matters most to prospective midrange array purchasers, gathering the relevant data, and then analyzing the results.

The data collection survey included 104 scored questions with 288 scored items per midrange array. The resulting data was categorized, standardized and distilled into summary scoring and ranking tables as well as a one-page data sheet for each array.1_This

power-ful combination of summary data and data sheets make it easy to do quick, side-by-side comparisons of storage arrays.

On the demand side, multiple factors contribute to a newly dynamic and competitive environment. Enterprises are keeping more data and seeking to do more with the data they keep. Beyond data growth, consolidated virtual server environments create a highly random work load that is challenging for traditional storage arrays. Desktop virtualization creates yet another new set of challenging storage workloads.

On the supply side, advances in available CPU cores and DRAM capacity, coupled with the arrival of flash memory on the enterprise storage scene, have created new opportunities to meet storage capacity and performance demands through new storage architectures, super-sized caches, and storage software that provides advanced capabilities like dynamic automated storage tiering.

Meeting performance and reliability requirements at the lowest possible cost is a high priority for many enterprises; and they realize that gaining the ability to quickly understand what is happening in their storage environment and to automate manual processes gives them the opportunity to reduce the cost of managing their data center infrastructures. Therefore, this Buyer’s Guide incorporates data on integrated performance monitoring software and auto-mation hooks for provisioning and ongoing management of storage arrays.

Like previous Midrange Array Buyer’s Guides, VMware integration is broken out from other software-enabled capabilities because VMware integration is so critical for enterprise data centers. The majority of enterprises use VMware in their environments.

In addition, the depth of VMware storage-related API support can enhance server and stor-age performance while reducing administration overhead. Extensive VMware integration from a storage array equates to higher performance and a lower cost of ownership.

Although VMware dominates the enterprise virtualization space, other hypervisors are gain-ing traction with the install base for Microsoft Hyper-V havgain-ing risen to nearly 28% this year.2

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Although software capabilities are critical, robust hardware options are still of great importance when selecting a midrange array. As such, this Buyer’s Guide still scores and places a greater emphasis on controller configurations, hard drive capabilities and available ports on each array. CPU cores, cache size, storage density and storage capacity are also scored. Enterprise-level organizations require standards like hot swap drives and redun-dant controllers to ensure there is no single point of failure, and those necessary hardware elements are addressed.

The DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide is our largest Buyer’s Guide project to date. Although the print edition of the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide includes 50 midrange array data sheets, at least 100 arrays are actually represented, because nearly every data sheet represents a series of arrays.

For example, the HP StoreVirtual 4130, 4330, 4530 and 4730 are represented only by the HP StoreVirtual 4730 in the print version. If you would like to more closely examine each model in a series, the data is broken out individually in the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Interactive Buyer’s Guide (IBG) module which users may subscribe to at http://www. dcig.com/interactive-buyers-guide.html.

It is in this context that DCIG presents its DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide. As prior Buyer’s Guides have done, it puts at the fingertips of organizations a resource that provides them with a comprehensive list of midrange arrays that can assist them in this all-important buying decision while removing much of the mystery around how midrange arrays are configured and which ones are suitable for which purposes.

This DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide accomplishes the following objectives: • Provides an objective, third party evaluation of midrange arrays that evaluates

and scores their features from an end user’s viewpoint

• Includes recommendations on how to best use this Buyer’s Guide

• Scores and ranks the features on each midrange array based upon the criteria that matter most to end users so they can quickly know which midrange arrays are the most appropriate for them to use and under what conditions

• Provides data sheets for 50 midrange arrays from 19 different storage providers so end users can do quick comparisons of the features that are supported and not supported on each midrange array

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

How to Use this Enterprise

Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide

In determining how to best use the information contained in this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide, it is important to note that it is intended to help enterprise organizations in their purchase of a midrange array. The purpose of this Buyer’s Guide is NOT to tell users exactly which midrange array to purchase. Rather, it is to help guide them in coming up with a list of competitive products that have comparable features that meet their specific needs. It is also important for users to note that just because a product scored the highest in a particular category or is ranked a certain way does not automatically mean that it is the right product for their organization. If anything, because of the scope of the midrange array models evaluated and analyzed, it may have features that are too robust for the needs of an individual department or organization. However, what this Buyer’s Guide does is give users some sense of how each array compares to others classified as “midrange arrays” for enterprise organizations, as well as offers additional insight into what product offerings are avail-able on the market.

DCIG recommends that you use this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide in the following seven ways:

• Eliminate the painstaking research associated with coming up with a short list of midrange arrays that meet their needs. This Buyer’s Guide ranks, scores and contains data sheets for 50 different models from 19 different providers. Each midrange array is scored and then ranked as “Best-in-Class,” “Recommended,” “Excellent,” “Good” and “Basic” based upon its score. On each array, over 100 different features were evalu-ated, weighted, scored and then ranked. All an organiza-tion has to do is look at the scores and features of each product in order to come up with a short list of products for consideration.

Array 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 multiple storage providers that include different models. Now organizations can refer to the scores and rankings of each midrange array in this guide so they know when they are getting a good deal, a great deal or just a “so-so” one.

• Gain perspective on how models from less well known storage providers compare against estab-lished and better known brands. Anyone involved with storage has probably heard of Dell, EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp. This creates a certain built-in level of comfort when buying products from these companies and a corresponding built-in resistance to buying midrange arrays from companies that are perceived as unknown quantities.

This Buyer’s Guide helps to remove some of that apprehension about buying from a less well known provider or even a less well known model from an established provider. Using this Buyer’s Guide organiza-tions can see how these models from lesser known companies as well as lesser known models from established providers stack up.

• Take advantage of normalized storage terminology. Every computing industry has a proclivity to adopt acronyms and jargon that is specific to its lexicon. But the data storage industry seems to go out of its way to not only use unfamiliar terms but refer to the same technol-ogy in different ways. This Buyer’s Guide sifts through the acronyms and storage jargon and terms and normalizes them. This minimizes or even eliminates the need for users to try to understand all of the industry terminology. • Do side-by-side comparisons. The product data

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

for individual products can be printed out, laid down side by side and then the features on them quickly compared. • Justify technical buying recommendations to

business folks. Nothing is easier for those on the business side to understand than a number when doing comparisons. So at the top of every midrange array model data sheet, a product score is included so the business side of the house can quickly see how the different midrange array 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 storage providers.

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

In the interest of being fully transparent, a number of the storage providers included in this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide are, or have been DCIG clients. This is not to imply that they were given preferential treatment in the Buyer’s Guide. All it meant was that DCIG had more knowledge of their midrange arrays and that DCIG was aware that they offered arrays that might qualify for inclusion in this Buyer’s Guide.

In that vein, there are a number of important facts to keep in mind when considering the information contained in this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide and its merit.

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

• DCIG did not guarantee any storage provider that its enterprise midrange array(s) would be included in this

• Because of the number of features analyzed, how these features were weighted and then how these enterprise midrange array models were scored and then ranked, there was no way for DCIG to predict at the outset how individual enterprise midrange array models would end up scoring or ranking

DCIG would like to emphasize that no storage provider was privy to how DCIG did the scoring and ranking of the midrange arrays. In every case the storage providers only found out the scores and rankings of its midrange array model(s) after the analysis was complete.

Enterprise Midrange Array

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The term “midrange array” has become a nebulous term at best considering all of the new architectures and designs of midrange arrays that have emerged in the last decade. Terms like “scale-out storage” and “unified storage” have only further served to blur the lines of what constitutes a “midrange array.”

DCIG incorporated input from key users and vendors into defining the criteria we would use to decide what arrays belonged or did not belong in this Buyer’s Guide. This Buyer’s Guide attempts to take into consideration as many of these variables as possible, but likely failed to account for all of them. While this may have resulted in a specific model not being covered in this Buyer’s Guide when it rightfully may have belonged, DCIG believes the following criteria were consis-tently applied as we did our research and made our decisions. The rationale that was used to determine the inclusion and exclusion of specific models in this Buyer’s Guide is as follows:

• It had to support either the Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI block-based protocol. Well over half of the models included in this report supported both protocols but even if they supported only one, they were still

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

support 60 TBs or greater that many of the features that are of the most interest to organizations begin to surface. • It had to support two controllers with some method

for failover. It needed to support some type of two controller configuration such that a second controller could take over the application workload should the primary controller fail. This failover switching could be a more advanced configuration with both controllers configured in an Passive, Dual-Active, or Active-Active state. Configurations where the data is asynchro-nously replicated by the primary controller to a second controller for use in case of a failover were excluded from the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide. • There had to be sufficient information available to

DCIG to make meaningful decisions. DCIG made a good faith effort to reach out and obtain information from as many enterprise midrange array providers as possible by providing surveys to them for them to complete. However, in a few cases midrange array models may have been excluded because of a lack of reliable data. • The model had to be shipping as of September 1, 2013.

A cut off date had to be put in place or this Buyer’s Guide would never be published. Some allowances were made for feature or product enhancements that were made in August 2013 that did not adversely affect the analysis done in developing this Buyer’s Guide.

The 8-Step Process Used to Score

and Rank Enterprise Midrange Arrays

To score and rank each midrange array model, DCIG went through an eight step process to come to the most objective conclusion possible.

1. DCIG listed out all of the features available on all of the midrange arrays. Prior to selecting the features that were included in the final evaluation in the Buyer’s Guide, DCIG went through and quantified what features midrange arrays possessed. As part of this process, DCIG

For example, “Maximum Raw Storage Capacity” was evaluated as a feature instead of “Maximum Usable Storage Capacity.” While usable storage capacity is what users ultimately care about, a consistent objective answer cannot be arrived at as most midrange arrays offer multiple RAID options. So “Maximum Raw Storage Capacity” was selected as the feature to be evaluated since an objective answer could be ascertained and supported. 3. Each feature had a weighting associated with it.

The weightings were used to reflect if a feature was supported and potentially how well it was implemented. For example, the “Concurrent RAID Mix” feature is more of a “Yes” or “No” type of response whereas the “Internal HDDs Connectivity” feature covered a number of different disk drive interfaces with varying connectivity options. As such each of these features were weighted and scored differently.

4. A survey that asked about all of the features scored in this Buyer’s Guide was sent to each storage provider. In addition to using the information that was publicly available on each storage provider’s website, each storage provider included in this Buyer’s Guide had the opportunity to respond to a survey sent to it by DCIG. The survey elicits more data than was available on any vendor web site to provide a more thorough analysis of each midrange array. This was done to both verify that the information DCIG found on the storage provider’s website was correct as well as remove any ambiguities that existed regarding how some of the features were implemented.

5. All vendors were given the opportunity to review their data sheets before the final scores and rankings were determined. To ensure the information presented in this Buyer’s Guide is up-to-date and reliable, DCIG provided each vendor a copy or copies of their data sheets that appeared in this Buyer’s Guide without the scores and rankings on them. In this way they had the opportunity to validate the information

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

broke down into a total of four broad categories that are reflected on each midrange array data sheet. These four categories include Management & Software, VMware Integration, Hardware, and Support.

8. The midrange arrays were ranked using standard scoring techniques. One of the goals of this Buyer’s Guide is to establish clear lines of differentiation between midrange arrays with conclusions that are arrived at objectively. To accomplish this goal, the mean or average score for each classification was first determined and then the standard deviation.

Using the mean of the scores from all of the midrange arrays from which the standard deviation was calculated, DCIG developed a ranking for each midrange array model based upon the following in each classification:

• Those models that were .5 or greater standard devia-tions below the mean were given the rank of “Basic” • Those models that were .5± standard deviations above

or below the mean were ranked as “Good”

• Those models that were .5 – 1.5 standard deviations above the mean were ranked as “Excellent”

• Those models that were greater than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean were ranked as “Recommended”

• The model(s) with the highest score were given the designation of “Best-in-Class”

• It is for this reason that in each classification the number of models that achieved a certain ranking varied. Using this scoring and ranking method, DCIG feels confident that all of the models included in this report could be reasonably classified as midrange arrays suited for enterprise organizations.

DCIG Comments and Thoughts

Separate license fees for features can reduce the agility of the IT department in responding to changing business requirements because the purchase approval and ordering process may take several weeks. If implementation services are required, that may add additional weeks to the process. Separate licensing fees may be minor, or they can have a noticeable impact on the overall cost of ownership for an enterprise midrange array. Therefore, the annual cost of software licenses and associated support contracts should be incorporated into TCO (total cost of ownership) and ROI (return on investment) calculations.

This Buyer’s Guide acknowledges the value of included licenses by awarding a significant number of points to those arrays that ship with features already licensed. In particular, we give attention to licensing for snapshots, replication and thin provisioning features.

Automation

Data center automation is an area of emphasis for many organizations because it promises to facilitate efficient management of their data center infrastructure and enable a more agile response from IT to changing business require-ments. Ultimately, automation means more staff time can be spent addressing business requirements rather than manag-ing the routine tasks of a data center.

Organizations can implement automation in their environ-ment through manageenviron-ment interfaces that are scriptable and offer additional enhancements with API and SDK support. Support for automated provisioning is an area where improve-ment in the near future is expected. Currently, less than 20% of midrange arrays featured in this Buyer’s Guide expose an API for third-party automation tools, while 11% provide an SDK for integration with management platforms. As more organizations place a premium on automating their storage environment, these numbers should go up.

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

eliminates the cost and additional infrastructure complexity associated with licensing a third party product or the inef-ficiency associated with manual reclamation processes. Along the same lines, 21% of arrays are recognized by third party software, such as Symantec Storage Foundation, that can simplify storage management by reclaiming freed blocks of thinly provisioned storage automatically.

VMware Integration

In general, DCIG emphasizes advanced software features in the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide. This is especially true of integration with VMware vStorage APIs such as VAAI (vStorage APIs for Array Integration) and VASA (vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness). The VAAI and VASA APIs can dramatically improve overall data center performance.

Given the wide adoption of VMware by enterprises, it follows that they are seeking hardware that can take advantage of the “force multiplication” these APIs provide for existing and future VMware deployments.

The good news is that 62% of the midrange arrays in this Buyer’s Guide support all of the VAAI 4.1 APIs. However, only 10% of the arrays support the full set of VAAI v5 features. Of the VAAI v5 features, Dead Space Reclamation (SCSI UNMAP) fares best with 26% of arrays supporting this feature. Similar to the currently low support for VAAI v5.0, less than a fourth of the arrays support VASA. These integrations are key to the software defined data center and to minimizing ongoing management overhead for the large number of data centers that utilize VMware.

Robust VMware support is a product differentiator that matters to many potential array purchasers, and is an area where we expect to see further improvement in the coming year. Those organizations embracing VMware as their primary hypervisor will want to pay particular attention to how an array’s VMware support maps to their requirements

Nevertheless, just 45% support automated storage tiering, a technology that helps get the most benefit from the avail-able flash memory. Also, only 15% of arrays implement any of the flash memory optimization techniques—such as write coalescing—that enhance both performance and reliability. So while support for flash memory in midrange arrays has grown dramatically, the depth of integration still varies widely.

Reliability

This Buyer’s Guide only attempts to provide some insight into a midrange array’s reliability by examining whether or not it has redundant hardware, hot swappable components and what type of technical support it provides.

For quick comparison purposes, all of the arrays in the DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide include redun-dant fans and power supplies. Nearly all arrays in the Buyer’s Guide support hot-swap of drives, power supplies and fans, though a few featured redundant, but not hot-swappable fans. It is a core expectation of the enterprise-level organization that the enterprise midrange array being purchased offers near continuous availability. The arrays in this Buyer’s Guide account for that baseline need.

Performance and Pricing

Two factors that strongly influence buying decisions are performance and cost. So it may come as a surprise to those who look at this DCIG 2014 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide to see no performance benchmarks as to how any of the midrange arrays performed and only high-level pricing information. There are two core reasons why performance or detailed pricing information were not included in this Buyer’s Guide.

Performance will vary according to data center environment, the data being stored, and implementation decisions. So to introduce any type of performance metric would only result in the analysis and evaluations of the midrange arrays included in this Buyer’s Guide becoming more subjective, not less. The intent of this Buyer’s Guide is to provide a near

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real-DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

As for pricing, each midrange array data sheet provides only a starting list price for that midrange array. These list prices had no bearing in the weighting of any midrange array and are provided for reference purposes only.

DCIG recognizes that features like price and performance are relevant and even key considerations when buying an Enterprise Midrange Array. However, it is also almost impos-sible for a third party like DCIG to objectively measure these features on a large scale. Therefore, evaluating these factors is a part of the buying process that is still best left to end users.

Observations and Recommendations

Regarding Each Midrange Array Ranking

"Best-In-Class" Ranking

The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 earned the “Best-in-Class” ranking among enterprise midrange arrays evaluated this year. In comparison to its counterparts, this array stood out in the following ways:

• Achieved the highest score in three of the four scoring categories, including Management and Software, VMware Integration, and Support

• A single array can be scaled out to 4 mesh active controllers managing up to 864 TBs of data

• Offers HP 3PAR Peer Persistence and Remote Copy software to synchronously replicate data and then implement uninterrupted VM failover and failback without needing to implement a third party appliance or replication software

• Has “Best-in-Class” features, yet carries a starting list price below $50,000—which puts it within reach of many midsized organizations

Recommendations:

The HP 3PAR StoreServ is highly regarded for its perfor-mance due to its storage architecture and how it manages data placement within its system. As part of its architecture, HP 3PAR offers organizations the choice of using all hard disk drives (HDDs), a hybrid configuration consisting of both HDDs and solid state drives (SSDs), or an all flash memory array in the form of its new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450. To meet the increased performance demands that consolidated environments require as well as to deliver the higher levels of performance available on SSDs, HP 3PAR StoreServ scales up to four controllers in the 7400. As such there is minimal risk an organization's performance demands will outstrip the ability of HP 3PAR StoreServ to deliver on them.

The array further optimizes performance through the use of its wide striping technology. Wide striping places small chunks of data across all of the drives in a system to harness their collective throughput. Additionally, its Dynamic Optimization software ensures the chunks of data are on the right tier of storage. Wide striping places frequently accessed data on the most responsive tier of storage while moving infrequently accessed data to slower drives. HP 3PAR StoreServ conserves storage capacity through its thin provisioning feature. The array allocates only as much storage to the application as it actually uses while holding the rest of the requested storage capacity in reserve until it is required. Another feature of thin provisioning is its Thin Persistence feature, which identifies the storage capacity no longer used by the application and automatically returns it to the available pool of storage.

Storage capacity used by the array’s replication and snapshot features is efficiently managed by the unique methods that HP 3PAR StoreServ uses to provision storage so organizations may use these features without detecting extra overhead on the system or having to buy extra storage capacity.

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DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

HP 3PAR storage. Files may first be classified based on their metadata. An organization can then create policies that perform tasks such as managing retention and plac-ing files on the appropriate tier of storage based on each file's profile and classification.

The emergence of OpenStack storage technology has, among other things, created more confusion for storage purchasers. The good news is that HP's support for these OpenStack block storage Cinder drivers on its 3PAR (FC and iSCSI) storage arrays coupled with its support matrices, close alliances with hypervisor providers, back-end support and wide use of HP 3PAR StoreServ among top service providers makes HP 3PAR storage a safe bet for enterprises that may wish to implement OpenStack in the future.

Some of the analysis presented above goes beyond the data collected for this Buyer’s Guide by drawing on earlier DCIG analysis. To learn more about DCIG’s business-value-oriented take on HP 3PAR storage, see http://hpstorage.dcig.com.

“Recommended” Ranking

Observations:

The EMC VNX7500 and VNX5700 arrays share the “Recommended” label with the Hitachi Data Systems HUS 150 and HUS VM and NetApp FAS3250 arrays. The enterprise midrange arrays ranked as “Recommended” in this Buyer’s Guide generally shared the following characteristics:

• Scored at least 1.5 standard deviations above the mean in at least three of the four scoring categories

• Support all VAAI v4 and v5 features, and nearly all of the other VMware integration options measured—including SIOC, Storage DRS, VADP, VASA and VASRM • Support multi-tenancy

• Scale well beyond 1 PB

• Support unified block (SAN) and file (NAS) storage

comprehensive hypervisor and operating system support. The EMC arrays also provide superior file system support, including NFS v4.1 (pNFS), SMB 2.1 and 2.2. The EMC arrays provide API support for integrating into data center operations management tools and an SDK for integration with management software. The availability of the API may account for the ability of the EMC VNX arrays to integrate with CA Unicenter, HP Operations Manager, IBM Tivoli, Nagios XI and Zenoss Service Dynamics.

The Hitachi Data Systems HUS 150 and HUS VM and NetApp FAS3250 arrays also deserve serious consider-ation among enterprise midrange arrays. These arrays have native thin reclamation capabilities and Active-Active controllers. The HUS 150 also supports 16Gb FC and 40Gb Ethernet storage networking ports. The HDS arrays feature larger caches (160 GB and 384 GB) than the EMC (36 GB and 48 GB) or HP (64 GB) arrays.

The NetApp FAS3250 tops this category with a Hardware score in the “Recommended” range and all other scores in the “Excellent” range. The most comprehensive set of software and management features and the second highest VMware Integration score among “Excellent” arrays were key to its top ranking.

“Excellent” Ranking

Observations:

The midrange arrays ranked as “Excellent” in this Buyer’s Guide generally shared the following characteristics, with some exceptions:

• Scored “Excellent” in Management and Software and VMware Integration while achieving only a “Good” or “Basic” ranking in at least one category

• Support the big three data management tools of snapshots, replication and thin provisioning • Support all VAAI v4 but not all VAAI v5 features

(14)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Beyond their shared characteristics, half of which include exceptions, these arrays diverge in most other measures. Seven of the nine arrays support FC and iSCSI, four are scale-out architectures and three support multi-tenancy. Despite the diversity of options, all of these arrays are characterized by a solid enterprise feature set.

Recommendation:

The Huawei OceanStor S5800T took “Best-in-Class” in the Hardware category. The Starboard Storage AC4500 achieving an “Excellent” ranking is remarkable in large part because Starboard Storage is a startup founded in 2010, and released their first arrays in February 2012. The AC4500’s little brother—the AC4000—won the 2013 Flash Memory Summit’s Best of Show award for Most Innovative Flash Memory Enterprise Business Application. Starboard’s products are unified hybrid flash-HDD arrays. The manage-ment team includes founders/co-founders of multiple stor-age companies, including LeftHand Networks.

“Good” Ranking

Observations:

The enterprise midrange arrays ranked as “Good” in this Buyer’s Guide generally shared the following characteristics:

• All support the big three data management tools of snapshots, replication and thin provisioning • Support all VAAI v4 features, except for the HP EVA

P6550, which does not support any VAAI features • Limited or no support for VAAI v5 features and

other VMware integrations • Support iSCSI connections

• SAN block storage devices, with only the top scoring Nexsan NST5500 supporting unified block (SAN) and file (NAS) storage

and IBM XIV. Depending on business requirements, data center technologies and vendor relationships, any of these may be suitable for a given organization.

“Basic” Ranking

Observations:

The 17 enterprise midrange arrays ranked as “Basic” in each classification of this Buyer’s Guide generally shared the following characteristics:

• Very limited or non-existent VMware integration • No multi-tenancy

• No integration with Data Center Operations Management Software

• Support only a single SAN protocol (FC or iSCSI) at a time, except for IceWEB Unified Storage which supports both

• No support for NAS protocols, except for IceWEB Unified Storage and HP StoreEasy

• Only 7 of the 15 arrays support all three of the big data management tools of snapshots, replication and thin provisioning

Recommendation:

When choosing an array ranked as “Basic” an organiza-tion must understand its needs, and then let those needs determine which solutions are the best for its data center. A “Basic” array may address the need that prompted the organization to begin looking at enterprise midrange arrays in the first place. However, most of the “Basic” arrays provide significantly less deployment flexibility than their higher scoring competitors.

(15)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

ENTERPRISE

MIDRANGE ARRAY

SCORES AND

RANKINGS

The scores and rankings for the backup appliances 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 backup appliance was ranked

• A summary of the primary findings

(16)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

OVERALL SCORES AND RANKINGS

Enterprise Midrange Arrays Score Ranking

1. HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 147.00 Best-in-Class

2. EMC VNX7500 145.90 Recommended

4. HDS HUS 150 139.60 Recommended

5. HDS HUS VM 139.60 Recommended

6. NetApp FAS3250 134.50 Recommended

7. Dell EqualLogic PS6100/PS6110 114.50 Excellent

8. Huawei OceanStor 5800T 110.70 Excellent

9. Dell Compellent SC8000 107.20 Excellent

10. Starboard Storage AC4500 104.15 Excellent

11. EMC VNXe3300 103.50 Excellent

12. IBM Storwize V7000U 103.50 Excellent

13. HP StoreVirtual 4730 Storage 102.05 Excellent

14. Imation Nexsan NST5500 101.80 Excellent

16. Huawei OceanStor S2600T 99.35 Good

17. Oracle Pillar Data Systems Axiom 600 97.95 Good

18. Overland Storage SnapSAN S5000 95.85 Good

19. NetApp E5460 94.15 Good

20. Imation Nexsan E60 90.30 Good

21. Dot Hill AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series 90.05 Good

22. NetApp E2600-12 89.65 Good

23. Infortrend EonStor DS S16F-R2852-6 8G FC 86.45 Good

24. Oracle ZFS Storage ZS3 84.55 Good

(17)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Total Number of Products 50

Highest Score 147.00 Lowest Score 34.85 Average (Mean) 84.72 Standard Deviation 29.72 Recommended 129.31 – 147.00 Excellent 99.59 – 129.30 Good 69.86 – 99.58 Basic 34.85 – 69.85 Rankings

OVERALL SCORES AND RANKINGS

(continued)

31. X-IO Hyper ISE 7-Series 73.85 Good

32. NEC M500 73.10 Good

33. Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-R2152-6 1GbE 69.90 Good

34. Aberdeen AberSAN ZXP2 HA ZFS SAN 69.70 Basic

35. Dot Hill AssuredSAN 4000 Series 68.05 Basic

36. Infortrend ESVA F75-2830 65.45 Basic

37. Infortrend ESVA E60-2230 64.65 Basic

38. X-IO ISE 200 Series 62.30 Basic

39. Scale Computing ICOS Storage Nodes M Series 58.80 Basic

40. Overland Storage SnapScale X2 54.60 Basic

41. IceWEB Unified Storage Appliance Model 7000 53.55 Basic

42. Aberdeen XDAS D42F7 8Gb FC 51.30 Basic

43. Aberdeen XDAS iSD41 49.55 Basic

44. IBM DS5300 49.10 Basic

45. IBM DCS3700 47.60 Basic

46. Aberdeen XDAS iXD32 10G 45.90 Basic

47. Celeros SmartSAN XT23S-FC 45.20 Basic

48. Celeros SmartSAN XT23S-iSCSI 42.20 Basic

49. HP StoreEasy 5000 42.05 Basic

(18)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Management Software Scores and Rankings

1. HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 66.70 Best-in-Class

4. HDS HUS 150 60.50 Recommended

5. HDS HUS VM 59.15 Recommended

6. NetApp FAS3250 52.90 Excellent

7. Starboard Storage AC4500 48.05 Excellent

8. Oracle Pillar Data Systems Axiom 600 47.35 Excellent

10. HP StoreVirtual 4730 Storage 45.55 Excellent

11. Huawei OceanStor 5800T 44.95 Excellent

12. IBM Storwize V7000U 44.20 Excellent

14. Overland Storage SnapSAN S5000 43.15 Excellent

15. EMC VNXe3300 42.60 Excellent

16. Dell Compellent SC8000 41.30 Excellent

17. Dot Hill AssuredSAN Pro 5000 Series 40.15 Good

18. Imation Nexsan NST5500 39.95 Good

19. Huawei OceanStor S2600T 39.95 Good

20. Oracle ZFS Storage ZS3 38.50 Good

21. Infortrend EonStor DS S16F-R2852-6 8G FC 34.85 Good

22. Infortrend EonStor DS B24F-R2852 34.85 Good

23. Infortrend EonStor DS S48F-R2652-4 16Gb FC 34.85 Good

24. Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-E2251 10GbE 33.85 Good

(19)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Total Number of Products 50

Highest Score 66.70 Lowest Score 6.00 Average (Mean) 34.06 Standard Deviation 14.40 Recommended 55.66 – 66.70 Excellent 41.26 – 55.65 Good 26.86 – 41.25 Basic 6.00 – 26.85 Rankings

Management Software Scores and Rankings

(continued)

31. Infortrend ESVA E60-2230 28.70 Good

32. Overland Storage SnapScale X2 27.50 Good

33. Dot Hill AssuredSAN 300 Series 27.25 Good

34. Aberdeen AberSAN ZXP2 HA ZFS SAN 26.75 Basic

35. X-IO Hyper ISE 7-Series 26.35 Basic

36. Infortrend EonStor DS S16E-R2152-6 1GbE 26.00 Basic

37. Infortrend ESVA F75-2830 25.55 Basic

38. Scale Computing ICOS Storage Nodes M Series 24.65 Basic

39. Dot Hill AssuredSAN 4000 Series 21.15 Basic

40. Aberdeen XDAS iSD41 20.10 Basic

41. Celeros SmartSAN XT23S-FC 19.55 Basic

42. Aberdeen XDAS D42F7 8Gb FC 19.10 Basic

43. X-IO ISE 200 Series 18.10 Basic

44. Aberdeen XDAS iXD32 10G 18.00 Basic

45. IBM DCS3700 17.80 Basic

46. Celeros SmartSAN XT23S-iSCSI 17.55 Basic

47. IceWEB Unified Storage Appliance Model 7000 16.50 Basic

48. HP StoreEasy 5000 13.10 Basic

49. IBM DS5300 7.10 Basic

(20)

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

ENTERPRISE

MIDRANGE ARRAY

MODELS

(21)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Hardware Warranty 5 Years

Contract Support Availability Business Day

Contract Support†_{(Total #)} ₁

vSPHERE INTEGRATION* VAAI v4†_{(Total #)}

VAAI v5†_{(Total #)}

Other VMware Integrations Snapshot Integration

with vSphere‡

Performance Metrics for VAAI vSphere Plug-in for Array Management SIOC VASA AQDT VADP VASRM Storage DRS HARDWARE*_(CONTINUED) Supported Drives FC or SAS HDD 7.2K, 10K, 15K RPM SATA‡ SSD‡ SSD Optimization†_{(Total #)} ₁

Managed UPS/Battery Backup RoHS Compliant HARDWARE*

Controller Config Active-Active

Cores (Max) 16 cores

Scale-out (Max controllers)

Cache (Max) 1616 GB

Raw Storage Capacity (Max) Unlimited

Inline Deduplication Inline Compression Storage Networking Ports

(Max) 24 ports 1/10 Gb Ethernet Ports

(Max) 16 ports / 8 ports 8/16 Gb Fibre Channel Ports

(Max) 8 ports

/

FC

FCoE iSCSI Concurrent FC & iSCSI Concurrent SAN & NAS

RAID Options 0, 1, 5, 6

Multi-RAID / Erasure Codes

/

Redundancy† _{(Total #)} ₈

Drives: Global Hot Spares Anti-vibration Advanced HDD Spin Down

HDD Interface SAS 6Gb

MANAGEMENT & SOFTWARE* Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₂

Asynch Replication Synch Replication

Thin Provisioning†_{(Total #)} ₁

3rd Party Storage Reclamation Feature License Included

Snapshot Replication Thin Provisioning Re-striping Data on New

Disk/LUN Mixed Drive Types in LUN

Multipathing†_{(Total #)} ₁ Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₄ AST†_{(Total #)} ₂ Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Mgt Interfaces†_{(Total #)}

Notification†_{(Total #)}

DCM Software† _{(Total #)}

Aberdeen AberSAN ZXP2 HA

High Availability ZFS SAN

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

SCORE Management & Software* _Hardware* _IntegrationvSphere * _Support

69.70

26.75

33.45

0.00

9.50

(22)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability Business Day

with vSphere‡

Performance Metrics for VAAI vSphere Plug-in for Array Management SIOC VASA AQDT VADP VASRM Storage DRS HARDWARE*_(CONTINUED) Supported Drives FC or SAS HDD 7.2K, 15K RPM SATA‡ SSD‡ SSD Optimization†_{(Total #)}

Controller Config Active-Standby

Raw Storage Capacity (Max) 696 TB

(Max)

/

8/16 Gb Fibre Channel Ports

(Max) 8 ports

/

FC

RAID Options 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, _{50, 60} Multi-RAID / Erasure Codes

/

Redundancy† _{(Total #)} ₉

Drives: Global Hot Spares Anti-vibration Advanced HDD Spin Down MANAGEMENT & SOFTWARE*

Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₂

Multipathing†_{(Total #)} ₂ Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₂ AST†_{(Total #)} Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Mgt Interfaces†_{(Total #)} ₄

Notification†_{(Total #)} ₂

DCM Software†

Aberdeen XDAS D42F7 8GB FC

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

51.30

19.10

22.70

0.00

9.50

(23)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability Business Day _{(local time)} Contract Support†_{(Total #)} ₁

with vSphere‡

Performance Metrics for VAAI vSphere Plug-in for Array Management SIOC VASA AQDT VADP VASRM Storage DRS HARDWARE*_(CONTINUED) Supported Drives FC or SAS HDD 7.2K, 10K, 15K RPM SATA‡ SSD‡ SSD Optimization†_{(Total #)}

(Max) 12 ports

/

(Max)

/

FC FCoE iSCSI Concurrent FC & iSCSI Concurrent SAN & NAS

RAID Options 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50

/

MANAGEMENT & SOFTWARE* Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₂

Multipathing†_{(Total #)} ₁ Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₂ AST†_{(Total #)} Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Aberdeen XDAS iSD41

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

49.55

20.10

19.95

0.00

9.50

(24)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability Business Day _{(local time)} vSPHERE INTEGRATION*

with vSphere‡

Cores (Max) 1 core

Scale-out (Max controllers) Cache (Max)

Raw Storage Capacity (Max) Unlimited

(Max)

/

4 ports 8/16 Gb Fibre Channel Ports

(Max)

/

Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₂

Disk/LUN Mixed Drive Types in LUN Multipathing†_{(Total #)} Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₂ AST†_{(Total #)} Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

DCM Software†

Aberdeen XDAS iXD32 10G

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

45.90

18.00

18.40

0.00

9.50

(25)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability Business Day _{(local time)} Contract Support†_{(Total #)} ₁

with vSphere‡

(Max)

/

(Max) 8 ports

/

FC

/

Redundancy† _{(Total #)} ₆

HDD Interface SATA, SAS 6Gb

MANAGEMENT & SOFTWARE* Snapshots†_{(Total #)}

Asynch Replication Synch Replication Thin Provisioning†_{(Total #)}

Disk/LUN Mixed Drive Types in LUN Multipathing†_{(Total #)} Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} AST†_{(Total #)} Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Mgt Interfaces†_{(Total #)} ₁

Aberdeen XDAS T42F

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

34.85

6.00

19.35

0.00

9.50

(26)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability vSPHERE INTEGRATION*

Other VMware Integrations 2 Snapshot Integration

with vSphere‡

Controller Config Dual-Active

(Max)

/

(Max) 8 ports

/

FC

RAID Options 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10

/

Redundancy† _{(Total #)} ₇

Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₁

Multipathing†_{(Total #)} ₃ Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₃ AST†_{(Total #)} Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Mgt Interfaces†_{(Total #)} ₂

Notification†_{(Total #)} ₃

DCM Software†

Celeros SmartSAN XT23S-FC

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

45.20

19.55

20.15

1.50

4.00

(27)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability Contract Support†_{(Total #)}

with vSphere‡

Controller Config Dual-Active

Cores (Max) Scale-out (Max controllers)

(Max) 8 ports

/

(Max)

/

RAID Options 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10

/

Redundancy† _{(Total #)} ₇

MANAGEMENT & SOFTWARE* Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₁

Multipathing†_{(Total #)} ₃ Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₃ AST†_{(Total #)} Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Mgt Interfaces†_{(Total #)} ₂

Notification†_{(Total #)} ₃

Celeros SmartSAN XT235-iSCSI

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

42.20

17.55

19.15

1.50

4.00

(28)

DCIG Scores and Rankings

SUPPORT

Contract Support Availability 24×7×365

vSPHERE INTEGRATION* VAAI v4†_{(Total #)} ₃

VAAI v5†_{(Total #)} ₁

with vSphere‡

Raw Storage Capacity (Max) 960+ TB

(Max) 20 ports / 20 ports 8/16 Gb Fibre Channel Ports

(Max) 32 ports / 12 ports FC

RAID Options 0, 5, 6, 10

/

Redundancy† _{(Total #)} ₈

Snapshots†_{(Total #)} ₁

Thin Provisioning†_{(Total #)} ₂

Multipathing†_{(Total #)} ₇ Hypervisor/OS†_{(Total #)} ₁₀ AST†_{(Total #)} ₃ Policy-based Provisioning† (Total #) Multi-tenancy Performance Monitoring App

Mgt Interfaces†_{(Total #)} ₃

Notification†_{(Total #)} ₁

DCM Software†

Dell Compellent SC8000

Approximate Starting List Price: Under $50,000

OVERALL

Array Review 2013

2014

ENTERPRISE

MIDRANGE ARRAY

BUYER’S GUIDE

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO EVALUATING

ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAYS

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Executive Summary

How to Use this Enterprise

Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide

Disclosures

Enterprise Midrange Array

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The 8-Step Process Used to Score

and Rank Enterprise Midrange Arrays

DCIG Comments and Thoughts

on Enterprise Midrange Array…

Observations and Recommendations

Regarding Each Midrange Array Ranking

Enterprise Midrange Array

Scores and Rankings

Enterprise Midrange Array Models

Product Rankings Dashboard

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Introduction

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Introduction

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

How to Use this Enterprise

Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Disclosures

Enterprise Midrange Array

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

The 8-Step Process Used to Score

and Rank Enterprise Midrange Arrays

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

DCIG Comments and Thoughts

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

real-DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Observations and Recommendations

Regarding Each Midrange Array Ranking

"Best-In-Class" Ranking

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

“Recommended” Ranking

“Excellent” Ranking

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

“Good” Ranking

“Basic” Ranking

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

ENTERPRISE

MIDRANGE ARRAY

SCORES AND

RANKINGS

The scores and rankings for the backup appliances 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 backup appliance was ranked

• A summary of the primary findings

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

OVERALL SCORES AND RANKINGS

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

OVERALL SCORES AND RANKINGS

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Management Software Scores and Rankings

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

Management Software Scores and Rankings

DCIG 2014 ENTERPRISE MIDRANGE ARRAY BUYER'S GUIDE

ENTERPRISE

MIDRANGE ARRAY

MODELS