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    Making Leaders Successul Every Day

    Ags 29, 2011

    Make Oveview: MidageSoage, Q3 2011 Vaessa Avaez

    o Iase & Opeaios Poessioas

    http://www.forrester.com/
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    2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRankings, and Total EconomicImpact are trademarks o Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property o their respective owners. Reproduction or sharing o thiscontent in any orm without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. To purchase reprints o this document, please email [email protected]. For additional reproduction and usage inormation, see Forresters Citation Policy located at www.orrester.com. Inormation is

    based on best available resources. Opinions refect judgment at the time and are subject to change.

    Fo Iase & Opeaios Poessioas

    ExEcutIVE SuMMAry

    Te storage industry is undergoing a transition. Inrastructure and operations (I&O) execs know that

    storage is a core component o enabling private cloud environments. But to achieve cloud exibility and

    economics, the storage architectures in place needed to change. With many acquisitions taking place, as

    well as new solutions on the market, I&O proessionals must prepare their storage environments. Tis

    document will walk you through the drivers shaping the midrange storage market, the 10 criteria that

    I&O teams should ocus on when selecting a solution, and a summary o the top 11 solutions in the space.

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    http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57754&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57754&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56655&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56655&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57754&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57754&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/
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    New BuSINeSS INITIATIVeS FORCe New STORAge SOLuTIONS

    Most organizations today have SAN deployments in their environments. However, in the past year or

    so, weve seen I&O teams start data center consolidation and look to deploy a private cloud (see Figure

    1).1 Te goal is to leverage their technology platorms as part o their competitive advantage. Tis has

    generated a number o dierent initiatives in I environments, including: 1) converged inrastructures,

    which couple server, storage, and network together, and 2) re-evaluating the storage equipment, either

    because it has reached end o lie or because I organizations are suering rom capacity growth and

    task overload. Private cloud requires a level o automation and eciency that traditional storage

    solutions havent delivered in the past. As a result, I&O teams ace three primary challenges:

    Te business has no idea what its data is. Much o the data stored today hasnt been touchedin some time and is sitting idle. Its important to assess data and rationalize which data truly

    requires primary capacity.

    I&O and broader I silos still exist. Silos cant continue i your organizations initiativessuch as private cloud are going to succeed. Yet most storage purchasing decisions are made

    separately rom other technology purchases, and the storage teams dont always communicate

    with enterprise architecture, application development, or even other I&O teams like server and

    networking.

    Te wrong solution can hinder a bigger initiative. Oen, I&O teams dont communicate withlines o business and thereore dont know what kind o solution is needed or the initiatives at

    hand.

    Tese challenges and new business initiatives require much more than just hardware. Tey requirea simplifed and exible way o deploying storage in order to maximize resource eciencies.

    Although most environments are Fibre Channel today, recent Forrester survey data shows that

    organizations are actually moving orward with adopting various protocols. raditionally this has

    required two dierent solutions, but I&O execs are now approaching unifed architectures that

    simpliy the way o deploying and managing storage (see Figure 2).

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    Fir 1 Pivae cod Depomes Ae no loge Hpe

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.58821

    Which of the following initiatives are likely to be your rms/organizations top hardware/IT

    infrastructure priorities over the next 12 months?(Percentage of respondents who answered critical priority or high priority)

    Base: North American and European enterprise IT infrastructure decision-makers

    Source: Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2010*Source: Enterprise And SMB Hardware Survey, North American And Europe, Q3 2009

    80%79%

    80%77%

    60%61%

    29%

    2010 (N = 1,037)2009* (N = 1,020)

    23%

    28%18%

    Consolidate IT infrastructure via server consolidation,data center consolidation, or server virtualization

    Maintain or implement broad use of server virtualizationas the standard server deployment model

    Automate the management of virtualized serversto gain exibility and resiliency

    Build an internal private cloud operated by IT(not a service provider)

    Use cloud service oerings for storage-as-a-serviceor virtual-server-as-a-service at a service provider

    Fir 2 Mipooo use Is Gaiig Adopio

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.58821

    Which protocols do you use for networking virtual server hosts to the SAN?

    Base: 91 vendor and user companies that currently use virtualization technology in thex86 server environments

    (multiple responses accecpted)

    Source: September 2010 Global Virtual Server Environments Online Survey

    76%

    36%

    23%

    4% 4%

    FC NFS iSCSI FCoE DAS

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    A MIx OF 10 CRITeRIA ShApe The MIDRANge STORAge LANDSCApe

    Although the market is evolving quickly, and the line between midrange and high-end storage

    continues to blur, we have established 10 criteria to categorize a solution as midrange (see Figure 3).

    Fir 3 How Midage Soage Soves Kow Poems

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.58821

    Emerging criteria

    Criteria Business problem solved

    Thin provisioning Helps avoid capacity being underutilized,therefore buying capacity when trulynecessary

    Asynchronous and synchronousreplication

    Both allow for data to be replicated moreeciently depending on the requirements

    Multiprotocol support Allows for exibility and tiering; not tied toFibre Channel environment

    Primary deduplication Eliminates duplicates, saving capacity

    Automated tiering Tiering maximizes resources, allowing forhigh-end disks to be used for highperformance.

    VAAI integration Tie between server/storage to determinesthe capacity needed for workloads; higherpeformance on servers

    Storage virtualization Accessing data regardless of physicallocation/structure, managing storageeasier for dierent requirements

    Stretch clustering Cluster nodes geographically dispersedacross distance, providing redundancy

    Established criteria

    Multihypervisor support allows fororganizations to leverage dierenthypervisors for dierent workloads,

    depending on the business need.Object storage support Allows for metadata to be applied for

    extracting more easily

    Multihypervisor support

    Fiv establisd Critria Driv Midran Stora Dcisions . . .

    Tere are a number o proven storage technologies that have been on the market or some time now.

    Although these eatures are not massively adopted just yet, they do oer the unctionality needed or

    a successul private cloud deployment. I&O teams should prioritize these fve capabilities:

    Tin provisioning. Tin provisioning is designed to optimize storage capacity in a sharedstorage environment. It allocates capacity on-demand as opposed to pre-allocating, thereore

    increasing use. Capacity is normally oversubscribed, but it is only dedicated when data is

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    actually written on the application. Although thin provisioning has been on the market or

    some time, I&O teams have yet to widely adopt it.

    Asynchronous and synchronous replication. Most environments require synchronousreplication. But I&O should select solutions that have both capabilities and can identiy which

    data needs which type o replication to drive more perormance eciency.

    Multiprotocol support. Most SAN environments sit on Fibre Channel; however, we see anincrease in interest or other protocols such as NFS and iSCSI. Solutions with support or all

    protocols are much more exible or eciency purposes and allow or eective tiering.

    Primary deduplication. Tis is a process that looks or any redundant data. I it fnds aduplicate, the storage system will point to the original copy and eliminate the redundant data,

    reeing up capacity. Although widely used in backup, its much more benefcial in a primary

    storage environment, as it will signifcantly reduce the amount o capacity used.

    Automated tiering. iering is a key unction to enabling a private cloud and has been a manualand tedious procedure or a long time. Automated tiering places hot data on high-perorming disk

    and warm data, which isnt accessed as much, on cheaper disk, balancing out the cost eciencies.

    . . . Bt Fiv emrin Critria Ar Ncssary To Sort N, Dynamic workloads

    oday, the server, network, and storage environments are becoming more integrated than ever.2

    Te impact o initiatives such as server virtualization and VDI undamentally change the way

    storage and network resources are dynamically allocated. Most organizations suer today because

    o lack o preparation in designing their server/desktop virtualization environments. As a result,storage growth has spiraled out o control, and perormance or deployments on both the network

    and storage side have suered. As these initiatives continue to roll out, the server, network, and

    storage environments must understand the impact on each other and work in sync to deliver the

    necessary resources or exible and intensive workloads. Te solution is not to continue adding

    more hardware but to begin to understand the dierent eatures and unctionalities that can help to

    address some o these concerns. We recommend that I&O teams ocus on fve emerging capabilities:

    Storage virtualization. Similarly to server virtualization, storage virtualization eliminates thedependencies between data and where its stored. Tis allows or exibility in how capacity is

    managed.

    Stretch clustering. Stretch clustering is critical when one or more cluster nodes o a SAN aregeographically remote. Dierent rom vMotion, this is a group o ESX/ESXi instances within

    vCenter where at least some o the hosts in the cluster live in separate locations. vMotion, on the

    other hand, is the live migration o a guest virtual machine rom one host to another.

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    Multihypervisor support. Despite VMwares dominance in hypervisors, storage admins mustplan or growth in alternatives. As the hypervisor and storage become more interdependent

    on each other, storage systems must be able to support all hypervisors or environments where

    there are more than one in production.

    Object storage support. Objects allow or a more granular way o identiying data. Tey usericher metadata to easily retract data when needed based on soware capabilities with languages

    such as RES or Java.

    VAAI integration. For VMware-based environments, vStorage APIs or Array Integration(VAAI) is an API that allows VMware hypervisors to hand o storage unctions to storage

    arrays, alleviating workload strain on the servers.

    The MIDRANge STORAge LANDSCApe CONSISTS OF TwO VeNDOR CATegORIeS

    Te storage vendor landscape has evolved, mainly due to consolidation. I&O teams are ocusing on

    data center consolidation in the short term and enabling a private cloud long term.3 Tis is driving

    vendors to oer a new set o capabilities as highlighted above. But it also led to the massive M&A

    action we saw in 2010, where billion-dollar deals were struck.4 Although this report ocuses on

    midrange solutions, in reality, the lines are blurring between high-end and the midrange space. Te

    level o perormance and amount o capacity or midrange solutions have increased in recent years.

    Tey are spilling over into the higher end range in terms o unctions and eatures. o navigate this

    market, I&O teams should ocus on two basic categories o midrange storage vendors (see Figure 4).

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    Fir 4todas Midage Soage Make Oes A Wide Vaie O Soios

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.58821

    Core focusNo focus Relevant domain Some focus Substantial focus

    HP (3PAR)

    Dell/EqualLogic

    Pillar Data

    EMC

    Fujitsu

    NetApp

    Compellent*

    HDS

    Oracle

    Vendor Thinprovisioning

    Asynchronousand

    synchronousreplication

    Stretchclustering

    Multiprotocolsupport

    Objectstoragesupport

    Automatedtiering

    VAAIintegration

    Storagevirtualization

    MultihypervisorSupp

    ort

    Primary

    deduplication

    IBM

    Xiotech

    *Compellent was acquired by Dell on 02/22/2011Pillar Data was acquired by Oracle on 06/29/2011

    Catory 1: Systms Vndors Tat Can Or Srvr, Stora, And Ntorkin

    We examined six solutions rom fve vendors in this space. Tey are:

    Compellent Storage Center 5.4. Compellent represents one o the core values o storage inprivate cloud models. Automated tiering creates resource eciencies that allow or a system

    to identiy hot and cold data and place it on the most cost-ecient disks. Dells enhanced

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    capabilities place it in the top with its competitors. But Dell still needs to round out Compellent

    with sel-service unctionality, orchestration, and more robust resource management

    unctionality, to meet all I&O cloud needs. As most vendors look to do this, we expect Dell to

    evolve Compellents capabilities to meet these requirements.

    Dell EqualLogic PS6000XVS. Te technology o the ormer EqualLogic has always beencompetitive in this segment. oday, EQL Firmware 5.1 supports iSCSI and NFS protocols,

    which are relatively less expensive than Fibre Channel, reducing the cost o storage capacity. Its

    support o NFS is benefcial to the server virtualization environment, as NFS is a much more

    ecient protocol to leverage or this. Although it doesnt support Fibre Channel natively, it does

    support Fibre Channel-like unctionality over DCB Ethernet, or organizations that are willing

    to go down this route. Since most organizations primarily leverage Fibre Channel or their

    entire environment, much consideration needs to be made in choosing a solution that natively

    supports Fibre Channel.

    Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) AMS. Although better known in the high-end storage arena,HDS oers a midrange solution, which oers the basic unctionalities such as thin provisioning,

    snapshots, and cloning, but is oen overshadowed by its competitors EMC and NetApp. It

    provides support or FC, iSCSI, CIFS, and NFS. However, HDS still alls short with automated

    tiering and management capabilities as they relate to virtualized environments.

    HP 3PAR. HPs acquisition o 3PAR was strategic to its position as a vendor that could ulfll theI/O requirements needed or virtualization and private cloud environments. Automated tiering,

    a core criteria or the eciency o a private cloud, is 3PARs strength. i has been a leader in this

    space, and HPs addition has made it a midrange solution that can enable I/O requirements oreciency. HP will need to urther integrate 3PAR into its overall portolio and help customers

    into the transition rom its traditional HP EVA solution to a more robust solution that will help

    customers in the private cloud journey.

    IBM V7000. Te midrange market has evolved to include a number o the larger vendors,which have traditionally been in the high-end storage space. IBMs acquisition o V7000 delivers

    midrange capabilities and meets all the established criteria with the exception o primary

    deduplication. However, it lacks in the multiprotocol support area, a key requirement or

    enabling private cloud environments.

    Oracle Sun Storage 6000. With its acquisition o Sun, Oracles 6000 became its midrange solution.oday, the 6000 supports both synchronous and asynchronous replication. However, it doesnt

    provide any thin provisioning, primary deduplication, or multiprotocol support all criteria that

    should be a part o a midrange solution designed to enable simplifcation and eciencies.

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    Catory 2: Stora pr plays Or T Bst Ovrall economics

    Te storage pure play market is dwindling because o all the industry consolidation, but its still the

    sweet spot or I&O teams looking to meet aggressive storage needs with midrange solutions. Te top

    players include:

    EMC VNX. EMC has long been a ollower to NetApp in the midrange market. However,its recent release o VNX comes one step closer. It brings a great deal o the eatures and

    unctionality that enable private clouds, including thin provisioning, primary deduplication,

    automated tiering, and VAAI integration. Although EMC considers VNX a unifed solution,

    it in act still runs separate operating systems DAR and FLARE in one device. Te

    Unisphere management console eases the complexity and does alleviate a great deal o the

    manual tasks, but the act is that its still two dierent environments.

    Fujitsu Eternus DX440. Te company has maintained a storage solution within its portolioor some time but hasnt made much traction in the midrange space. Te solution oers all thebasic unctionality considered in our criteria, with the exception o primary deduplication. We

    expect Fujitsu to ramp up on its storage solutions as it sets out to provide a cohesive server and

    storage solution.

    NetApp FAS3270. NetApp provides the leading unifed solution. It continues to expand itsportolio and grow within the market. Multiprotocol support and ease o use remain the most

    valued capabilities by I&O and storage teams. However, primary deduplication continues to

    gain adoption and will do so increasingly, as its a key eature or eciency within private clouds;

    NetApp leads in making this unctionality work without signifcantly aecting perormance.

    Te acquisition and integration o Akorri was a good step to urther extend NetApp capabilities,but more needs to be done in this area or building private clouds.

    Pillar Data. A company partially owned by Oracle, Pillar Data has been a staple in themidrange solution space. Its solution oers the required criteria, but the value o its solution

    lies in its automated tiering capabilities. Its tiering allows you to set policies around your data,

    instead o just basing the requirement on use alone. Being partially owned by Oracle challenged

    the company in the area o innovation, as it competed to some extent against Oracles own

    storage solutions.5

    Xiotech ISE. Te ISE storage solution represents a new architecture or enabling the eciencieso cloud. It oers a hybrid storage environment that allows or automated tiering rom SAAto SSD, and its management capabilities help determine where data can reside most eciently

    and eectively. Its sel-healing capabilities also allow or drives to be repaired within a datapac

    without the need or taking everything out o service. However, Xiotech has suered rom

    management changes and the perils that come along with changing strategy. Xiotech will need

    to ocus on delivering the capabilities needed or a private cloud environment and ensuring that

    it can integrate into other core areas to this environment, such as server and networking.

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    OTheR VeNDORS TO CONSIDeR

    Forrester believes that the tie between server, storage, and network will continue to occur. Tere are

    a number o innovative start-up vendors that are pushing the envelope to change the way storage is

    built out and managed today, bringing together the server and storage worlds. Tey ocus on areas

    that have changed the storage requirements and contribute intelligence to the virtualized or cloud

    environment. Tese include vendors such as Virsto, whose virtualization management soware sits

    within the hypervisor, bringing a better understanding o the virtual server environment; Nutanix,

    which brings server and storage closer together; and SolidFire, which is oering SSD with Flash,

    driving down the cost o SSD, while still providing a high level o perormance. Tey are all oering

    a new way o creating eciencies within virtualized and cloud environments.

    r E c O M M E n D A t I O n S

    FOCuS YOuR STORAge ON SIMpLIFICATION, CONVeRgeNCe, AND AuTOMATION

    Is o oge aepae o have mipe soage ssems i pae ha eqie sigia

    maa ieveio. yo wi eed o evaae soios ha simpi o iase, have a

    desadig o o seve ad ewok eviomes, ad aomae as ma asks as possie.

    these soios wi imae eae he esoe efieies o a pivae od eviome. to

    maimize hei ivesme, I&O eams wi eed o:

    Assss t crrnt stora nvironmnt. review he pe o daa ad is eqiemeswhe deemiig wha soio o eed. these soios ma seve geea ppose

    wokoads, ma o o eai pes o wokoads.

    Discss t bsinss rqirmnts. udesad o siess gowh iiiaives, addeemie wha kid o soio wi eae hose. beoe makig phasig deisios, si

    dow wih o ie-o-siess, seve, ad ewok iaisos o deemie a ompehesive

    appoah.

    Lvra fcincy tools tat l rdc t amont o caacity rqird. Feaessh as hi povisioig ad soage esoe maageme oos have ee aod

    o some ime ow ad have ee pove. begi sig hem o a ega asis ad i a

    aomaed mae.

    undrstand t rol o virtalization in stora. thee is a gea dea o ieigeeha sis wihi a hpeviso om a viaizaio pespeive. Ese ha o desad

    wha apaiiies a e eveaged om hee, ad make he oeio o o soage

    eviome. this ie eomes mh moe iia as viaizaio eomes widespead

    hogho o iase. commiae wih o viaizaio ad ewok eams o

    make se oe i s.

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    SuppLeMeNTAL MATeRIAL

    Comanis Intrvid For Tis Docmnt

    CompellentDell

    EMC

    Hitachi

    HP

    IBMNetApp

    Oracle

    Pillar Data Systems

    Xiotech

    eNDNOTeS

    1 Recent Forrester inquiries rom enterprise inrastructure and operations (I&O) proessionals show that

    theres still signifcant conusion between inrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) private clouds and server

    virtualization environments. As a result, there are a lot o misperceptions about what it takes to get your

    private cloud investments right and drive adoption by your developers. Te answers may surprise you; they

    may even be the opposite o what youre thinking. For more inormation, see the May 25, 2011, Q&A: How

    to Get Private Cloud Right report.

    2 I pros have most o the basic ingredients to cook up their own cloud-like inrastructure or support

    complex applications but theres no recipe, and many ingredients just dont combine well. Complicating

    the story are the traditional inrastructure silos around servers, networks, and storage that must work

    together in a new, truly integrated way. Vendors like Cisco Systems, Dell, EMC, HP, and IBM have had basic

    converged inrastructure (CI) oerings or several years but many I&O teams hesitated to deploy them,

    as they required higher levels o integration. For more inormation, see the May 17, 2011, Are Converged

    Inrastructures Good For I? report.

    3 Inrastructure and operations (I&O) teams are acing a dicult challenge in the data center: tossing out

    the rules o networking architecture. Aer years o just throwing bandwidth at the problem, todays I&O

    teams are fnding they need to build undamentally dierent networks that accommodate advances in

    server virtualization and storage networking and pave the path to cloud computing. odays traditional

    three-tiered architectures are giving way to atter, converged Ethernet abrics. Why? A abric-based

    approach provides the necessary exibility, perormance, and reliability to support new shared resources,

    soware, and data models. Te goal o data center convergence and virtualization is to remove redundancy

    in SAN networks and ineciencies in the compute spectrum and oer them rom an inormation grid,

    AKA the cloud. For more inormation, see the December 15, 2010, Te Data Center Network Evolution:Five Reasons Tis Isnt Your Dads Network report.

    4 Acquisitions have long been a part o the storage vendor landscape. But 2010 and the frst part o 2011

    saw an explosion o huge deals rom almost every storage vendor. Tere are ew independent options le,

    so its time or inrastructure and operations (I&O) proessionals to re-evaluate their impressions o the

    http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56655&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56655&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56651&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56651&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=57737&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56651&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56651&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56655&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=56655&src=58821pdf
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    Make Oveview: Midage Soage, Q3 2011

    Fo Iase & Opeaios Poessioas

    12

    megavendors and work to standardize on the broad oerings o a ew selected options. Tese deals also

    move vendors into some new territories, so I&O executives should look at how application-centric storage

    solutions and bundled oerings with server, network, and applications might ft in their environment. For

    more inormation, see the June 16, 2011, Blockbuster Deals Reshape Te Storage World report.

    5 Note that Oracle acquired Pillar Data on June 29, 2011 aer the research and writing o this report

    was completed. We have decided to keep the Pillar analysis separate rom Oracle given that only the

    announcement o the intent to acquire was made by the publication time o this report.

    http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=58935&src=58821pdfhttp://www.forrester.com/go?docid=58935&src=58821pdf
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