itg: cost/benefit case for the ibm ds8800 systems: comparing costs for ds8800 and emc vmax systems

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Cost/Benefit Case for

IBM System Storage DS8800

Comparing Costs for IBM DS8800 and

EMC Symmetrix VMAX Systems

International Technology Group 609 Pacific Avenue, Suite 102

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International Technology Group i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 Challenges and Opportunities 1 Cost Factors 2 EMC FAST VP and IBM Easy Tier 3 Overview 5 EMC Symmetrix VMAX 6

VMAX Systems 6 VMAXe Systems 7

IBM DS8800 8 Overview 8

SFF and SAS-2 8

Space Reduction 8 Energy and Cooling 10 Other Areas 11

SSDS AND TIERING 13 General Picture 13 Storage Tiering 13 EMC FAST VP 14 IBM Easy Tier 15 Drive Blends 16

DETAILED DATA 17 Installations and Scenarios 17 Cost Calculations 19 Cost Breakdowns 20

List of Figures

1. Average Three-year VMAX and DS8800 Costs – Conventional Scenarios 1

2. Average Three-year VMAX and DS8800 Costs – Tiered Scenarios 2

3. General Comparison of EMC VMAX and IBM DS8800 Systems 5

4. EMC Symmetrix VMAXe and VMAX Systems – Summary 7

5. Number of Disks per Frame – Example 9

6. Floor Space Occupied by IBM DS8800 and EMC VMAX Systems – Example 9

7. Data Center Energy Consumption by Type of Equipment – User Example 10

8. Data Center Hot/Cold Aisle Layout – Example 11

9. DS8800 Advanced Caching Algorithms 12

10. EMC FAST Cache and FAST VP 14

11. FAST VP Management Variables – Examples 15

12. EMC FAST VP Performance Tests – Summary 16

13. Installations Summary – Business Profiles 17

14. Software Products Employed in All Comparisons 17

15. Installations Summary – Conventional Scenarios 18

16. Installations Summary – Tiered Scenarios 19

17. Three-year Cost Breakdowns – Conventional Comparisons 20

18. Three-year Cost Breakdowns – Tiered Comparisons 21

International Technology Group 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Challenges and Opportunities

At yearend 2005, the average U.S. Fortune 500 corporation contained around 150 terabytes (TB) of server disk storage. By yearend 2010, this had increased to more than 900TB. On current trends, it will exceed

five petabytes (5,000TB) by yearend 2014. For most organizations, managing growth has become the

number one storage priority.

The elements of a solution are emerging. The storage industry has entered a period of unprecedented

change. Virtualization (a.k.a. thin provisioning), solid state drives (SSDs), nearline devices, tiering

strategies, deduplication and other new capabilities offer the potential for major efficiency gains.

But there is a downside. At a time when storage workloads are growing more complex, there are

widespread uncertainties as to which technologies should be employed, in what manner, for the greatest

benefit. Expectations are often exaggerated. Integration, optimization and management of increasingly

diverse application and technology portfolios pose new challenges.

These issues are particularly significant for the high-end disk systems that, in large organizations, support

the most business-critical workloads. Users of these remain conservative. Meeting performance demands,

maintaining service levels and ensuring enterprise-class availability and recoverability remain overriding priorities. Technological change and cost control must occur without jeopardizing them.

This does not mean, however, that new technologies cannot be introduced, or that costs cannot be

contained. High-end systems account for a large part of organizational storage expenditures. If risk issues are properly addressed, they may represent a major opportunity for cost savings.

This report deals with this opportunity. Specifically, it compares three-year costs for use of IBM System

Storage DS8800 and EMC Symmetrix VMAX systems.

Comparisons are presented for conventional scenarios, in which systems are equipped with standard high-performance drives, and for tiered scenarios using EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for

Virtual Pools (FAST VP) and IBM Easy Tier V3.

In three large installations in financial services, manufacturing and IT services companies, costs for use of DS8800 systems equipped with conventional high-performance drives average 28 percent less than for

VMAX equivalents. Figure 1 summarizes these results.

Figure 1: Average Three-year VMAX and DS8800 Costs – Conventional Scenarios

For tiered scenarios, three-year costs for use DS8800 systems with Easy Tier V3 average 31 percent less

than for VMAX equivalents with FAST VP. Figure 2 summarizes these results.

EMC VMAX

IBM DS8800

$ Millions

Hardware Software Software support Data center

20.0

27.6


Figure 2: Average Three-year VMAX and DS8800 Costs – Tiered Scenarios

In conventional scenarios, VMAX systems are configured with 300GB Fiber Channel (FC) drives operating at 15,000 revolutions per minute (15K rpm). DS8800 systems employ 300GB Serial Attached

SCSI 2.0 (SAS-2) 15K rpm drives. DS8800 SAS-2 drives are 2.5-inch Small Form Factor (SFF) devices.

In tiered scenarios, both platforms are configured as full three-tier systems equipped with solid state

drives (SSDs). In addition, VMAX systems employ 300GB FC 15K rpm and 2TB SATA 7.2K rpm. DS8800 systems also employ 300GB SAS-2 15K rpm SFF and 3TB nearline SAS-2 7.2K rpm devices.

In both sets of scenarios, configurations include operating systems, tiering, point-in-time copy,

multipathing and, where appropriate, real-time replication and recovery software. Hardware and software costs are based on “street” prices; i.e., discounted prices reported by users.

Configurations in tiered scenarios are based on user experiences, supplemented by vendor test results and

guidelines for tiered environments. Configurations were established based on application, workloads and performance and service level requirements for individual systems in each installation.

Calculations include hardware acquisition, software licenses and (for VMAX systems) maintenance and

data center costs including occupancy, energy and infrastructure equipment. Hardware maintenance is not

included, as EMC offers a standard three-year 24x7 warranty, and DS8800 calculations are based on IBM warranty options providing comparable coverage. DS8800 software maintenance is not included as

calculations are again based on three-year, 24x7 IBM software warranty options.

The basis of these calculations, along with details of installations, configurations and pricing methodology, may be found in the Detailed Data section of this report. Cost breakdowns for installations

and scenarios are also presented in this section.

Cost Factors

Lower three-year costs for DS8800 systems are due to two main factors:

1. Pricing practices. Although initial EMC purchase prices for hardware and software may be similar to or lower than DS8800 equivalents, the company tends to charge more for later

upgrades. For example, list prices for disk units are routinely 40 percent higher for upgrades, and

surcharges extend to a wide range of other hardware and software components.

User experiences indicate that IBM pricing tends to be more consistent over time, with the result

that cost comparisons over three-year or longer periods tend to favor DS8800 systems.

EMC VMAX

IBM DS8800

$ Millions

Hardware Software Software support Data center

23.0

33.2


In cost calculations presented in this report, allowance was made for annual capacity growth rates

of between 15 and 35 percent for the financial services company, 20 to 45 percent for the manufacturing company and 20 to 40 percent for the IT services companies, depending on

applications. In organizations experiencing higher growth, cost disparities in favor of DS88000

systems may be larger.

It should be emphasized that discounts offered by EMC and IBM vary widely between organizations. The pricing employed in this report may thus not correspond to that experienced

by individual customers.

2. Hardware technologies. DS8800 systems support use of SAS-2 SFF drives. Although these have been widely adopted by vendors of small and midrange arrays, IBM is the first major vendor to

have introduced them into a high-end disk system. EMC has announced plans to do the same.

SAS-2 technology is significantly faster than earlier generation SAS drives employed in volume products. The connection speed has doubled – from 3 to 6 Gbps. In comparison, current-

generation FC drives employed in VMAX systems continue to employ 4 Gbps speeds. The next-

generation SAS-2 specification will boost speed to 12 Gbps.

The SAS-2 point-to-point connection method also generates less system overhead than Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) technology. Moreover, FC-AL overhead tends to expand when

some drives in a loop are significantly faster than others. The performance impact is thus

comparatively high when SSDs are combined with other types of drive.

In addition, the 2.5-inch form factor enables major space savings – in DS8800 systems, twenty-

four 2.5-inch drives occupy the same rack space as sixteen 3.5-inch devices – and upward of 30

percent lower energy consumption.

The bottom-line significance of space and energy economies is often underestimated. If

allowance is made for overall data center infrastructures, occupancy and energy costs may be

three or more times higher than for disk systems alone.

Standardized cost per square foot assumptions may also mislead. Construction and operating costs for Tier 4 data centers, which typically house business-critical systems in large

organizations, are – by wide margins – higher than for the less sophisticated facilities that feature

in most industry TCO methodologies.

Reflecting technology differences, data center costs for conventional and tiered DS8800 scenarios

average 33 and 36 percent less respectively than VMAX equivalents.

Although overall three-year costs for both platforms are marginally higher for tiered than for conventional

scenarios, comparative cost structures are generally similar. In tiered scenarios, lower DS8800 and Easy Tier costs reflect the same factors as for conventional scenarios, as well as costs of FAST VP software

and support. Easy Tier is a no-charge feature.

EMC FAST VP and IBM Easy Tier

Aggressive EMC claims for performance improvements and cost reductions that may be realized through FAST VP have drawn a great deal of industry attention.

EMC has reported strong growth in demand since FAST VP was introduced in January 2011. During

second quarter 2011, for example, more than 90 percent of VMAX systems were said to have shipped

with FAST software, SSDs and SATA drives.


Equally, however, IBM claims that around 50 percent of DS8700 and DS8800 users have activated Easy

Tier, and it can be expected that adoption rates will increase following the introduction of Easy Tier V3.

Clearly, both solutions have proved attractive to users. Organizations have been able to exploit the

potential of SSDs to improve performance and reduce overall disk capacities for high-end I/O-intensive

workloads. In many cases, tiering has also enabled use of high-capacity SATA drives as an alternative to

more expensive, higher-performance FC devices.

Although Easy Tier provides many of the same capabilities as FAST VP, the IBM approach to

implementation and operation has been significantly different. According to the company, this approach

responds closely to the requirements expressed by its DS8000 customers.

In principle, FAST VP enables operating parameters to be set more frequently, and with higher

granularity than Easy Tier. FAST VP is also designed to run continuously, with statistics collection,

analysis and data movement processes occurring on a 24x7 basis.

In practice, however, users have found it difficult to exploit such capabilities. Continuous data collection

and movement tend to generate system overhead that may impair production performance and service

levels. Equally, few organizations seem prepared to invest the administrator time and effort that would be

necessary to migrate data across tiers multiple times per day, on an application-by-application basis.

As a result, FAST VP processes are typically executed during off-peak periods, often in batch mode. Easy

Tier migrates small increments of data every five minutes, reducing production impacts.

A further difference should be highlighted. In sharp contrast to FAST VP, Easy Tier is designed to minimize complexity. Administrative processes are simpler, and automation and workload management

technologies are more advanced. (For example, Easy Tier implementations involve setting only two

parameters. FAST VP requires that a wide range of parameters be set, and policies defined on an application-by-application basis.)

FAST VP is not “fully automated” – in practice a great deal more administrator intervention is typically

required than for use of Easy Tier. “Fully automated” may be an eventual goal. But it does not correspond

to current realities.

A clear conclusion emerges. Tiering may play a valuable role in meeting today’s high-end storage

challenges. But in business-critical environments, its deployment remains subject to operational

constraints, and to the need to maintain continuity of performance, service quality and data protection. Schemes for the future cannot substitute for solid engineering and quality of technology today.

From this perspective, DS8800 systems remain among the industry’s premier high-end disk solutions.


PLATFORMS

Overview

EMC VMAX and IBM DS8800 represent the latest chapter in a more than 20-year rivalry between these

vendors in high-end disk systems.

The EMC VMAX platform, introduced in April 2009, is the latest iteration of the EMC Symmetrix architecture, which first reached the marketplace in 1990. The immediate predecessor of VMAX, the

DMX generation of systems, was introduced in 2003 and last updated in 2007.

The IBM DS8800 is the latest in the company’s DS8000 series of systems, the first of which was

introduced in 2004. The immediate DS8800 predecessor, the DS8700, was introduced in 2009. Both companies have maintained high levels of compatibility between successive generations of system.

For example, the VMAX version of the EMC Enginuity allows DMX scripts to run on VMAX systems.

DS8800 OEL is said by IBM to contain around 85 percent of the same code as for the DS8700, which in turn contained over 95 percent of the code of its DS8300 predecessor. Maintenance of compatibility in

this manner materially reduces risks of errors that may impact production.

There are numerous commonalties and some differences between VMAX and DS8800 systems, which are summarized in figure 3.

FUNCTION EMC SYMMETRIX VMAX SYSTEM IBM DS8800 SYSTEM

System units 1-8 engines

Each engine contains: dual integrated directors with 2 x quad core Intel Xeon 2.33 GHz processors each; 32-128GB physical (16-64GB effective) cache; 8-16 I/O ports; & 16 disk ports

Dual 2-way or 4-way Power6+ 5.0 GHz processor units

Cache, I/O & disk ports separately configurable

Configuration range 96 to 2,400 3.5” drives

64GB-1,024GB physical (32GB-512GB effective) cache

16-128 disk ports

4-128 host FC ports

4-64 host FICON ports

8 to 1,536 2.5” (SAS-2 or SSD) or 8 to 768 3.5” drives

32GB-384GB cache

8-64 disk ports

4-128 host FC/FICON ports

Drive interface

Drive types

4 Gbps FC & SATA

200GB & 400GB SSD

146GB, 300GB, 450GB & 600GB FC 15K

300GB, 450GB & 600GB FC 10K

1TB & 2TB 7.2K SATA

6 Gbps SAS-2

300GB SSD

146GB & 300GB SAS-2 15K

450GB, 600GB & 900GB SAS-2 10K

3TB 7.2K Nearline SAS-2

Host interface 4 Gbps or 8 Gbps FC/FICON 4 Gbps or 8 Gbps FC/FICON

RAID support Levels 1, 5, 6 & 10 Levels 5, 6 & 10

Thin provisioning Yes (Virtual Provisioning) Yes

Encryption method Executes on back-end processor Disk-based

Figure 3: General Comparison of EMC VMAX and IBM DS8800 Systems

Commonalities include support for tiered use of SSDs, high-performance HDDs and higher-capacity,

lower-cost media; and thin provisioning (which EMC refers to as “virtual provisioning”); i.e., the ability

to allocate space dynamically as data is written to disk, rather than in preset volumes.


Both platforms are recognized industry leaders in the following areas:

• Availability. DS8800 as well as VMAX systems incorporate sophisticated reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features, and allow use of RAID to mask the effects of disk failures.

IBM and EMC support RAID level 5 (which is now routine for most high-end applications), level

6 (an enhancement to level 5 that combines four or more disks to protect data against loss of any

two disks) and level 10 (which combines level 0 striping and level 1 mirroring).

EMC continues to support RAID level 1, which provides basic 1:1 mirroring. RAID 1 is now

rarely used for new applications. RAID 10 provides superior data protection.

EMC’s engine-based packaging represents a potential vulnerability. In principle, engines can be replaced without disrupting operations. But because each engine handles a specific set of disks,

an engine failure could result in loss of access to some or all of the data on these.

• Replication and recovery. Both companies offer robust solutions for point-in-time copy (IBM FlashCopy and EMC TimeFinder families) and remote real-time replication and disaster

recovery. EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility/Asynchronous (SRDF/A) and Symmetric

Remote Data Facility/Synchronous (SRDF/S), and IBM Global Mirror (asynchronous) and Metro

Mirror (synchronous) are recognized industry leaders in this area.

Three-site replication solutions, which provide a further level of protection against “cascading”

outages that might affect two data centers, include EMC’s SRDF/Star and IBM’s Metro/Global

Mirror. Although there are some technical differences between EMC and IBM solutions, these deliver generally similar functionality, and all are widely used.

DS8800 and VMAX systems both offer hardware-based encryption. EMC offers an adapter-based

implementation of RSA Data Protection Manager encryption. RSA was acquired by EMC in 2006.

IBM offers self-encrypting options for all DS8800 SAS-2 15K and 10K rpm drives. These options

employ onboard encryption engines implementing Seagate Secure technology. The company has also

announced plans to deliver similar options for DS8800 SSDs and nearline drives in the fast half of 2012.

Differences between these platforms are discussed in more detail below. In dealing with performance issues, a distinction is drawn between system-level performance, and the effects of SSDs and tiering

solutions. These are addressed separately in the following section.

EMC Symmetrix VMAX

VMAX Systems

VMAX systems are built around engine units containing redundant Intel Xeon-based integrated directors,

along with cache, and I/O and disk ports. Up to eight engines may be configured in a frame. Engines

replace dedicated channel and disk directors employed in earlier EMC systems.

Engines contain symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) units built around quad core Intel Xeon 2.33 GHz processors, 16GB to 64GB of RAM, up to 128GB of mirrored (i.e., 64GB of effective) cache, 8 to 16

front-end I/O ports and 16 back-end ports. Engine-based packaging means that processors, cache and (if

more than 16 are required) host ports cannot be configured separately. Expansion of these requires an additional engine or engines.


VMAX systems support larger overall cache sizes than DMX-4 systems – up to 1,024GB compared to

512GB. However, as cache for both systems is fully mirrored, only about 50 percent is usable. The effective increase is from 256GB to 512GB.

VMAX systems retain the same overall structure of system bays and storage bays as DMX systems.

Configurations may include up to 8 engines and 2,400 disk drives, which may be SSD, FC and/or SATA

devices. In principle, DMX-4 systems supported 1,920 drives, although EMC offered custom configurations of up to 2,400.

EMC also offers an entry-level model, the VMAX SE, which is built around a single system engine and

supports up to 128GB physical (64GB effective) cache and 360 disk drives. VMAX SE systems cannot be upgraded to larger VMAX configurations.

VMAXe Systems

VMAXe, which was introduced in January 2011, is a downsized version of the core VMAX platform. VMAXe cannot be upgraded to VMAX.

Principal differences between VMAXe and VMAX systems are summarized in figure 4.

VMAXe VMAX

Maximum engines 4 8

Intel processor Westmere quad 2.4 GHz Harpertown quad 2.33 GHz

Maximum disks 960 2,400

Maximum cache per engine 96GB 128GB

Connectivity 64 x 8 Gbps FC ports

32 x Ethernet ports

128 x 8 Gbps FC ports

64 x Ethernet ports

CKD & FICON support No Yes

Power Single-phase only Single- & three-phase

Figure 4: EMC Symmetrix VMAXe and VMAX Systems – Summary

Unlike VMAX, VMAXe does not support Fibre Connection (FICON) and Count Key Data (CKD), which

effectively preclude use with mainframe systems.

Support for single-phase power only further restricts use of VMAXe systems. Single-phase is widely used for smaller loads (e.g., for small business and residential sites), and in rural areas where distribution costs

are comparatively low. Large data centers tend to employ three-phase or combinations of three-phase

backbones and single-phase feeds. VMAX and DS8800 systems offer single- and three-phase options.

VMAXe systems support most major EMC VMAX software tools, although the EMC RecoverPoint product has been substituted for SRDF. RecoverPoint is positioned for use with EMC midrange systems.

Because of requirements for mainframe connectivity, SRDF compatibility and/or three-phase power,

VMAXe systems would not be realistic candidates for use in any of the installations upon which cost comparisons presented in this report are based. All VMAX calculations are based on mainstream models.


IBM DS8800

Overview

The DS8800 platform is, in some respects, an evolutionary upgrade of the DS8700. Systems continue to employ redundant SMP clusters built around IBM POWER RISC processors. In DS8800 systems, core

processors have been upgraded from 4.7 GHz POWER6 to 5.0 GHz POWER6+ technology. Maximum

cache size remains 384GB.

The IBM SMP implementation is different from that of EMC. VMAX processor cores are dedicated to specific front-end or back-end tasks in the same manner as for DMX-4 directors. In DS8800 systems, all

tasks are shared between all cores. This approach uses overall processor capacity more efficiently.

In addition to standard models, IBM also offers a DS8800 Business Class. This is a single-frame version equipped with a single two-way SMP cluster. It may be configured with up to 10 disk enclosures (up to

240 drives), 16GB to 64GB cache, and two to four host adapters. Business Class frames may be equipped

with more drives per adapter than standard models, reducing configuration cost and complexity.

DS8800 Business Class models are designed for smaller environments, such as those of organizations employing low-end System z Business Class mainframes.

SFF and SAS-2

The DS8800 differs from earlier DS8000 systems in its use of Small Form Factor (SFF) 2.5 inch drives with SAS-2 interfaces.

Use of 2.5-inch drives delivers key benefits in three areas – space reduction, power and cooling overhead

and performance. According to IBM, use of 2.5-inch SAS-2 drives will typically result in to 40 to 50 percent reductions in footprint, and at least 30 percent reduction energy consumption compared to 3.5-

inch FC drives. These claims are consistent with industry experience.

EMC has announced plans to replace FC with SAS-2 in their high-end disk systems, while EMC has

indicated that it expects eventually to standardize its high-end systems on two-tier configurations employing combinations of SSDs and SAS-2 drives.

This process has already begun with the company’s new VNX midrange platform, introduced in January

2011. VNX supports use of 2.5-inch as well as 3.5-inch SSD, high-performance SAS-2 and Nearline SAS-2 drives. The system also employs 6 Gbps SAS-2 disk interfaces.

Market researchers estimate that SAS devices currently represent between 40 and 60 percent of the

overall disk drive market, and that demand will continue to expand more rapidly than for FC or SATA. Costs will thus tend to decline more rapidly than for the latter. Some analysts also predict that Nearline

SAS will replace SATA.

There is no impact on availability. The disk mechanisms employed in enterprise-class FC and SAS-2

drives are the same – they simply employ different interfaces.

Space Reduction

The space reduction potential of use of 2.5-inch drives is apparent within the IBM DS8000 product line.

DS8700 systems employ disk enclosures that house sixteen 3.5-inch drives in a 3.5U enclosure. DS8800 systems may be configured with Gigapacks that contain twenty-four 2.5-inch drives in a 2U enclosure.

Drives may be acquired and installed in increments of 8, 16 and 24.


One key implication is that more drives may be housed in the same frame. Figure 5, for example, shows

numbers of drives supported by three-frame configurations of both systems.

Platform Base

Frame 1

st

95E 2

nd

95E Total

DS8800 (2.5”) 240 336 480 1056

DS8700 (3.5”) 128 256 256 640

Figure 5: Number of Disks per Frame – Example

Configurations are the same physical size, and include base frames (which house processor units and other system-level components) as well as 95E expansion frames. Maximum DS8800 and DS8700

configurations are 1,536 drives in four frames, and 1,024 drives in five frames respectively.

The amount of data center floor space occupied by DS8800 systems also compares favorably with EMC VMAX. Figure 6, for example, shows floor space occupied by DS8800 and VMAX configurations

supporting approximately the same number of drives, 1,056 and 960 respectively.

Figure 6: Floor Space Occupied by IBM DS8800 and EMC VMAX Systems – Example

In this presentation, which includes vendor-recommended service clearances, the DS8800 configuration

occupies 27 percent less floor space overall, and a third less space per drive.

The cost implications of such differences are magnified if allowance is also made for space occupied by computer room air conditioning (CRAC), chillers, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), power

distribution systems (PDS) and other infrastructure equipment; and for aisles and other interactive areas.

In most data center environments, space requirements for these are proportional to those for active IT equipment. Depending on data center layouts, equipment types and other factors, it may be necessary to

multiply space directly occupied by disk systems by three to five times to determine real occupancy costs.

Another issue should be highlighted. Industry methodologies for calculating data center occupancy costs

often employ assumptions based on standard facilities housing distributed servers and small and midsize

storage arrays. High-end disk systems, however, support business-critical systems in large organizations

and are typically housed in more sophisticated and expensive Tier 3 or Tier 4 data centers.

– Width – 111.9” (284.2 cm)

– D

ep

th –

12

4.6

” (

31

6.5

cm

)

Back Service Clearance

Front Service Clearance

STANDARD FRAME

240 drives

95E

336 drives

95E

480 drives

IBM DS8800: 1,056 drives

– Total Footprint – 96.8 sq. ft.

(9 sq. meters)

– Width – 151” (383.5 cm)

– D

ep

th –

12

5.8

8”

(31

9.7

cm

)

Back Service Area

Front Service Area

EMC Symmetric VMAX: 960 drives

– Total Footprint – 132 sq. ft.

(12.26 sq. meters)

SYSTEM BAY

STORAGE BAY

240 drives

STORAGE BAY

240 drives

STORAGE BAY

240 drives

STORAGE BAY

240 drives


The Uptime Institute, which sets de facto industry standards for data center resiliency, defines four tiers.

The highest of these, Tiers 3 and 4, involve extensive redundancy of infrastructure components, “hardened” construction parameters and rigorous operating practices. Designs are intended to realize

99.982 percent (Tier 3) to 99.995 percent (Tier 4) availability.

Capital and operating costs for Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers are significantly higher than those for lower-

level facilities. For example, construction costs for Tier 4 data centers are typically five to ten times

higher than for Tier 1 equivalents, and operating costs are three to five times higher.

Higher construction costs may also increase annual costs. An initial construction cost of, say, $5,000 per

square foot amortized over ten years would represent more than $500 per square foot per year.

All three of the organizations upon which comparative costs presented in this report were based housed

high-end disk systems in Tier 4 data centers.

Energy and Cooling

Industry experience has shown that use of 2.5-inch rather than 3.5-inch drives typically reduces energy

consumption and cooling requirements by 30 to 40 percent.

The general industry “rule of thumb” is that IT equipment causes 30 to 40 percent of overall data power consumption. The remainder is accounted for by infrastructure equipment such as that described above,

and by support systems and the space occupied by these. In Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers with high levels

of power and cooling redundancy, the proportion may be lower.

Figure 7 shows an example for one of the organizations used as the basis of comparative cost calculations

presented in this report.

Figure 7: Data Center Energy Consumption by Type of Equipment – User Example

Overall power consumption is proportional to that by IT equipment. In this case, it would thus be necessary to multiply energy savings realized by use of 2.5-inch drives in DS8800 systems by more than

three times to determine the actual bottom-line impact.

Potential energy and cooling savings are magnified by the DS8800’s use of front-to-back cooling; i.e., cold air is drawn into the front of the system, and hot air is expelled from the back. Conventional designs

(often referred to as “chimneys”) draw cold air through both the front and back of systems, and expel it

upward, where it is eventually returned to CRAC units.

Front-to-back cooling increases the effectiveness of “hot aisle/cool aisle” layouts that have become widely adopted in high-end data centers. Figure 8 shows a simplified example.

IT equipment

32%

Chillers 33%

Power equipment

17%

CRAC 12%

Other 6%


Figure 8: Data Center Hot/Cold Aisle Layout – Example

By improving airflow efficiency, such approaches have commonly reduced overall data center power and

cooling costs by 20 to 30 percent.

VMAX systems employ front-to-back cooling only for system bays. Storage bays, which generate

significantly higher power and cooling overhead in most VMAX installations, employ chimneys.

Other Areas

There are also significant technical differences between DS8000 and VMAX systems in a number of

other areas. These include the following:

• Cache technologies. Although VMAX systems may be configured with larger caches, this does

not necessarily translate into higher performance. User experiences have shown that IBM DS8000 systems typically require less cache than VMAX equivalents.

There are a number of reasons for this. Only about 50 percent of VMAX cache is usable.

Moreover, the mirroring processes employed by EMC tend to increase contention for memory resources, and to degrade overall system performance.

In addition, while EMC employs DMX-era cache techniques, DS8800 systems implement newer

algorithms developed by IBM’s Research Division that accelerate performance and improve capacity utilization. These are summarized in figure 9.

A key advantage of the IBM approach is that it draws upon proprietary autonomic technologies.

Autonomic computing, meaning the application of advanced artificial intelligence to system

administration and optimization tasks, has been a major IBM research focus for more than a decade. The company is the recognized industry leader in this area.


ALGORITHM FUNCTION

Sequential Prefetching in Adaptive Replacement Cache (SARC)

Manages cache allocation for random & sequential I/Os; pre-fetches & loads data into cache; dynamically learns what data should be stored in cache based upon the frequency needs of the hosts; optimizes overall performance & capacity utilization.

Adaptive Multi-Stream Prefetching (AMP)

Determines data to be prefetched based on workload characteristics; minimizes idle cache capacity; improves performance for common sequential & batch processing workloads; optimizes cache efficiency in response to changing workloads.

Intelligent Write Caching (IWC)

Organizes & manages order of cache writes to minimize use of disk resources & improve overall I/O performance; can double throughput for random write database workloads.

Figure 9: DS8800 Advanced Caching Algorithms

Finally, while DS8800 systems divide cache into 4-kilobyte (KB) increments (commonly referred to as “slots” or “pages”), VMAX systems employ 64KB increments. Although random I/Os are

typically 4KB to 8KB in size, the EMC approach assigns them a full 64KB of cache. As a result,

overall cache utilization may be significantly lower.

• Volume management. System-level performance and capacity utilization are materially affected

by the manner in data volumes are organized, modified and managed. If underlying structures are

inefficient, the effects may be magnified when these are mapped to RAID configurations, and the

performance and functionality of tiering solutions overlaid on them may be impaired.

Legacy VMAX structures oblige administrators to build higher-level metavolume structures out

of hypervolumes located on individual disks. In comparison, IBM uses a single category of extent

pools, which are constructed using standardized 1GB blocks of data (extents). Extent pools operate more efficiently, leave less unused capacity and do not need to be micromanaged by

administrators.

The IBM approach has proved a great deal less complex and more flexible. It provides particular value when organizations must deal with dynamic workloads characterized by high levels of

growth and/or change.

DS8800 Storage Pool Striping allows workloads to be spread across all extents within a pool, and

provides load-balancing functions that reduce risks that “hot spots” will develop. A key benefit is that, by implementing these capabilities as part of the core operating system, the tasks that must

be handled by Easy Tier and other optimization solutions are simplified.

In addition, I/O Priority Manager enables organizations to prioritize workload access to system resources based on performance and/or quality of service (QoS) targets. Administrators may define up to three main

priority levels and 16 sublevels for specific applications. The facility provides highly granular monitoring,

load balancing and policy-based allocation of system resources.

Experiences with I/O Priority Manager suggest that it may obviate the need for cache partitioning

techniques such as those employed by EMC in VMAX systems. This would improve ability to respond to

workload changes, and would not limit cache resources to specific volumes.

I/O Priority Manager originated as a tool for UNIX, Linux and Windows environments. In the latest version, support has been extended to the mainframe z/OS environment. Key capabilities include support

for z/OS volumes and integration with the z/OS Workload Manager (WLM).


SSDS AND TIERING

General Picture

Solid state drives (SSDs) originated in the 1990s, and were initially employed in specialized defense,

aerospace, communications and other compute-intensive applications. Demand for high-performance

systems for such applications continues to form a high-end niche within the overall SSD market. Most “100 percent” SSD systems are for this type of application.

SSDs began to move into mainstream commercial applications in the early to mid-2000s. This trend

overlapped with the appearance of storage virtualization technologies that made it possible to combine

SSDs and HDDs in the same virtual pool. This approach, generally referred to as “tiering,” was pioneered by specialist vendors and later adopted by major industry players.

EMC was the first large storage systems vendor to introduce SSDs as well as FC and SATA drives on its

major platforms during 2008. Support was extended to DMX-4 high-end, CLARiiON midrange and Celerra network attached storage (NAS) systems. The company currently claims to be the largest vendor

of SSDs in high-end and midrange disk arrays.

IBM added SSD support for DS8000 and DS5000 disk systems, the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) cross-platform storage virtualization system, and IBM Power and System x servers in 2009. A broader

initiative was also launched by the company to optimize exploitation of SSDs by all IBM server

platforms, as well as by DB2 and Tivoli software.

With certain types of workload, organizations have been able to achieve increases in overall system performance of hundreds or even thousands of times with relatively small SSD quantities (e.g., two to

three percent). Most current applications, however, require larger SSD capacities and/or deliver smaller

performance improvements.

Storage Tiering

The most common form of storage tiering currently involves manual intervention by administrators to

identify “hot spot” data that would benefit from location on SSDs, move these to SSDs, and relocate them

as and when workloads change. Decisions are supported by periodic collection and analysis of data

distribution and performance statistics.

Manual techniques have proved adequate for high-end I/O-intensive applications where SSDs provide

most benefit. However, for some vendors – EMC has been in the forefront among these – the ability to

develop a larger market for tiering depends upon automation.

In most organizations, storage workloads have become increasingly diverse over time. This trend has

been accelerated by server as well as storage consolidation initiatives, and by the increasingly mixed

nature of workloads in most application areas. In such environments, manual techniques would be

prohibitively expensive in administrator time an/or would not be feasible for operational reasons.

Numerous other vendors now offer solutions that provide such capabilities in varying ways, and to

varying degrees. These include 3PAR (Adaptive Optimization), Compellent (Intelligent Tiered Storage),

Hitachi (Dynamic Tiering), XIO (Continuous Adaptive Data Placement) and others. 3PAR and Compellent have been acquired by Hewlett-Packard and Dell respectively.


EMC FAST VP

EMC’s FAST has developed in two phases. The original version of FAST, introduced in 2009, supported

allocation and re-allocation of data only in logical unit number (LUN) increments, and was subject to other limitations that restricted its appeal to a small minority of early adopters.

FAST VP enables movement of data blocks with sub-LUN granularity. The smallest increment, according

to EMC, is 7.68MB, and the largest is 1GB.

FAST Suite software consists of two products: FAST Cache employs up to 2TB of SSD to cache data drawn from FC and/or SATA drives; and FAST VP, which moves data from FC drives to SSDs and/or

SATA drives. The roles of these products are illustrated in figure 10.

Figure 10: EMC FAST Cache and FAST VP

FAST VP is built upon the storage pool structures implemented by VMAX thin provisioning. It incorporates two core algorithms: intelligent tiering (which determines the appropriate tier for a given

data set); and allocation compliance (which detects when allocated capacity of a storage group exceeds

set limits, and initiates corrective data movements).

These are applied to three main processes: collection of statistics; analysis of these; and movement of data

between tiers in response to the results of analysis. Collection of statistics may run continuously as a

background task, or may be scheduled to occur periodically. Analysis and data movement windows may also be set by users. EMC supplies Tier Advisor Tool to assist in making such decisions.

FAST VP deployment involves two distinct phases: initial analysis of workloads and data distribution,

setting of configurations, system parameters and policies, and related tasks; and ongoing activities –

which, in principle, occur continuously and are fully automated.

In practice, however, users have found that it is often not realistic to conduct FAST processes during peak

operating hours. Statistics collection and repeated movement of blocks of data between disks tend to

generate levels of system overhead that impair production performance. Equally, it is often not feasible to assign administrator time during periods of high activity.

For both reasons, statistics are typically collected, and data is moved in batch mode during off-peak

periods. Windows for both typically range from one to eight hours, depending on application and

workloads, and on the size and complexity of data volumes.

Equally, effective use of FAST requires that storage administrators perform a variety of manual tasks

such as reviewing statistical analyses, performing a variety of management functions (e.g., confirming or

changing variables such as those shown in figure 11) and initiating relocation of data between tiers.

SATA

Fibre

Channel

SSD

FAST

Cache

Fibre

Channel

SATA

FAST

VP


Tiering policies Data allocations

Auto-tier

Highest available tier

Lowest available tier

Tier 1/2/3

e.g. 10% SSD – RAID 5

40% FC 15K – RAID 1

50% SATA – RAID 6

File system properties Relocation rate

Statistics collection

Analysis

Data relocation

Speed of data movement

• 10 settings

Storage pool properties File system properties

Pool type; e.g. mapped

Disk type

• Single disk type

- Flash/FC/SATA

• Multiple disk types

• Mirrored

- Mixed/Performance/Capacity

- Extreme performance

Advanced data services

• Thin/Compressed/Mirrored

• Tiering policy

Predict full

Automatic extension enabled/disabled

Obtain unused disk volumes

Slice pool volumes by default?

Template pool

Stripe Size/stripe members

Deduplication enabled/disabled

Predict full

Read/write throughput

Automatic extension enabled/disabled

File-level retention enabled/disabled

Slice volumes?

Replications

Disk usage

Figure 11: FAST VP Management Variables – Examples

These effects might be manageable where workloads are comparatively simple, stable and/or predictable. However, growth in a number of variables – including configuration and workload complexity, and in the

size and frequency of data movements (which would tend to occur if data volumes were expanding

rapidly) – would exacerbate operational challenges faced by users.

Administrative costs and difficulties would escalate well beyond current levels. This would particularly be the case if, as EMC has indicated as an eventual goal, policies and parameters were set on an

application-by-application basis. Declining batch windows would also pose problems for many users.

FAST VP is also supported by EMC on its Clarion CX-4 and VNX midrange disk systems.

IBM Easy Tier

IBM’s Easy Tier was first introduced in April 2010 for DS8700 systems, and support was later extended

to the DS8800. Easy Tier is accompanied by the Storage Tier Advisor Tool that identifies “hot spots,”

recommends where data should be located, and models the effects of configuration changes. Storage Tier

Advisor Tool is a no-charge feature.

The initial version, now referred to as Easy Tier V1, enabled concurrent use of two out of three tiers –

SSDs and high-performance HDDs, or SSDs and nearline devices. Easy Tier V2 added the ability to

rebalance workloads within tiers in the event that imbalances developed, or when capacity was added to or removed from systems. V3 featured additional enhancements, including concurrent three-tier support

and support for thin provisioning.


Easy Tier is designed to minimize complexity. It may be set up in, at most, a few hours by in-house IT

staff. In comparison, FAST VP deployments typically require assistance by the EMC Professional Services organization or EMC qualified service partners, as well as extensive administrator retraining.

Easy Tier offers Manual and Automated Modes. Manual Mode is employed for major tasks such as

moving entire volumes between tiers, to a new pool in the same tier, striping volumes or changing RAID

configurations, while Automated Mode enables workload recognition, movement of data in smaller increments, and other routine tasks to be performed without administrator intervention.

IBM autonomic technologies are employed. Autonomic computing, meaning the application of advanced

artificial intelligence (AI) to IT administration and optimization tasks, has been a major IBM R&D focus for more than a decade. The company is the recognized industry leader in this area.

One example is that Easy Tier is built around a continuous learning algorithm that enables the system to

recognize and adapt to evolving workload patterns. When Easy Tier is first activated, it normally requires that statistics be collected over a 24-hour period to enable “workload learning” (IBM’s term).

Easy Tier is also supported for the IBM Storwize v7000 midrange platform, and for the company’s SAN

Volume Controller (SVC) cross-platform storage virtualization solution.

Drive Blends

Although performance and/or capacity utilization benefits may be realized with two to three percent SSD configurations, the proportion of SSDs is often higher.

FAST VP performance test results published by EMC, which are summarized in figure 12, for example,

employ configurations in which ten percent of drive populations are SSDs. In some user environments, percentages are significantly higher.

TEST FAST VP

CONFIGURATION PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT

Oracle 11gR2 finance & HR database workloads on x86 Linux server

April 2011

80 drives: 8 x 400GB SSD (10%), 40 x 300GB FC 15K rpm (50%), 32 x SATA 1TB 7.2K rpm (40%)

81% improvement in transactions per minute for combined database workload; 160% improvement for separately-managed workloads

Complex OLTP environment on three DB2 9.7 LUW databases

January 2011

80 drives: 8 x 400GB SSD (10%), 40 x 300GB FC 15K rpm (50%), 32 x SATA 1TB 7.2K rpm (40%)

0.76% to 13.46% improvements in transactions per minute depending on workload characteristics

Figure 12: EMC FAST VP Performance Tests – Summary

IBM tests have shown similar variances. According to the company, an internal test using a transactional

database workload showed that use of 13 percent SSDs achieved a 171 percent performance gain. This

blend offered the lowest cost of storage per transaction per second of any of the configurations tested.


DETAILED DATA

Installations and Scenarios

Cost comparisons presented in this report are based on high-end disk system installations in three large

user organizations whose business profiles are summarized in figure 13.

FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY

MANUFACTURING COMPANY

IT SERVICES COMPANY

Diversified retail bank $600 billion assets 15+ million customers 2,000+ branches 65,000 employees

Consumer packaged goods $15 billion revenues 70+ manufacturing & distribution centers 35,000 employees

Data center, application & telecommunications services $4 billion revenues 10 operations centers 20,000 employees

Figure 13: Installations Summary – Business Profiles

Installations were based on data on disk system hardware and software configurations, applications,

capacity growth rates, host platforms (e.g., mainframes, UNIX, Windows or Linux servers) and other

subjects reported by users of EMC VMAX and/or IBM DS8800 systems.

Organizations also employed older EMC and IBM high-end disk platforms. These were translated into VMAX and DS8800 configurations based on installed capacity in terabytes, performance characteristics,

business criticality and projected growth rates.

In the financial services and IT services company installations, high-end disk systems support mixes of mainframe and open systems hosts. In the manufacturing company installation, systems support UNIX

and Windows servers. Because of mainframe connectivity requirement and/or data center and operational

characteristics, VMAXe systems were not realistic candidates for use in comparisons.

For each installation, two scenarios were developed:

1. Conventional scenarios are for use of VMAX and DS8800 systems equipped with 15K rpm

300GB 3.5-inch FC and 2.5-inch SAS-2 disks respectively.

2. Tiered scenarios are for use of the same systems in three-tier configurations employing FAST VP and Easy Tier V3 respectively.

VMAX systems were equipped with 3.5-inch 400GB SSDs, 15K rpm 300GB FC, and 7.2K rpm

2TB SATA disks, while DS8800 systems were equipped with 2.5-inch 300GB SSDs, 2.5-inch 15K rpm 300GB SAS-2, and 3.5-inch 7.2K rpm 3TB Nearline SAS-2 drives.

For both sets of scenarios, RAID 5 with normal complements of spares was employed. Configurations

also include the software products shown in figure 14.

FUNCTION EMC VMAX SYSTEM IBM DS8800 SYSTEM

Operating system Enginuity 5875 Operating Environment License

Point-in-time Copy TimeFinder FlashCopy

Real-time replication SRDF/A, SRDF/S Global Mirror, Metro Mirror

Multipathing PowerPath (host-based) Subsystem Device Driver

Figure 14: Software Products Employed in All Comparisons


Real-time replication software is employed only for systems requiring exceptionally high levels of

availability and recoverability.

Tiered VMAX scenarios also include EMC FAST Suite and Tier Advisor Tool. Tiered DS8800 scenarios

include Easy Tier V3 and Storage Tier Advisor Tool.

Hardware and software configurations were then determined for each installation and scenario over a

three-year period. Results are summarized in figures 15 and 16.



IT SERVICES COMPANY

EMC VMAX SYSTEMS

Initial Configuration

Business-critical

2 x 198TB, 2 x 86TB

Other systems

1 x 221TB, 1 x 198TB 1 x 108TB

Total: 1,095TB

Business-critical

2 x 144TB

Other systems

1 x 189TB, 1 x 126TB 1 x 99TB, 1 x 95TB

Total: 797TB

Business-critical

2 x 158TB

Other systems

1 x 113TB, 1 x 90TB

Total: 519TB

End of Period Configuration

Business-critical

2 x 405TB, 2 x 203TB

Other systems

1 x 464TB, 1 x 383TB 1 x 162TB

Total: 2,225TB

Business-critical

2 x 317TB

Other systems

2 x 324TB, 1 x 243TB 1 x 185TB

Total: 1,710TB

Business-critical

2 x 347TB

Other systems

1 x 194TB, 1 x 171TB

Total: 1,059TB

IBM DS8800 SYSTEMS


Business-critical

2 x 202TB, 2 x 86TB

Other systems

1 x 223TB, 1 x 202TB 1 x 108TB

Total: 1,109TB

Business-critical

2 x 144TB

Other systems

1 x 187TB, 1 x 122TB 1 x 101TB, 1 x 94TB

Total: 792TB

Business-critical

2 x 158TB

Other systems

1 x 115TB, 1 x 94TB

Total: 525TB


Business-critical

2 x 410TB, 2 x 209TB

Other systems

1 x 461TB, 1 x 382TB 1 x 166TB

Total: 2,247TB

Business-critical

2 x 317TB

Other systems

2 x 324TB, 1 x 245TB 1 x 187TB

Total: 1,714TB

Business-critical

2 x 346TB

Other systems

1 x 194TB, 1 x 173TB

Total: 1,059TB

Figure 15: Installations Summary – Conventional Scenarios

Terabyte values shown are for raw physical capacity.




IT SERVICES COMPANY

EMC VMAX SYSTEMS


Business-critical

2 x 162TB, 2 x 116TB

Other systems

1 x 437TB, 1 x 379TB 1 x 91TB

Total: 1,463TB

Business-critical

2 x 177TB

Other systems

1 x 213TB, 1 x 164TB 1 x 156TB, 1 x 77TB

Total: 964TB

Business-critical

2 x 323TB

Other systems

1 x 221TB, 1 x 191TB

Total: 1,058TB


Business-critical

2 x 320TB, 2 x 290TB

Other systems

1 x 762TB, 1 x 749TB 1 x 141TB

Total: 2,872TB

Business-critical

2 x 383TB

Other systems

1 x 432TB, 1 x 379TB 1 x 372TB, 1 x 149TB

Total: 2,098TB

Business-critical

2 x 703TB

Other systems

1 x 374TB, 1 x 365TB

Total: 2,145TB

IBM DS8800 SYSTEMS


Business-critical

2 x 174TB, 2 x 122TB

Other systems

1 x 445TB, 1 x 323TB 1 x 97TB

Total: 1,457TB

Business-critical

2 x 173TB

Other systems

1 x 222TB, 1 x 169TB 1 x 149TB, 1 x 85TB

Total: 971TB

Business-critical

2 x 331TB

Other systems

1 x 215TB, 1 x 184TB

Total: 1,061TB


Business-critical

2 x 360TB, 2 x 280TB

Other systems

1 x 760TB, 1 x 743TB 1 x 149TB

Total: 2,932TB

Business-critical

2 x 387TB

Other systems

1 x 447TB, 1 x 390TB 1 x 369TB, 1 x 166TB

Total: 2,146TB

Business-critical

2 x 700TB

Other systems

1 x 374TB, 1 x 361TB

Total: 2,135TB

Figure 16: Installations Summary – Tiered Scenarios

Cost Calculations

Costs were calculated as follows:

• System costs include initial hardware and license acquisition, as well as costs of hardware and

software upgrades over three-year periods.

Calculations do not include hardware maintenance costs. EMC offers a standard three-year 24x7 warranty for VMAX hardware, while costs for DS8800 systems were based on three-year

warranty models offered by the company.

VMAX costs include software maintenance. Although EMC offers a 90-day warranty for VMAX software, this applies only to media defects. Since such defects are rare, it is assumed that no

warranty coverage occurs; i.e., maintenance charges apply upon installation. DS8800 calculations

are based on three-year system warranty options.


For tiered scenarios, software acquisition and maintenance calculations allow for variations in

EMC pricing for SATA and non-SATA devices, and in IBM pricing for use of SSD, SAS-2 or nearline drives.

• Data center costs include acquisition and maintenance costs for data center infrastructure

equipment including CRAC, cooling, UPS, PDS and other infrastructure equipment; and

occupancy and energy costs for disk systems as well as infrastructure equipment.

Occupancy costs were calculated based on footprints for disk systems as well as infrastructure

equipment, including allowance for service clearances, aisles and other inactive areas. Costs were

calculated using an overhead assumption for cost per square foot per year for an approximately 40,000 square foot Tier 4 facility.

Infrastructure equipment costs were calculated based on discounted purchase and maintenance

prices for models from leading vendors supplying large corporate data centers. Costs were prorated; e.g., if disk systems required 40 percent of the capacity of a 30-ton chiller, calculations

were for 40 percent of three-year costs for this unit.

Energy costs were determined using vendor ratings and independent estimates for disk systems

and infrastructure equipment. Calculations were based on specific utilization levels and hours of operation. A conservative assumption for average cost per kilowatt-hour was employed. This

remained constant over the three-year measurement period.

All cost calculations are for the United States.

Cost Breakdowns

Detailed cost breakdowns are presented in figures 17 and 18.

Category Financial Services

Company Manufacturing

Company IT Services Company

EMC SYMMETRIX VMAX SYSTEMS

Hardware 20,405 14,118 12,913

Software 10,531 7,491 5,383

Software support 3,666 2,570 1,838

Data center 1,873 1,069 820

Total ($000) 36,475 25,248 20,954

IBM DS8800 SYSTEMS

Hardware 16,743 10,848 8,142

Software 10,735 5,965 4,868

Data center 1,289 723 522

Total ($000) 28,768 17,537 13,532

Figure 17: Three-year Cost Breakdowns – Conventional Comparisons


Category Financial Services

Company Manufacturing

Company IT Services Company

EMC SYMMETRIX VMAX SYSTEMS with FAST VP

Hardware 26,047 18,385 15,144

Software 11,722 8,522 7,333

Software support 4,063 2,909 2,548

Data center 1,512 874 645

Total ($000) 43,344 30,690 25,670

IBM DS8800 SYSTEMS with EASY TIER V3

Hardware 20,420 14,622 9,392

Software 10,136 7,012 5,014

Data center 987 571 389

Total ($000) 31,543 22,205 14,795

Figure 18: Three-year Cost Breakdowns – Tiered Comparisons

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY GROUP

ITG sharpens your awareness of what’s happening and your competitive edge

. . . this could affect your future growth and profit prospects

International Technology Group (ITG), established in 1983, is an independent research and management consulting firm specializing in information technology (IT) investment strategy, cost/benefit metrics,

infrastructure studies, deployment tactics, business alignment and financial analysis.

ITG was an early innovator and pioneer in developing total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) processes and methodologies. In 2004, the firm received a Decade of Education Award

from the Information Technology Financial Management Association (ITFMA), the leading professional

association dedicated to education and advancement of financial management practices in end-user IT

organizations.

The firm has undertaken more than 120 major consulting projects, released more than 250 management

reports and white papers and more than 1,800 briefings and presentations to individual clients, user

groups, industry conferences and seminars throughout the world.

Client services are designed to provide factual data and reliable documentation to assist in the decision-

making process. Information provided establishes the basis for developing tactical and strategic plans.

Important developments are analyzed and practical guidance is offered on the most effective ways to

respond to changes that may impact complex IT deployment agendas.

A broad range of services is offered, furnishing clients with the information necessary to complement

their internal capabilities and resources. Customized client programs involve various combinations of the

following deliverables:

Status Reports In-depth studies of important issues

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Clients include a cross section of IT end users in the private and public sectors representing multinational corporations, industrial companies, financial institutions, service organizations, educational institutions,

federal and state government agencies as well as IT system suppliers, software vendors and service firms.

Federal government clients have included agencies within the Department of Defense (e.g. DISA), Department of Transportation (e.g. FAA) and Department of Treasury (e.g. US Mint).

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