DCIG is pleased to announce the release of its 2014-15 High End Storage Array Buyer’s Guide that weights, scores and ranks more than 100 features of thirteen (13) different storage arrays from five different storage providers.
Due to the scalability and high availability criteria that were used to evaluate these high end storage arrays, the number of reviewed products is relatively small compared to other DCIG Buyer’s Guides. However, this inaugural guide provides enterprises with a comprehensive list of high end storage arrays’ supported features and functionality to assist them in this all-important buying decision.
High end storage arrays are especially well-suited for large enterprises because the arrays:
- Scale up storage capacity and performance through the addition of disks and/or nodes
- Provide high availability by implementing active-active controllers
- Support multiple ports and storage networking interfaces such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel (FC) and Fibre Connection (FICON)
- Provide a mature and feature-rich suite of data management services
- Support virtualization integration leveraging VMware’s API’s to offload some processing to the storage array
- Provide performance monitoring for the entire array and various components
- Provide storage efficiencies via automated storage tiering
- Support non-disruptive upgrades
The DCIG 2014-15 High End Storage Array Buyer’s Guide Top 5 solutions include (in alphabetical order):
- HDS VSP G1000
- HP XP7
- HP 3PAR StoreServ 10400
- HP 3PAR StoreServ 10800
- NetApp FAS8080 EX
The HP 3PAR StoreServ 10800 earned the “Best-in-Class” ranking among the high end storage arrays evaluated this year. In comparison to its counterparts, this array stood out in the following ways:
- Achieved the highest overall score
- Achieved the highest score in Software and VMware Integration categories
- Supports all VAAI 4.x and 5.x features earning a “Best-in-Class” ranking in VMware integration
- It represented the best balance of strengths across all the scoring categories
About the DCIG 2014-15 High End Storage Array Buyer’s Guide
Selecting and comparing vendors and researching their products can be a daunting task. DCIG creates Buyer’s Guides in order to help end users accelerate the product research and selection process–driving cost out of the research process while simultaneously increasing confidence in the results.
Organizations should therefore use this Buyer’s Guide as a handbook to understand who the high end storage players are, what products they offer, what features and functions are available on each, how these solutions scale, what networking and storage protocols they offer, and how organizations might manage any solution they purchase.
The DCIG 2014-15 High End Storage Array Buyer’s Guide achieves the following objectives:
- Provides an objective, third party evaluation of products that evaluates and scores their features from an end user’s perspective
- Ranks each array in each scoring category and then presenting these results in an easy to understand table
- Provides a standardized data sheet for each of the arrays so users may do quick side-by-side comparisons of products
- Provides insights into the high availability and scalability of the arrays as well as what features the arrays offer
- Gives any organization a solid foundation for getting competitive bids from different providers that are based on “apples-to-apples” comparisons
The DCIG 2014-15 High End Storage Array Buyer’s Guide is available immediately through the DCIG Analyst Portal for subscribing users by following this link.