DCIG is pleased to announce the December 17 release of the DCIG 2015-16 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide that weights, scores and ranks more than 95 features of thirty-three (33) different storage arrays or array series from sixteen (16) different storage providers.
The midrange array category is quite large and is usually broken down into several additional categories. The most basic breakdown is by how the storage is accessed: Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS), or both.
This Buyer’s Guide focuses on SAN arrays designed for the enterprise data center. Although a number of the products included in this guide also support NAS protocols–and the data sheets reflect some NAS features–the arrays were evaluated on the basis of their enterprise SAN features.
DCIG’s goal in preparing this guide is to evaluate, score and rank each solution based upon a comprehensive list of features that reflects the needs of the widest range of organizations. Scoring and ranking tables enable end users to do “at-a-glance” comparisons between many different array models; and our standardized data sheets facilitate side-by-side comparisons which enable organizations to quickly get to a short list of products that may meet their requirements.
Enterprise midrange arrays are especially well-suited for medium-sized enterprises because the arrays:
- Provide a high degree of availability by implementing a dual-controller architecture and redundant/hot swap components
- Scale up storage capacity and performance through the addition of disks and/or nodes
- Scale up performance through the use of flash memory as a large shared cache and/or high-performance storage tier
The DCIG 2015-16 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide Top 8 solutions include (in alphabetical order):
- EMC VNX5000/7000/8000 Series (VNX8000)
- FUJITSU Limited ETERNUS DX S3 Series (DX600)
- HDS Hitachi Unified Storage VM
- HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 Series (7440c)
- IBM Storwize V7000 (V7000 Unified)
- NetApp FAS8000 Series (FAS8040)
- Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance (ZS4-4)
- Tegile T3000 Series (T3400)
The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 Series (7440c) earned the Best-in-Class ranking among all Enterprise Midrange Arrays in this buyer’s guide. The StoreServ 7400 Series stood out by offering all of the following capabilities:
- The best balance of strengths across all the scoring categories, including achieving Best-in-Class in both Management and Virtualization.
- Outstanding management integration. The 7400 Series can be managed and monitored from within leading hypervisor management consoles including VMware vCenter and Microsoft System Center (SCVMM), as well as OpenStack and SMI-S storage management interfaces.
- Superb virtualization support. The 7440c supports all of the VMware VAAI 4.x and 5.x and all of the other VMware storage integrations surveyed— including VASA, VASRM, VADP, SIOC, and Storage DRS. The array also supports Microsoft ODX as well as the Hyper-V and Oracle VM hypervisors.
- Support for both remote monitoring and proactive remediation. Proactive remediation adds value by minimizing the number and duration of service interruptions and by reducing the troubleshooting time and expertise required of business IT staff.
About the DCIG 2015-16 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide
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.
The DCIG 2015 Enterprise Midrange 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 what features the arrays offer to optimize integration into virtualization environments
- Provides insight into which features will result in improved performance
- Gives any organization a solid foundation for getting competitive bids from different providers that are based on “apples-to-apples” comparisons
The DCIG 2015-16 Enterprise Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide is available immediately to subscribing users of the DCIG Analysis Portal. Individuals who have not yet subscribed to the DCIG Analysis Portal may test drive the DCIG Analysis Portal for 30 days as well as download this Guide by following this link.