Enterprise storage solutions remain fixtures in many data centers as enterprises implement private cloud architectures. Yet to retain this stature, enterprises must select storage solutions that help them to address modern IT challenges. These challenges include data availability, data center complexity, future proofing storage investments, and protecting against cybersecurity threats, among others.
To help enterprises meet these challenges, DCIG has recently produced a series of competitive intelligence (CI) reports. These specifically evaluate how the HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 compares to various competitors. DCIG has previously published CI reports that evaluate how the B10000 compares to Pure Storage FlashArray and Dell PowerStore. Now DCIG announces the availability of 3rd CI report (link) in this series that evaluates how the B10000 compares to the NetApp ASA r2.
Modern IT Challenges
Enterprises face many different IT infrastructure challenges than they did even a few years ago. They must deal with:
- Cybersecurity threats posed by both hackers and insiders.
- Customer and user expectations for anywhere, anytime application and data availability.
- Hybrid cloud adoption and growth.
- VMware software licensing changes.
- More VMware vSphere hypervisor alternatives.
- Increasingly complex IT infrastructures created by all these challenges.
These represent many of the concerns for which enterprises must account for as they manage their modern IT infrastructures.
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and NetApp ASA r2
The HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and NetApp All-SAN Array (ASA) r2 both offer features that help enterprises respond to these challenges. This 3rd published DCIG Competitive Intelligence Report in this series focusing on HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 compares how well it matches up against the NetApp ASA r2 in the following five areas:
#1: Product Architecture and Data Availability
Data availability, capacity, and performance remain the backbone of enterprise storage solutions. As such, enterprises still expect modern enterprise storage solutions to possess and deliver on these three characteristics.
Enterprises also now expect storage solutions to meet current and future data availability, capacity, and performance requirements. These expectations require modern storage solutions:
- Scale capacity or performance resources granularly and independently of the other resource.
- Scale both up and out.
- Continue to perform well during normal operations and when storage system maintenance activities occur, such as during storage system patches and updates and during controller refreshes and upgrades.
- Minimize or eliminate hardware obsolescence associated with making these changes. Monitor resources for utilization.
- Allocate and balance performance as needed.
NetApp ASA r2
NetApp made a notable architectural change to its ASA storage systems, when compared to its other models, by introducing symmetric active-active nodes for each HA-pair. The ASA r2 A-Series offers six models that range in raw capacity per HA-pair from 734 TB (A20) to 2.67 PB (A1K). The ASA r2 C-Series comes in three models that range in raw capacity per HA-pair from 1.5 PB (C250) to 7.4 PB (C800).
All NetApp ASA r2 models support a federated clustering architecture delivered through its ONTAP storage operating system. In a federated cluster, the NetApp ASA r2 aggregates multiple ASA r2 appliances to form a single, logical storage system. This permits the federated NetApp ASA r2 cluster to aggregate performance from all appliances in the cluster.
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000
HPE offers HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 as a single model that consists of a composable, disaggregated, scale-out architecture. Using this architecture, enterprises may configure the B10000 to meet different use cases.
The B10000 composable infrastructure offers both compute and storage nodes. Enterprises may start out with an initial, entry-level configuration as small as two compute nodes. Each of these two nodes must contain at least eight (8) NVMe SSDs of the same capacity. Once deployed, the B10000 may then introduce additional performance or capacity independently of one another.
#2: Optimizing and Future Proofing Storage Investments
Enterprises must address unexpected changes to their IT infrastructure that require them to introduce more capacity, more performance, or both. To minimize prematurely replacing hardware in their existing IT infrastructure, they want to optimize and future-proof their investments in hardware.
Storage solutions can be particularly sensitive to any planned or unplanned capacity or performance changes in the IT infrastructure. Enterprises can reach the capacity and performance limits of a storage array before the array reaches its planned end-of-life (EOL). This may require enterprises to replace existing storage solutions prematurely.
NetApp’s Storage Lifecycle Program (SLP) covers all ASA r2 models and includes updates for controllers and software, dedicated controller update services, and support, among other services.
The HPE Storage Future-Ready Program delivers multiple guarantees and features to future-proof investments for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000. Some of these include a 100% Data Availability Guarantee, a 30-day Satisfaction Guarantee, a Cyber Resiliency Guarantee, among others.
#3: AIOps for Hybrid Cloud Management
Enterprises already grapple with the complexity associated with managing their on-premises IT environments. However, the demands of computing in today’s world often compel them to implement hybrid cloud computing. For better or worse, hybrid cloud environments may only serve to exacerbate the complexity associated with IT management.
To address this complexity, artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) has emerged to help enterprises manage their hybrid cloud IT infrastructures. A cloud-based, centralized AIOps application equips enterprises to monitor devices and services both on premises and in the cloud. Both HPE and NetApp offer AIOps applications that enterprises may use to assist in this endeavor.
NetApp BlueXP
NetApp BlueXP™ offers a single management interface to build, govern, and protect data and storage across hybrid multi-cloud environments. Available as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), enterprises may access BlueXP through both a web-based console and APIs.
HPE AIOps/HPE GreenLake
HPE AIOps collects and analyses telemetry metadata across HPE’s compute, networking, and storage infrastructure stack as well as manages this entire stack. The HPE GreenLake cloud unifies management, service, and support to provide AIOps capabilities, or experiences, for HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.
#4: Anomaly Detection
Ransomware still attacks by encrypting, exfiltrating, and/or deleting data. Thankfully, enterprise cybersecurity software often detects these common types of ransomware attacks. However, enterprises must also deal with new strains of ransomware that have become more challenging to detect.
Hackers have created new strains of ransomware that encrypt data at very granular levels. This type of ransomware uses an attack methodology referred to as intermittent encryption. Rather than encrypting an entire file, it encrypts components of a file as small as 16 bytes.
This technique can have the same net effect as encrypting an entire file as it can make the file unreadable and unusable. However, intermittent encryption incurs less system overhead since it only encrypts small chunks of each file. In so doing, intermittent encryption may evade common methods used by many algorithms to detect ransomware.
This has led to an increase in software that specifically performs anomaly detection. Rather than trying to identify ransomware’s presence, this software looks for anomalies in the data. Both NetApp and HPE currently offer software that analyzes data stored on their systems for anomalies.
NetApp BlueXP
NetApp BlueXP includes Data Infrastructure Insights Storage Workload Security. This feature offers an Anomaly Detection Monitor that continuously monitors NetApp ONTAP systems for anomalies. NetApp defines an anomaly as a metric that is several standard deviations away from a weighted mean of that metric. Its Anomaly Detection algorithm also gives more weight to the activity in recent weeks than prior weeks.
HPE Cyber Resiliency Guarantee
The B10000 offers continuous data protection (CDP) based on Zerto’s algorithm that enterprises can use to perform backups and recoveries. However, enterprises will find the most value in B10000’s ability to perform real-time, adaptive anomaly detection.
To perform anomaly detection, the B10000 performs native, block-level ransomware detection, included as part of its Cyber Resiliency Guarantee. The B10000 monitors in real-time all data that flows onto it for anomalies. This real-time data tracking and analysis facilitates real-time alerting to any changes in the data. The B10000 specifically monitors and analyzes data at a granular level.
#5: Server Virtualization Platform Support
Broadcom’s software licensing changes since it acquired VMware have prompted many enterprises to explore alternative hypervisor solutions. While enterprises will not abandon VMware anytime soon, many have already begun evaluating competitive hypervisors.
This evaluation of competitive solutions has prompted the introduction of multiple VMware alternatives, including HPE VM Essentials (HPE’s own hypervisor). As this evaluation occurs, storage providers must continue to demonstrate support for VMware vSphere along with other hypervisors. Both NetApp and HPE have taken steps to address these current dynamics in the virtualization marketplace.
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000: A New, Powerful, Flexible All-flash Alternative
Modern storage solutions must do more than simply, quickly, and efficiently provide storage. They must now address issues that enterprises routinely encounter in their IT infrastructures.
These include adapting to unexpected changes, controlling costs, detecting and responding to ransomware, managing IT complexity, and the rise of multi-hypervisor environments. To their credit, both HPE and NetApp recognize these issues and deliver storage solutions designed to address them.
However, the HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 offers enterprises a new, powerful, flexible all-flash alternative to NetApp ASA r2. More importantly, it addresses these key challenges that enterprises currently face as they manage multi-hypervisor, hybrid cloud environments.
To download this report without registration on HPE’s site, you may follow this link.
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Both HPE and NetApp are or have been clients of DCIG. HPE commissioned DCIG to produce this Competitive Intelligence Report.