Enterprise storage systems have evolved to become modern storage platforms. These storage platforms still deliver features such as high availability, performance, reliability, and technical support. However, they have matured to offer new features that play a greater role in today’s enterprises. These include resolving 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, Dell PowerStore, and the NetApp ASA r2 storage systems. Now DCIG announces the availability of the fourth and final 26-page DCIG Competitive Intelligence report (link) in this series that evaluates how the B10000 compares to the IBM Storage FlashSystem.
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 IBM Storage FlashSystem
The HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 and IBM Storage FlashSystem both offer features that help enterprises respond to these challenges. This 4th published DCIG Competitive Intelligence Report compares how well these two solutions differ in the following five features and capabilities:
#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.
IBM Storage FlashSystem
IBM offers four different all-flash Storage FlashSystem models to address use cases for specific enterprise needs. These include the FlashSystem 5300 for entry-level and midrange environments, the 7300 for midrange environments, the 9500 for high levels of performance, and the C200 for archive and backup workloads.
The IBM Storage FlashSystem offers the option to create a federated cluster referred to as a FlashSystem grid. A FlashSystem grid scales out to and supports up to 32 systems where a system consists of two nodes. Each FlashSystem system model in a FlashSystem grid maintains its autonomy resulting in each system “owning” its volumes and volume groups.
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.
IBM makes its Storage Assurance program available for these four all-flash Storage FlashSystem models and their all-flash expansions. Enterprises must obtain either a four (4) year or eight (8) year IBM Storage Assurance service contract that they can pay upfront, annually, quarterly, or monthly.
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, and 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.
IBM Storage Insights/Storage Insights Pro
Any enterprise with an IBM Storage FlashSystem block storage system may sign up and access IBM Storage Insights at no charge. Available as a cloud-based service, it assists enterprises in monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing select components of their storage infrastructure.
IBM also offers for an additional charge a capacity-based subscription version of IBM Storage Insights, known as IBM Storage Insights Pro. It includes all the features of IBM Storage Insights plus some additional benefits. These include capacity reclamation, collecting more capacity and performance metrics, and the availability of REST APIs, among others.
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 and Ransomware 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.
IBM Storage FlashSystem
IBM offers enterprises multiple options to protect and secure data from ransomware and other cybersecurity events. For example, FlashSystems with NVMe FlashCore Modules (FCMs) support Inline Data Corruption Detection. These FlashSystems utilize AI and ML services to detect changes to data indicative of direct attacks or threats. To gain access to IBM’s ransomware threat detection capabilities, enterprises must purchase a subscription to IBM Storage Insights Pro.
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 IBM 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 IBM 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 the IBM Storage FlashSystem. 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 and for no charge on HPE’s site, you may follow this link.
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Both HPE and IBM are or have been clients of DCIG. HPE commissioned DCIG to produce this Competitive Intelligence Report.