Getting the Most from Your Storage Environment Are You Getting the Most from Your Storage Environment?

Issue 1

Getting the Most from Your Storage Environment Are You Getting The Most From Your Storage Environment?

2 The increasing demands of application and database workloads, Are You Getting The Most From Your growing numbers of virtual machines, and more powerful processors Storage Environment? are driving demand for ever-faster storage systems. Increasingly, IT organizations are turning to solid-state storage to meet these 8 demands, with hybrid and all-flash arrays taking the place of From the Gartner Files: traditional disk storage for high performance workloads. Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays While the performance characteristics of flash storage (high IOPS and 21 bandwidth with low latency) guarantee a boost to your applications, About HP you can get an even bigger boost in end-to-end performance by combining the speed and resiliency of flash with enhancements to your storage network.

Understanding Storage Performance There are three key measurements of storage performance: I/O operations per second (IOPS), bandwidth, and latency.

• IOPS is the measure of read/write volume a device can support. Storage devices are rated for IOPS using benchmark tests, but in real-world situations, IOPS performance can be constrained by several factors including storage network (SAN) bandwidth.

• Bandwidth is the capacity to move data. It’s a fixed capacity, based on the characteristics of SAN components (host bus adaptor, switches, fiber channel, storage array, etc.).

• Latency is the time it takes to complete an I/O request (response time). For an optimal user experience, lower latency is always better. The primary source of latency is the storage system itself, but latency can also be introduced by your storage network (SAN).

To understand the relationship between IOPS, bandwidth, and latency, think of your network as a highway. Bandwidth equates to the number of lanes. To accommodate more traffic, you need more lanes. IOPS would be the number of cars, their spacing, and their average speed. Latency equates to the duration of the trip from point to point.

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2 • Data compaction – technologies like deduplication that can reduce Just a few years ago, I/O latencies of overall capacity requirements and TCO

“10-20ms were generally acceptable. • Reduced footprint – high-density drives utilizing data compaction That’s no longer the case. can reduce footprint by 80% with commensurate power reduction ” • Tier 1 functionality – advanced features like sync/async replication, The physical characteristics of a spinning disk drive introduce latency live data migration, and transparent data center failover should be into every I/O operation. It takes a minimum of 2ms and usually standard longer for the disk head to move into place and read data from the spinning disk. Just a few years ago, I/O latencies of 10-20ms were generally acceptable for most applications. That’s no longer the case. At a current cost of less than $2 per GB Latency becomes particularly important in high volume transactional workloads, when database requests are time sensitive and “of usable storage, flash storage, when dependent on prior transaction results. Users (both business users deployed properly, can be well worth the and online customers) have come to expect a level of performance that requires lower-latency storage solutions. investment.

- Demartek Boosting Performance with Flash ” While latency greater than 2 milliseconds is generally the best achievable outcome for IOPS on spinning disk, flash storage provides In addition, the right flash solution will support converged data sub-millisecond latency. Flash arrays can perform more IOPS with protection, providing seamless integration and data movement lower latency than comparable disk-based systems. That’s one of between primary and backup storage. the key reasons solid-state is becoming the go-to storage solution for high performance workloads. The performance benefits of flash storage have been well known to the industry for a long time, but until recently the cost of flash systems was prohibitive for all but the most demanding applications. Now the price of flash is falling. At a current rate of $2 per GB of usable storage Flash arrays can provide up to a 10X or less, all-flash solutions are cost competitive with Tier-1 spinning disk “performance boost over comparable systems. spinning disk arrays while taking up 90% Flash storage provides a cost-effective and efficient means to boost less floor space, all at a price point per application performance while maintaining the resiliency and advanced data services available from Tier-1 spinning disk. As with GB comparable to spinning disk. all technology advances, applications and user expectations have changed in response to this capability. Companies are moving to ” flash storage to keep up with these expectations, but that’s only part While speed is a key characteristic of flash storage, the right flash of the story. storage system will also provide: Flash and Your Storage Network • Enterprise-class reliability – mission-critical workloads require 99.9999% availability Migrating to flash addresses performance of the storage system itself, but I/O latency can come into your storage network (SAN) at several • Modern scale – scalability into the 100s of terabytes points including the host server, the host adapter (HBA), network switches, cables, and target adapter. The cumulative effect of these latency sources has an impact on application performance.

3 FIGURE 1

Source: Demartek

Latency at the host HBA (the connection between the host server and Can Gen 5 16Gb/s FC reduce FC bottlenecks when the storage network) is of particular concern and can grow rapidly optimizing your SAN for Flash? when IOPS or bandwidth limitations are met. As soon as host HBAs Gen 5 16Gb/s FC provides an increased performance ceiling, reach a saturation point, I/Os begin queuing up on the host, resulting doubling throughput of each SAN component from 8 Gb/s (Gen 4) to in increased latency and a degraded user experience. 16 Gb/s and requiring fewer links to reach your desired bandwidth. This in turn means lower power consumption and less cabling. A common online transaction processing (OLTP) workload can quickly In addition, the higher speed of Gen 5 technology allows fabrics saturate your 4Gb/s or 8Gb/s fiber channel network components to connect with fewer inter-switch links (ISLs), which is especially without fully utilizing all of your compute or storage resources. This helpful in large fabrics. Furthermore, 16Gb/s FC delivers investment leaves you with processing bottlenecks and unused capacity and protection, as it can support legacy 8 Gb/s and 4 Gb/s FC too. prevents you from realizing the full return on your storage investments and service level agreements (SLAs). Gen 5 FC 16Gb/s HBAs also reduce latency to less than half that of Gen 4 equipment. This is accomplished through improvements In migrating to flash, you run the risk of bumping up against the in ASICs, firmware, and chipsets on the adapter. If storage targets limitations of your current SAN – shifting bottlenecks from the storage also support 16Gb/s FC, latency in the low tenths of a millisecond is system to the network. To avoid this, you should consider creating possible. Gen 5 16 Gb/s FC switches and HBAs have been around a complete end-to-end solution that optimizes all components since 2011, but 16 Gb/s FC storage targets have just recently been in the SAN while providing the agility to support a mix of storage introduced into enterprise arrays. environments suited to your IT landscape. In essence, Gen 5 16Gb/s FC allows your infrastructure to exchange a lot of small data pipes for fewer, larger ones. This simplifies management while improving quality of service and return on investment for the entire infrastructure. In addition, 16Gb/s FC can provide some operational A common OLTP workload can quickly advantages when used at both the switch and HBA. Clearlink “saturate your 8Gb/s fiber channel technology can reduce troubleshooting time with advanced diagnostics. Fabric Assigned World Wide Names and Boot LUN can enable rapid network, leaving you with processing server deployment, allowing servers to be added or replaced in minutes bottlenecks and unused capacity. as opposed to hours or days, with no FC fabric reconfiguration required. ” Given the performance characteristics of Gen 5 FC, switching your existing 8Gb/s FC or older FC network to Gen 5 16 Gb/s FC should provide an instant boost in overall performance. It sounds great in theory, but what happens when you put this theory to the test?

4 How does it work in an application environment? “We noted that if we chose to do so, workload intensity could have been In a recent study1, Demartek evaluated the performance of an increased considerably without saturating the Gen 5 16Gb/s FC SAN. all-flash storage system in an end-to-end Gen 5 16Gb/s FC SAN and compared it to an end-to-end 8Gb/s FC environment. The “In our opinion, upgrading Fibre Channel components to Gen 5 16Gb/s methodology was simple: FC has immediate payoff in environments where the rather significant investment in high-performance storage has already been made or is 2 • Create an OLTP workload in an 8Gb/s FC end-to-end configuration planned.”

• Measure bandwidth, IOPS, and latency Test Description It’s important to understand that this test was run against real-world • Replace the 8Gb/s infrastructure with Gen 5 16Gb/s FC with no workloads. Often manufacturers rate equipment using benchmark application, server, or storage device tuning tests that create synthetic workloads that don’t resemble real customer environments. In this test, Demartek ran the TCP Benchmark™ E (TCP-E) to • Measure the resulting differences in performance generate an OLTP workload that simulates something you might actually see in your data center. The findings below show dramatic improvements in read bandwidth, IOPS, and latency at both the host and the array. “The workload employed in this test used a real database (Microsoft SQL Server) with database tables, indexes, etc., performing actual database “A common OLTP workload can saturate 8 Gb/s host FC bandwidth transactions. When using real database workloads, I/O rates will vary without fully utilizing all of the compute or storage resources. as the workload progresses because the database performs operations By replacing the 8 Gb/s FC components with 16 Gb/s FC on the that consume varying amounts of CPU and memory resources in addition [storage] array, FC switch, and on the host HBAs, we saw storage to I/O resources. These results more closely resemble a real customer I/O bandwidth and IOPs increase by 35% without making any environment. application-level changes... Latency improved by a factor of 2.5X or better, remaining significantly under a millisecond consistently. “Our goal was to find a workload intensity that would just saturate a dual port 8 Gb/s FC host HBA without driving latency up significantly…This workload was executed on both storage and SAN configurations.3” FIGURE 2

Source: HP

1 Evaluation Report: All-Flash HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage System and Generation 5 (Gen 5) 16 Gb/s Fibre Channel, Demartek, March 2015 (published 3/30/2015) 2-3 Ibid.

5 Looking at the Data Bandwidth and IOPS also showed marked improvements.

“With no modification or tuning to the workload, the 8Gb/s FC infrastructure was replaced with Gen 5 16 Gb/s FC storage targets, We see significant latency reduction at [HBAs and switches]. Total bandwidth immediately improved by 35%. “ both ends of the SAN by upgrading the IOPS showed similar improvement, as expected. ” end-to-end FC infrastructure. Demartek Recommendations – Demartek ” “For the greatest performance gains across the board, we recommend upgrading older SANs to Gen 5 16 Gb/s FC, particularly where a significant investment in flash storage has been made. This In the Demartek test, switching to 16 Gb/s FC showed immediate is the best way to fully realize the return on investment made in high improvements in latency at both the host and array. Host latency performance storage and servers. However, a full SAN upgrade dropped from over a millisecond to below half a millisecond – a 2.5X may not be an option in some environments for different reasons, improvement. The effect was even greater on the array, with latency frequently related to expense or logistics. If a [partial] upgrade is the reduced by a factor of 4. only option, there are several considerations to keep in mind.

“Given this impressive decrease in latency accompanying a significant “Without first upgrading switching to Gen 5 16 Gb/s FC, any upgrades increase in the amount of work [34% increase in IOPS and 35% increase to host and array initiators and targets will have limited benefits, in bandwidth], it is apparent that the 8 Gb/s FC technology was impeding since no port will be able to deliver 16 Gb/s through an 8 Gb/s switch. optimal performance of the OLTP workload to the point of introducing Fibre Channel is backward compatible to the prior two generations, latency into the system. Examining the array-side data shows an even meaning new switches can be added to existing SANs, and ports can greater improvement… latency is reduced by a factor of 4.” be gradually migrated to them.

FIGURE 3

Source: HP

4 Ibid.

6 “The testing data showed that latency improvements seen on the array after upgrading to Gen 5 FC were not fully realized at the server. This suggests that upgrading server HBAs over storage targets will provide a more immediate gain in performance. This will also increase the bandwidth and IOPS potential from the host (and reduce latency from I/O queuing).”5

The combination of enterprise-class, all-flash arrays combined with Gen 5 16 Gb/s FC SAN infrastructure provides the best opportunity to uncover the true performance potential of your flash storage solution and maximize your return on investment.

Source: HP

5 Ibid. See also Evaluation Report: HP StoreFabric SN1100E 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA and Brocade 16Gb Fibre Channel Performance, Demartek, December 2014 (published 12/3/2014)

7 From the Gartner Files: Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays

Solid-state arrays provide performance Considering the potentially disruptive nature Strengths levels an order of magnitude faster than of SSAs on the general-purpose external disk-based storage arrays at competitive controller-based (ECB) disk storage market, • The Invicta series offers customers the prices per GB, enabled by in-line data Gartner has elected to report only on flexibility to start small, and then cost- reduction and lower-cost flash memory. This vendors that qualify as an SSA vendor. We effectively scale based on workload Magic Quadrant will help IT leaders better do not consider solid-state drive (SSD)-only characteristics. understand SSA vendors’ positioning. general-purpose disk array configurations in this research. To meet these inclusion • Cisco UCS customers benefit from Invicta’s Strategic Planning Assumptions criteria, SSA vendors must have a dedicated close integration with UCS Director and By 2019, the SSA market is expected to grow model and name, generally available by 31 UCS Fabric Interconnects. approximately five times in revenue from the December 2014, and the product cannot be current market size of $1.43 billion in 2014. configured with hard-disk drives (HDDs) at • Deduplication is offered as an add-on any time. These systems typically (but not feature, allowing customers to trade off By 2017, the total number of vendors will always) include an OS and data management data reduction for performance based on increase by 50%, but 20% of the current software optimized for solid-state technology. specific application requirements. vendors will exit the market. Magic Quadrant Cautions By 2020, the percentage of data centers that A vendor’s position on the Magic Quadrant will use only SSAs for primary data, instead should not be equated with its product’s • There hasn’t been much innovation and of hybrid arrays, will increase from 0% today attractiveness or suitability for every client’s sales execution from Cisco after the to 25%. requirements. If the solutions better fit Whiptail acquisition, casting a shadow on your needs, have the appropriate support Invicta’s future. Market Definition/Description capabilities and are attractively priced, then • The attrition in the Whiptail organization This document was revised on 25 June it is perfectly acceptable to acquire solutions and the lack of focus on SSAs from Cisco 2015. The document you are viewing is the from vendors that are not in the Leaders are negatively impacting implementation corrected version. For more information, see quadrant. and technical support services. the Corrections page on gartner.com. Vendor Strengths and Cautions • Pricing is still on an a la carte basis, This Magic Quadrant covers solid-state Cisco charging for individual data services such array (SSA) vendors that offer dedicated Cisco entered the SSA market through the as deduplication and replication, while SSA product lines positioned and marketed acquisition of Whiptail in 2013. In 2014, Cisco most other vendors are gravitating toward with specific model numbers, which cannot briefly halted the shipping of solid-state arrays unified, all-inclusive base pricing. be used as, upgraded or converted to due to quality issues. After re-engineering general-purpose or hybrid storage arrays. efforts that involved transitioning from white- For specific SSA product analysis, please see label hardware to Unified Computing System the companion note “Critical Capabilities for (UCS) hardware design and fixing critical Solid State Arrays.” software bugs, the Cisco UCS Invicta series was relaunched in January 2015, having been closely integrated with UCS fabric and management platforms. Cisco now offers two products — UCS Invicta Appliance and the UCS Invicta Scaling System — segmenting the market based on customer needs for scalability and performance. The Invicta Appliance is a 2U appliance that can scale up to 24TB, while the Invicta Scaling System can scale up to six nodes for a maximum raw capacity of 144TB.

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FIGURE 1 Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays

Source: Gartner (June 2015)

9 EMC • XtremIO provides global deduplication, Cautions EMC offers two SSA products on the market: but it does not have detailed data XtremIO and the VNX-F; however, EMC leads reduction reporting by logical unit number • Eternus DX200F is a relatively new with XtremIO as its strategic SSA offering. (LUN) or volume; data reduction reporting product, with few public references and XtremIO was purpose-built as a scale-out is only available at the X-Brick or cluster case studies. SSA. It is the only EMC offering with in-line level. data reduction, and it was designed from • The product has no in-line data reduction inception to be simple to administer and • Extra products such as RecoverPoint and features, such as deduplication and operate. As it did with the disruptive upgrade VPLEX often need to be purchased to compression. in September 2014 that resulted in several provide high availability and replication, disgruntled customers during the 2.4 to 3.0 at extra cost and administration • Fujitsu has limited sales and support migration, EMC is able to quickly address complexity. coverage in the Americas. upgrade issues and reduce migration outages. Overall, EMC has been able to Fujitsu HP successfully sell and market XtremIO due to With the Eternus DX200F becoming available HP continues to invest in its solid-state its vast sales force, channel bandwidth and in June 2014, Fujitsu is a latecomer to the array portfolio through enhancements in its execution prowess. The XtremIO product SSA marketplace as it took a long time for existing 3PAR StoreServ 7450c product, as has gone through several software updates it to decide whether to stay with a hybrid well as the introduction of a cost-effective, in the past year, and EMC has additional general-purpose array product strategy entry-level solution: the 3PAR StoreServ changes in the pipeline to improve reliability, containing tiers of SSDs and HDDs, or to 7200c All-Flash Array. The 3PAR hardware performance and data protection. have an additional dedicated SSA offering. architecture and management platform Fujitsu’s short-term tactics are to resell the lends itself well to efficient use of underlying Strengths Violin Memory SSA when customers require SSD technology, and to quality of service larger capacity SSAs, and the DX200F when (QoS), which continues to improve. The SSA • EMC has highly responsive sales and smaller capacities are required. This will product portfolio is robust and excels in marketing organizations, which publicly continue until Fujitsu has its own larger key functionality like thin provisioning and and very successfully articulate XtremIO capacity offerings and data reduction ability. resiliency; however, it still lacks other key roadmaps, problems, fixes and issues. Fujitsu also offers an inclusive software features such as compression. HP’s scale-out licensing method, which makes it quicker approach and lower entry point in the market • EMC provides existing customers with and simpler for customers to purchase all was supported by a regalvanized sales and higher-than-competitor discounts, and features and expand the array with fewer marketing campaign that paid dividends for advantageous XtremIO purchase terms for hidden and upgrade costs. HP during 2H14, with substantial revenue warranty and maintenance. recognition and market share gain. HP’s Strengths sales and channel execution was supported • EMC has an extremely capable in-house by an aggressive pricing campaign that global support and service organization • The product offers proven synchronous points back to the efficiency of HP’s hardware that is responsive with upgrade equipment and asynchronous replication features architecture. when customer have to perform upgrades based on the DX array software. and replacements. • There is common administration and Cautions configuration software between all disk and solid-state arrays. • XtremIO’s cadence of fixes and software upgrades has been, and will continue to • High-availability clustering provides quick be, overwhelming for many customers as failover and synchronization between the vendor strives to achieve feature parity systems. or exceed the capabilities of competitors.

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Strengths Huawei Cautions Huawei’s SSA product line consists of the • Proven reliability, features and scale OceanStor Dorado5100 and Dorado2100 G2 • Huawei’s support capabilities outside within the 3PAR architecture with a single, series, which are second generation, and of China are weak, effecting resolution familiar platform appeals to HP’s existing the recently introduced OceanStor 18800F. times for complex problems. general-purpose storage array customer Because it is headquartered in China, base. Huawei derives more than half of its revenue • Innovation at the software layer from Asia/Pacific customers, but has had continues to lag behind hardware-layer • Given its efficient use of SSD capacity, HP severe brand perception and execution enhancements. can sustainably offer very aggressive challenges in the U.S. Huawei relies on its pricing that can rival nearly all vendors. direct sales force to generate a majority of its • When Huawei introduces data reduction SSA sales, although channel development capabilities in its product line, customers • HP has demonstrated that its sales and efforts are starting to pay off in Asia (outside need to be prepared to cope with a channel bandwidth can quickly scale to of China), EMEA and South America. Huawei disruptive upgrade. attract, address and react quickly to the has an aggressive sales approach, offering needs of a growing, global installed base. steep discounts off the list price for qualified IBM enterprise customers. From an engineering IBM understands the changing direction of Cautions perspective, Huawei has significant R&D the storage array market, evidenced by its investments in flash, with deep vertical aggressive investments in its SSA products • Full in-line deduplication effectiveness is integration through design and development and a renewed sales focus. IBM led and relatively unproven, and compression is of application-specific integrated circuit outgrew the market in terms of shipments; currently unavailable. (ASIC)-based SSD controllers and SSDs. however, it did not grow as fast as the market in revenue. While this indicates an • HP offers a cost-effective alternative; Strengths aggressive pricing strategy and successfully however, a demonstrable ROI is needed selling into its installed base, it also signifies to distinguish that its product functionality • Huawei has multiple hybrid and solid- the need to add more premium data and capability can rival other feature-rich state product lines aimed at common management services as it continues to offerings. customer workloads across block, file expand in and outside of its customer base. and object protocols with a common • HP’s reporting and analytical features management interface. IBM procures NAND components, which continue to evolve, but need further it optimizes through its own engineering improvement. • It offers differentiated performance and testing. These efforts were further improvements and pricing flexibility due enhanced via a strategic NAND relationship to its vertically integrated design and announcement with Micron Technology engineering enhancements. that allowed IBM to make performance and reliability improvements. This latest • Huawei is striving to create announcement coincides with the debut transparency around its performance of IBM FlashSystem V9000 and IBM through participation in standardized FlashSystem 900, which are updates to IBM benchmarking tests. FlashSystem V840 and IBM FlashSystem 840. FlashSystem V840 is based on IBM Spectrum Virtualize software and the underlying FlashSystem hardware, which provides the all-flash storage capacity. The Spectrum Virtualize software, which is the new name for the SAN Volume Controller (SVC) software component, provides data services and virtualization capabilities.

11 Strengths Kaminario Cautions Kaminario is one of the more tested SSA • IBM has a strong heritage in providing a startups. Delivering its products for more • Kaminario has limited marketing ability high-performance SSA with the ability to than four years, it is now on its fifth- to gain mind share, which is important adapt to changing storage technologies. generation product. The Kaminario K2 in order to expand its sales channel architecture is a mature and proven platform bandwidth and long-term viability. • IBM has a strategic supplier NAND offering flexible deployment through a scale- relationship for flash cost and quality up or scale-out approach. It has versatile • Sales and support is focused on the U.S. optimization, which provides security of selectable data reduction options at the and Europe, so buyers outside these supply for its customers. LUN level. Array design decisions provide geographies should understand support Kaminario with the ability to leverage ramifications and Kaminario’s ability to • There is a consistent investment and more cost-effective SSD technology with scale support. cadence of additional hardware little compromise. The company promotes development and software product transparency with its business programs • Kaminario’s interoperability with updates. and public benchmarks. Kaminario has independent software vendors (ISVs) trails improved its awareness with creative competitors in the depth of integration Cautions marketing efforts, which paid off in 2014 as with VMware, Microsoft and OpenStack it more than doubled its sales. After raising hypervisor and cloud management APIs. • IBM Spectrum Virtualize software has $68 million between December 2014 and the majority of its software used in many February 2015, Kaminario will now need NetApp other IBM storage products, which implies to raise its mind share further in order to NetApp was a late entrant into the SSA software, update and fix dependencies, attract leading channel partners, grow market, with a diverse portfolio consisting of plus resource prioritization challenges. internationally and, ultimately, continue to three distinct products. While its execution grow sales. is consistent, it has grown at a slower rate • No native deduplication features are than the market. The EF-Series (based on offered, but they can be provided by IBM Strengths the hybrid E-Series) remains the flagship partners — such as Atlantis Computing product, and is focused on workloads that and Permabit — at extra cost and • Kaminario has a scale-up/scale-out do not need data reduction capabilities. The complexity. architecture with rich features that has All-Flash FAS, productized during June 2014, demonstrated strong performance is aimed at the traditional fabric-attached • Leveraging IBM Spectrum Virtualize and reliability over its past five product storage (FAS) customers who would like to software that sits in the data path generations. preserve their investments in that platform introduces additional latency, rack but need more robust performance than space requirements and potential • Kaminario utilizes flexible storage what hybrid arrays can offer. FlashRay is high-availability challenges, and more efficiency and resiliency technologies to planned as NetApp’s purpose-built product elements to service, when compared to maximize cost structure that enables its for solid-state media, although it is still in FlashSystem 840. bold guarantee program for an average limited availability status. Given the overlap of $2/GB usable capacity. between the three different products and the complexity that arises from that overlap, • With its recent funding raise from NetApp tries to segment and qualify December 2014, Kaminario continues customer workloads to the appropriate to invest in execution through global product through workload analysis tools, channel expansion. which channel partners and its internal sales force can leverage. Our conclusion is that, in the long term, the FAS SSA will be the strategic product for NetApp and will incorporate elements of FlashRay.

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Strengths Nimbus Data Pure Storage Nimbus Data had the foresight to see the Pure Storage has executed well on its • Both the EF-Series and FAS series are advantages of SSA, and so was one of the vision of software-led solid-state arrays mature products that have a large early entrants into the SSA market. However, that leverage off-the-shelf cost-effective installed base, offering existing customers it has not grown as fast as the market. The hardware components providing cost- platform continuity and management vendor specializes in and concentrates on effective SSAs. Through creative marketing familiarity. selling to large customers. The vendor’s programs and targeted competitive management structure is lean, and it often campaigns, it has managed to achieve • NetApp has continued to deliver does not have the resources to work within high customer awareness and challenge performance enhancements to the or expand out of its existing installed base. the large storage behemoths by making EF-Series that include newer CPUs and Many customers who approach Nimbus Data it easy for customers to buy and own its faster host interfaces (12Gb SAS and 56Gb and request information, offers, quotations products. This is a testament to Pure’s InfiniBand, in addition to 16Gb FC and and participation in RFIs and RFPs do not mature and established FA-400 Series, 10Gb iSCSI). receive an answer. Due to lack of resources which continues to deliver capable data and external funding to expand, its market management services and proven data • All-Flash FAS is now available as part of share has been declining. reduction implementation while based on the FlexPod reference architecture, which consumer-grade SSD technology. Pure has has a strong momentum having achieved Strengths done this with an aggressive go-to-market $3 billion in sales since its inception in channel strategy, and has maintained high 2010. • Nimbus Data has wide feature and unified customer satisfaction levels as it has scaled block and file protocol support, plus the business. Pure’s culture and innovation Cautions InfiniBand. has been able to attract high-quality personnel as it continues to expand across • There is significant overlap in NetApp’s • The product performs well in high- geographies. Gartner expects that Pure solid-state array product portfolio, with performance, bandwidth and latency- Storage will be publicly traded within the three different products causing confusion sensitive environments. next 12 months. among customers about sustainable innovation and long-term viability of each • Nimbus Data has a broad product Strengths of these products. portfolio of array capacities that boasts cost-effective price points given the usage • Pure Storage demonstrates that it • FlashRay, which was announced in of consumer-grade flash technology. understands customer pain points 2014 — but is still in limited availability through new creative pricing and as a single-controller array with several Cautions guarantee programs around controller missing software functionalities — raises upgrades, SSD warranties and questions about the ability of NetApp to • The vendor has a highly centralized top- maintenance pricing. be competitive amid rapid innovation from down management approach, and this competitors. narrow executive hierarchy challenges • Pure is moving from being a software- decision making and could be problematic orientated vendor using commodity SSDs • The lack of data reduction capabilities for long-term viability. to being more of a hardware-engineering limits the appeal of EF-Series in server organization that designs and tunes its virtualization, virtual desktop infrastructure • The organization has a relatively small own storage array subsystem. (VDI) and online transaction processing sales and support staff, which may not (OLTP) consolidation use cases. scale, especially if outside of the select • The vendor has gained customer trust by geographic regions where Nimbus Data demonstrating it is reliable, stable and currently has support. easy to work with.

• Nimbus Data lacks financial and organizational transparency and public references.

13 Cautions Strengths Tegile Founded in 2010, Tegile is a relatively new • As a privately held and fast-growing • SolidFire exhibits growing momentum in entrant in the SSA market. Over a short company, there continues to be lack of the enterprise segment through strong period of time, it has achieved good market transparency around its financial metrics VMware and OpenStack integration, and adoption of the T3800, which only became such as revenue growth, cash burn rate through the introduction of cost-effective available in June 2014. Customers should and profitability. entry-level models, such as SF2405. exploit Tegile’s IntelliCare guarantees around price, availability and upgrades. The Tegile • The Pure Storage FA-400 series product • SolidFire offers flexible deployment T3600 through T3800 SSAs are built on the has limited scalability when compared to models that include all software-inclusive same platform as the hybrid T3100 through competitive products. appliances, prevalidated reference T3400 storage arrays, and, therefore, all have architectures with technology partners, the same administration and configuration • Given the rapid revenue growth that it is and a software-only option aimed at graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The reuse experiencing, Pure Storage has its task hyper-scale cloud providers. of the same proven software used in the cut out in its ability to grow its workforce, hybrid arrays, and a ZFS-based architecture while simultaneously preserving its core • SolidFire’s QoS, multitenancy, API-based that has been optimized and rewritten, culture and practices as it proceeds storage automation and scale-out enables Tegile to offer a mature platform. toward an IPO. capabilities make it an attractive storage Tegile provides list price and discount platform for diverse storage consolidation percentage transparency on its purchase SolidFire and private cloud workloads. offers. Complementing this openness, it also SolidFire’s initial focus was on technology includes all software features in the base companies and service providers offering Cautions price of the product; therefore, customers do high-performance infrastructure as a not have to purchase extra licenses as they service (IaaS) and SaaS. Since early 2014, • SolidFire’s success in the market expand the array. Tegile sells its products via SolidFire increased its focus on enterprise is predicated on rapid evolution of the channel rather than direct, and so far, this customers through a reseller agreement multitenant private clouds, which have indirect go-to-market business model has (with Dell) and channel programs targeting been plagued by technology immaturity been successful. multitenant private cloud workloads. and cultural challenges in the enterprise. Recent enhancements include competitive Strengths entry-level offerings (SF2405); Element X, • SolidFire’s breadth of reference a software-only version of the SolidFire implementations, depth of ISV • Tegile has a simple product portfolio, product targeted at hyperscale customers; partnerships and strength of a presales which leverages the same hardware, and ActiveIQ, a SaaS-based analytics and team focused on enterprise workloads software and management GUI for all reporting platform that delivers proactive continue to trail competitors. SSAs and hybrid storage arrays. support and is available as part of a standard maintenance contract. In addition, • SolidFire has limited sales, service and • Broad block and file protocol support SolidFire offers a platform compatibility support personnel outside of the U.S., makes Tegile one of the few unified SSA guarantee, ensuring that all future software Japan, Korea, Singapore, Australia and offerings. and hardware releases will interoperate Western Europe. with existing infrastructure. Customers are • The vendor offers selectable data allowed to perform their own software and reduction, and detailed instrumentation hardware upgrades, which shows a robust and data reduction reporting on a storage and resilient design. SolidFire also offers a pool and LUN level. competitive unlimited drive wear guarantee and simple, all-inclusive pricing.

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Cautions Strengths Vendors Added and Dropped We review and adjust our inclusion criteria • Tegile has limited market traction and • Violin Memory’s purpose-built hardware for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes presence outside North America and delivers strong performance, density as markets change. As a result of these Western Europe. and a price that appeals to demanding adjustments, the mix of vendors in any customers for low-latency workloads. Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may • Tegile exhibits a lack of enterprise-focused change over time. A vendor’s appearance channel partners and an overall limited • Violin Memory has demonstrated agility in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one market awareness. and resilience to accelerate both its year and not the next does not necessarily hardware and software development indicate that we have changed our opinion • Extra products need to be purchased if efforts in order to swiftly integrate its data of that vendor. It may be a reflection of synchronous replication is required; only management software into its 7000 series. a change in the market and, therefore, asynchronous replication is available today. changed evaluation criteria, or of a change • The vendor offers relatively fast product of focus by that vendor. Violin Memory transition to a new product line, with more Violin Memory has traveled a turbulent comprehensive software features in the Added Concerto operating system. path over the past few years, as a failed Fujitsu and Tegile IPO precipitated a complete overhaul of the Cautions executive and sales teams. In early 2014, Violin Dropped Memory emerged under a new executive team Skyera was purchased by Western Digital that has endeavored to revitalize the company. • Violin Memory’s software abilities and in December 2014, but failed to meet our Violin continues to leverage its component implementation need to be refined and revenue inclusion criteria. hardware approach, but it re-engineered a improved for ease of use. more resilient module on a more advanced Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria flash memory process through its strong • The vendor has considerable relationship with flash memory maker Toshiba. concentration among a small group of To be included in the Magic Quadrant for customers, and while it has diversified SSAs, a vendor must: Most importantly, Violin has promoted a over the past quarters, it still deserves more cohesive data management software to be monitored closely to ensure future • Offer a self-contained, solid-state-only approach that debuted in early 2015 in its 7300 company stability. system that has a dedicated model name and 7700 product lines. However, these are and model number (see Note 1). new to the market and have limited customer • Violin could be an acquisition target validation compared to the prior series. The should its data management software not • Have a solid-state-only system. It must advancements in data management software resonate well with existing customers, and be initially sold with 100% solid-state are based mostly upon optimization and if its financial and profitability targets are technology and cannot be reconfigured, redevelopment of intellectual property licensed not achieved by 2016. expanded or upgraded at any point from FalconStor. With a more comprehensive with any form of HDD within expansion and integrated data management software trays via any vendor’s special upgrade, suite, many existing customers have been specific customer customization or vendor carefully testing and delaying purchases to the product exclusion process into a hybrid or detriment of Violin’s customer revenue growth. general-purpose SSD and HDD storage Now that Violin is focusing aggressively array. on selling its more competitive 7000 series products, its success will be dependent upon the merits of its software and its ability to attract quality channel partners in order to achieve its revenue growth targets.

15 • Sell its product as a stand-alone product, While the SSA Magic Quadrant represents Evaluation Criteria without the requirement to bundle it with vendors whose dedicated systems meet Ability to Execute other vendors’ storage products in order our inclusion criteria, ultimately, it is the We analyze the vendor’s capabilities across to be implemented in production. application workload that governs which broad business functions. Vendors that solutions you should consider, regardless have expanded their products across a • The product and a service capability of any criteria. wider range of use cases and applications, must be available in at least two of the improved their service and support following markets — Asia/Pacific, EMEA, Other vendors and products were capabilities, and focused on improving North America and South America — via considered for the Magic Quadrant but mission-critical applications will be more direct or channel sales. Availability does did not meet the inclusion criteria, despite highly rated in the Magic Quadrant analysis. not include hybrid (SSD, HDD) storage offering SSD-only configuration options to Ability to Execute reflects the market arrays. existing products. These vendors and/or conditions and, to a large degree, it is our specific products may warrant investigation analysis and interpretation of what we hear • Provide at least five references that based on your application workload needs from the market. Our focus is assessing Gartner can interview. There must be for their SSD-only offerings: how a vendor participates in the day-to-day at least one client reference from Asia/ activities of the market. Pacific, EMEA, North America and South • American Megatrends (AMI) StorTrends America, or the two geographies within 3600i Product or Service evaluates the capabilities which the vendor has a presence. of the products or solutions offered to the • Dell Compellent Storage solutions market. Key items to be considered for the • Provide an enterprise-class support SSA market are how well the products and/or and maintenance service, offering 24/7 • EMC VMAX services address enterprise use-case needs, customer support (including phone the critical capabilities of the product and the support). This can be provided via • Fusion-io ION (acquired by SanDisk) breadth of product and/or solutions. other service organizations or channel partners. • Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) VM Overall Viability includes an assessment of the organization’s financial health, the • Have established notable market • IBM DS8000 financial and practical success of the presence as demonstrated by the business unit, and the likelihood that the amount of PBs sold, number of clients or • NEC A5000 individual business unit will continue to invest significant revenue. in the product, offer the product and advance • NetApp FAS (excluding All-Flash FAS) the state of the art in the organization’s The SSAs evaluated in this research include product portfolio. scale-up, scale-out and unified storage • Oracle ZFS architectures. Because these arrays Sales Execution/Pricing looks at the vendor’s have different availability characteristics, • X-IO ISE 800 Series capabilities in all presales activities and performance profiles, scalability, ecosystem the structure that supports them. This support, pricing and warranties, they includes deal management, pricing and enable users to tailor solutions against negotiation, presales support and the overall operational needs, planned new application effectiveness of the sales channel. deployments, and forecast growth rates and asset management strategies.

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Market Responsiveness/Record focuses Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria Marketing Strategy relates to what vendor on the vendor’s capability to respond, solution message is described, how that change direction, be flexible and achieve Evaluation Criteria Weighting message is communicated, what vehicles competitive success as opportunities develop, are used to effectively deliver it, and how Product or Service High competitors act, customer needs evolve well the buying public resonates with and and market dynamics change. This criterion Overall Viability High remembers the message. In a market also considers the provider’s history of Sales Execution/Pricing Medium where many vendors and/or products can responsiveness. sound the same, or sometimes not even be Market Responsiveness/ High known, message differentiation and overall Record Marketing Execution reflects unaided awareness are vital. awareness (that is, Gartner end users Marketing Execution Medium mentioned the vendor without being Customer Experience High Sales Strategy considers the strategy for prompted) and a vendor’s ability to be Operations Medium selling products that uses the appropriate considered by the marketplace. Vendor network of direct and indirect sales, references, Gartner inquiries and end-user Source: Gartner (June 2015) marketing, service and communication client search analytics results are factored affiliates that extend the scope and depth of in as a demonstration of vendor awareness Completeness of Vision market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, and interest. Completeness of Vision distills a vendor’s services and the customer base. view of the future, the direction of the Customer Experience looks at a vendor’s market and the vendor’s role in shaping that Offering (Product) Strategy looks at a capability to deal with postsales issues. market. We expect the vendor’s vision to be vendor’s product roadmap and architecture, Because of the specialized nature of the compatible with our view of the market’s which we map against our view of cloud storage market and the mission-critical evolution. A vendor’s vision of the evolution enterprise requirements. We expect product nature of many of the storage environments, of the data center and the expanding role of direction to focus on catering to emerging vendors are expected to escalate and SSAs are important criteria. In contrast with enterprise use cases for solid-state arrays. respond to issues in a timely fashion with how we measure Ability to Execute criteria, dedicated and specialized resources, and the rating for Completeness of Vision is based Business Model assesses a vendor’s to have relevant detailed expertise. Another on direct vendor interactions, and on our approach to the market. Does the vendor consideration is a vendor’s ability to deal analysis of the vendor’s view of the future. have an approach that enables it to scale with increasing global demands. Additional the elements of its business (for example, support tools and programs are indications of Market Understanding looks at the development, sales/distribution and a maturing approach to the market. technology provider’s capability to manufacturing) cost-effectively, from understand buyers’ needs, and to translate startup to maturity? Does the vendor Operations considers the ability of those needs into an evolving roadmap of understand how to leverage key assets the organization to meet its goals and products and services. Vendors must show to grow profitably? Can it gain additional commitments. Factors include the quality the highest degree of vision, listen to and revenue by charging separately for optional, of the organizational structure, including understand buyers’ wants and needs, and high-value features? Other key attributes in skills, experiences, programs, systems and can shape or enhance those wants and this market are reflected in how the vendor other vehicles that enable the organization needs with their added vision. uses partnerships to increase sales. The to operate effectively and efficiently on an ability to build strong partnerships with a ongoing basis. broad range of technology partners and associated system integrators demonstrates leadership.

17 Vertical/Industry Strategy measures the Quadrant Descriptions Niche Players vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills Leaders Vendors in the Niche Players quadrant and offerings to meet the specific needs Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have the often excel by focusing on specific market of individual market segments, including highest scores for their Ability to Execute or vertical segments that are generally vertical markets. and Completeness of Vision. A vendor underpenetrated by the larger SSA vendors. in the Leaders quadrant has the market This quadrant may also include vendors that Innovation measures a vendor’s ability share, credibility, and marketing and are ramping up their SSA efforts, or larger to move the market into new solution sales capabilities needed to drive the vendors having difficulty in developing and areas, and to define and deliver new acceptance of new technologies. These executing upon their vision. technologies. In the SSA market, innovation vendors demonstrate a clear understanding is key to meeting rapidly expanding of market needs; they are innovators and Context requirements and to keeping ahead of thought leaders; and they have well- new (and often more-agile) competitors. This Magic Quadrant represents vendors articulated plans that customers and that sell into the enterprise end-user market prospects can use when designing their Geographic Strategy measures the with specific branded SSAs. An insatiable storage infrastructures and strategies. In vendor’s ability to direct resources, skills demand for storage also demands a addition, they have a presence in all four and offerings to meet the specific needs of more capable high-performance tier that major geographical regions, consistent geographies outside the “home” or native can deliver low-latency storage more financial performance and broad platform geography, either directly or through reliably in order to create tangible benefits. support. partners, channels and subsidiaries As high-performance storage demand as appropriate for that geography and explodes, it will require even more storage Challengers market. administration, emphasizing the perpetual Vendors in the Challengers quadrant need for storage efficiency, resiliency and Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation participate in the SSA market and execute manageability to counter this trend. Criteria well enough to be a serious threat to vendors in the Leaders quadrant. They Market Overview Evaluation Criteria Weighting have strong products, as well as sufficient Demand for SSAs continues to exceed Market Understanding High credible market position and resources market expectations. A few customers are to sustain continued growth. Financial moving to all-flash and SSA data centers for Marketing Strategy Medium viability is not an issue for vendors in the primary storage when the data reduction Sales Strategy Medium Challengers quadrant, but they lack the ratio makes the SSA’s capacity utilization Offering (Product) Strategy High size and influence of vendors in the Leaders competitive with HDD arrays or hybrid arrays. quadrant. This high adoption rate is due not only to Business Model High the hard requirements, such as increases in Vertical/Industry Strategy Low Visionaries productivity, reduced environmental footprint Innovation High A vendor in the Visionaries quadrant and storage efficiency, but also to the desire Geographic Strategy Medium delivers innovative products that address for a new storage technology and its order- operationally or financially important end- of-magnitude improvement in performance. Source: Gartner (June 2015) user problems at a broad scale, but has Even though many do not need it, if the desire not demonstrated the ability to capture is sufficient, the need will be justified. From market share or sustainable profitability. an empirical perspective, SSA success is also Visionary vendors are frequently privately due to historic stagnation and inability of held companies and acquisition targets hard-disk-drive-based storage to increase for larger, established companies. The performance in terms of latency compared to likelihood of acquisition often reduces the the increase in CPU performance. Similarly, risks associated with installing their systems. the reduced latency of solid-state arrays

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has enabled the creation of data reduction customer choice, productivity, simpler Note 1 features, which provide higher storage and more transparent purchasing, and Product Feature Qualification utilization rates, reduce writes and improve ownership costs are propelling this market Product features considered for inclusion cost-effectiveness. The advent of these to very high growth rates. For example, must have been in general availability by factors has led to the continuing high rate of five-year SSD media guarantees, all-inclusive 31 December 2014 to be considered in the adoption of SSAs, evidenced by the fact that software licensing, and productivity- rather vendors’ product rating. New products lack the SSA market segment more than doubled than engineering-oriented administration sufficient market validation and references. in 2014 compared to 2013, with total market software are common characteristics within revenue for SSAs in 2014 totaling $1.43 billion. the SSA market. These are purchase terms Evaluation Criteria Definitions that all customers should request. SSAs have Ability to Execute Due to commoditization, competition is matured to levels competitive with general- increasing, which in turn accelerates the purpose storage arrays in all but for the Product/Service: Core goods and services rate of change in the wider storage array highest scaling in raw capacity. Compared offered by the vendor for the defined market. market. Therefore, compared to previous to 2014, the preferred connection protocol is This includes current product/service years, larger changes are expected in the still Fibre Channel: 61% of all SSAs attached capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and movement of vendors’ positions within the to servers use Fibre Channel, and 14% use so on, whether offered natively or through Magic Quadrant. These changes, which level the iSCSI protocol. Network File System (NFS) OEM agreements/partnerships as defined the playing field, are described in“Traditional and Common Internet File System (CIFS) in the market definition and detailed in the Storage Vendors, Brands and Products Are attach are, therefore, still rarely used. Server subcriteria. No Longer Risk-Free.” The majority of large virtualization, OLTP, and VDI are the top three established vendors have embraced the SSA workloads (in that order), with analytics Overall Viability: Viability includes an SSA market; and, specifically, HP, EMC and moving to fourth place this year. assessment of the overall organization’s Pure Storage have successfully executed at financial health, the financial and practical more than the market rate in revenue terms. Evidence success of the business unit, and the The smaller vendors, such as SolidFire and • More than 2,000 Gartner client inquiries in likelihood that the individual business Kaminario, have also managed to keep 2014 and 1H15 unit will continue investing in the product, up and execute well when using revenue will continue offering the product and will as an indicator. Any vendor that has not • Vendor interviews and product advance the state of the art within the kept up with a 100% growth rate must demonstrations in 2014 and 1H15 organization’s portfolio of products. therefore be lacking in execution or other factors. Nevertheless, some established • Surveys of included vendors Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor’s disk vendors that do not have specific SSA capabilities in all presales activities and the products are still selling their older disk- • Customer reference surveys in 1H15 structure that supports them. This includes based arrays, which have been configured deal management, pricing and negotiation, as hybrid arrays containing SSDs. While this • Dedicated SSA market share process in presales support, and the overall method of leveraging existing array products 2013 and 2014 effectiveness of the sales channel. reduces a vendor’s development costs, it also excludes that vendor from the new SSA • Public information, such as U.S. Securities Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to market, as customers cannot purchase all and Exchange Commission filings, press respond, change direction, be flexible and of the new features that SSAs offer. Other releases, vendor websites and community achieve competitive success as opportunities more subtle factors, such as improved support forums develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor’s history of responsiveness.

19 Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, Completeness of Vision Business Model: The soundness and logic of creativity and efficacy of programs Market Understanding: Ability of the the vendor’s underlying business proposition. designed to deliver the organization’s vendor to understand buyers’ wants and message to influence the market, promote needs and to translate those into products Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor’s the brand and business, increase and services. Vendors that show the highest strategy to direct resources, skills and awareness of the products, and establish degree of vision listen to and understand offerings to meet the specific needs of a positive identification with the product/ buyers’ wants and needs, and can shape or individual market segments, including brand and organization in the minds of enhance those with their added vision. vertical markets. buyers. This “mind share” can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated Innovation: Direct, related, complementary initiatives, thought leadership, word of set of messages consistently communicated and synergistic layouts of resources, mouth and sales activities. throughout the organization and expertise or capital for investment, externalized through the website, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive Customer Experience: Relationships, advertising, customer programs and purposes. products and services/programs that positioning statements. enable clients to be successful with the Geographic Strategy: The vendor’s strategy products evaluated. Specifically, this Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling to direct resources, skills and offerings to includes the ways customers receive products that uses the appropriate network meet the specific needs of geographies technical support or account support. This of direct and indirect sales, marketing, outside the “home” or native geography, can also include ancillary tools, customer service, and communication affiliates that either directly or through partners, channels support programs (and the quality thereof), extend the scope and depth of market reach, and subsidiaries as appropriate for that availability of user groups, service-level skills, expertise, technologies, services and geography and market. agreements and so on. the customer base. Gartner Research G00270206, Valdis Filks, Joseph Unsworth, Arun Chandrasekaran, Operations: The ability of the organization Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor’s 23 June 2015 to meet its goals and commitments. approach to product development and Factors include the quality of the delivery that emphasizes differentiation, organizational structure, including skills, functionality, methodology and feature experiences, programs, systems and other sets as they map to current and future vehicles that enable the organization to requirements. operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.

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