DCIG, LLC Announces Insider's Guide to Private Cloud Storage Arrays
Austin, Texas (PRWEB) July 30, 2013 -- The movement of data into and out of the “Cloud” is no longer hype. As much as the transition of enterprise scale-out storage systems to become the foundation for big data and private storage clouds has happened over the past three years, so has the emergence of solutions to make the cloud mainstream. It comes as no surprise then that industry watchers predict that on-premise storage spend will be reallocated to support cloud initiatives, inclusive of private, public and mix of both, by up to as 30 percent. When you factor in the dollars behind this growth, this translates to be more than $11+ billion.
While companies are jockeying to be the cloud of choice, or cloud solution of choice, many end users are still keeping a critical eye on how best to leverage the cloud for their own purposes. While few would argue the cloud has key benefits, there is still general reluctance to keep key critical applications and corporate data on a public cloud. However, as evidenced by research conducted for the first annual Private Cloud Storage Arrays Buyer’s Guide, there are more than a number of attractive solutions to help end users take advantage of the cloud for private cloud initiatives.
“Private clouds can provide the best of both worlds for end users,” said Jerome Wendt, president and lead analyst, DCIG, LLC. “They can minimize the perceived inherent risks and uncertainties associated with public clouds, while delivering on all the key features such as high availability, easy configuration and management, non-disruptive maintenance and growth as you need it. At the end of the day, IT staff want to take advantage of the latest technological advancements for the cloud without sacrificing time and resources. Our research indicates there are a number of solid private cloud solutions out there to accommodate capacities in the hundreds of terabytes to those that have the potential to scale to exabyte levels and beyond.”
For the latest Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide, DCIG, LLC evaluated 25 offerings from more than a dozen companies. After an initial questionnaire of more than 100 questions was completed, participating companies’ capabilities were assessed from the questionnaire and from information available in the public domain. Solutions were then evaluated for more than 150 characteristics, and weighted after conversations with end-users. After scores were compiled, solutions were assessed and ranked either “Best-in-Class,” “Recommended,” “Excellent,” “Good,” and “Basic” across functionality and capability relative to the overall market landscape. The intent for this Buyer’s Guide, as with all DCIG Buyer’s Guides, is to provide an “at-a-glance” comparison from which end users can select the most appropriate solution for their existing needs. The Buyer’s Guide also provides perspective on how solutions from less well known storage providers compare against established and better known brands.
The DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide Top 10 solutions include (in alphabetical order): Coraid EtherDrive; Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN + FS8600 NAS; EMC Isilon NL-series, S-series, X-series; IBM SONAS; IceWEB 6500 series; NetApp FAS3220, 3250; and Nimbus Data E-class Flash Memory.
The NetApp FAS3250 achieved the “Best-in-Class” ranking among the private cloud storage arrays with its companion FAS3220 close on its heels. In comparison to other private cloud storage arrays evaluated, NetApp’s offering stood out in the following ways:
• NetApp’s ONTAP management software continues to rank among the most feature-rich storage system operating system suites in the industry including:
• Full integration with VMware vSphere
• Support for both deduplication and SSD providing the ability for these arrays to fulfill roles ranging from archive and backup to production support of virtualized applications
The DCIG 2013 Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide achieves the following objectives by:
• Providing an objective, third-party evaluation of currently available private cloud storage arrays
• Evaluating, scores and ranks of private cloud storage arrays from an end-user’s perspective
• Including recommendations on how to best utilize the private storage arrays included in the Buyer’s Guide
• Providing data sheets on all private cloud storage arrays included from 15 different providers so organizations may do a quick comparison of features while having sufficient detail at their fingertips to make an informed decision
• Providing insight into each private cloud storage array’s support for various applications, the robustness of its hardware, its management and replication capabilities, its integration with VMware vShere and what levels of support it offer
“Based on end user feedback received during the creation of this guide, we’ve highlighted where a certain array has VMware vSphere integration capabilities. As we are finding, as many organizations continue to virtualize their environments, the deployment of private clouds becomes particularly appealing. At their core, private clouds can help improve hardware densities, simplify management, reduce overall costs and help with non-disruptive storage operations. At a point in time when many IT staff are tasked to ‘do more with even less,’ the creation of private clouds makes economical sense,” added Wendt. We know this guide will help end users in the decision process of what solutions to short-list for further evaluation.”
Disclosure and Methodology
DCIG identified more than a dozen companies that provide private cloud storage arrays. Each provider was given the opportunity to complete a survey with 100 questions and had to meet the following criteria:
• Be available as an appliance that is available as a single SKU and includes its own hardware and software
• Contains nodes that are independently configurable for processing, storage or both. Each node may include its own processor, power, network interface, and optional disk controllers.
• Supports horizontal scaling of drive capacity and throughput through the addition of nodes.
• Supports the vertical scaling of drive capacity and throughput by way of the independent upgrading of components within individual nodes.
• Supports Ethernet connectivity.
• Supports one or more of the following storage networking protocols: CIFS, NFS, REST/object storage, iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) and/or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), ATA over Ethernet (AoE).
• Supports storage of data across multiple nodes.
• Supports the hot insertion and removal of individual nodes.
• Primarily functions using storage local to the device and/or its direct peers (more than a private cloud storage gateway).
In every case the participating vendor had the opportunity to review and respond to the survey and the information regarding their product displayed on the data sheets included in this Buyer’s Guide.
There were some cases where private cloud storage array providers elected not to respond to DCIG’s inquiries or requests. While those products were still covered in this Buyer’s Guide, the information as presented in this Guide may be incomplete or not represent all of the product’s capabilities. In cases where no responses were received, a notation is included on the bottom of that product’s data sheet indicating that all information displayed is strictly drawn from publicly available sources.
DCIG also spoke to various end-users to get a sense of how they would weight their needs in these various areas. DCIG then evaluated the vendors’ capabilities by applying weighting indicated from our conversations with these end-users. No vendors, whether clients or not, were afforded preferential treatment in the Buyer’s Guide. All research was based upon information provided directly by vendors, research and analysis by DCIG and other publicly available information.
It is worth noting that each Buyer’s Guide is not intended to be a substitute for internal testing. DCIG encourages any organization that is considering the purchase of any solution included in a Buyer’s Guide to do its own in-house testing.
Availability
The DCIG Private Cloud Storage Array Buyer’s Guide is available immediately and may be downloaded for no charge with registration at the following link.
Resources:
DCIG Blog: http://www.dcig.com
About DCIG
DCIG, LLC, is an analyst firm with headquarters in Texas, focusing on archive, backup, retrieval and storage systems. DCIG’s analysts blend analysis, journalism, advertising and marketing into compelling blog entries at http://www.dcig.com as well as journalistic writings with leading trade and industry publications. DCIG’s goal is to provide evaluations and interview content on sponsoring and non-sponsoring companies to consumers, public relations firms, business analysts and other companies. DCIG distributes industry, company and product analysis by way of viral marketing and community building using the burgeoning BLOG infrastructures created worldwide.
Jim Nash, DCIG, http://www.dciginc.com, 952-442-8608, [email protected]
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