Critical Capabilities for General-Purpose, High-End Storage Arrays 20 November 2014 ID:G00263130 Analyst(s): Valdis Filks, Stanley Zaffos, Roger W. Cox VIEW SUMMARY Overview Key Findings With the inclusion of solid-state drives in arrays, performance is no longer a differentiator in its own right, but a scalability enabler that improves operational and financial efficiency by facilitating storage consolidation. Product differentiation is created primarily by differences in architecture, software functionality, data flow, support and microcode quality, rather than components and packaging. Clustered, scale-out, and federated storage architectures and products can achieve levels of scale, performance, reliability, serviceability and availability comparable to traditional, scale-up high-end arrays. The feature sets of high-end storage arrays adapt slowly, and the older systems are incapable of offering data reduction, virtualization and unified protocol support. Recommendations Move beyond technical attributes to include vendor service and support capabilities, as well as acquisition and ownership costs, when making your high-end storage array buying decisions. Don't always use the ingrained, dominant considerations of incumbency, vendor and product reputations when choosing high-end storage solutions. Vary the ratios of SSDs, Serial Attached SCSI and SATA hard-disk drives in the storage array, and limit maximum configurations based on system performance to ensure that SLAs are met during the planned service life of the system. Select disk arrays based on the weighting and criteria created by your IT department to meet your organizational or business objectives, rather than choosing those with the most features or highest overall scores. What You Need to Know Superior nondisruptive serviceability and data protection characterize high-end arrays. They are the visible metrics that differentiate high-end array models from other arrays, although the gap is closing. The software architectures used in many high-end storage arrays can trace their lineage back 20 years or more. Although this maturity delivers high availability and broad ecosystem support, it is also becoming a hindrance with respect to flexibility, adaptability and delays to the introduction of new features, compared with newer designs. Administrative and management interfaces are often more complicated when using arrays involving older software designs, no matter how much the internal structures are hidden or abstracted. The ability of older systems to provide unified storage protocols, data reduction and detailed performance instrumentation is also limited, because the original software was not designed with these capabilities as design objectives. Gartner expects that, within the next four years, arrays using legacy software will need major re- engineering to remain competitive against newer systems that achieve high-end status, as well as hybrid storage solutions that use solid-state technologies to improve performance, storage efficiency and availability. In this research, the aggregated scores among the arrays are minimal. Therefore, clients are advised to look at the individual capabilities that are important to them, rather than the overall score. Because array differentiation has decreased, the real challenge of performing a successful storage infrastructure upgrade is not designing an infrastructure upgrade that works, but designing one that optimizes agility and minimizes total cost of ownership (TCO). Another practical consideration is that choosing a suboptimal solution is likely to have only a moderate impact on deployment and TCO for the following reasons: Product advantages are usually short-lived and temporary. Gartner refers to this phenomenon as the "compression of product differentiation." Most clients report that differences in management and monitoring tools, as well as ecosystem support among various vendors' offerings, are not enough to change staffing requirements. Storage TCO, although growing, still accounts for less than 10% (6.5% in 2013) of most IT budgets. NOTE 1 Z/OS SUPPORT This research compares storage arrays that support z/OS mainframe environments with arrays that do not. This difference in the presence or absence of z/OS support is taken into account only in the array ecosystem ratings, where it contributes positively to arrays supporting z/OS, and has no influence on arrays not supporting z/OS. It has no influence on other ratings or the rating weights used in the tool. CRITICAL CAPABILITIES METHODOLOGY This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products or services. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance for specific product or service use cases. Next, products/services are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical capabilities for each use case is then calculated for each product/service. "Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate products/services in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition decisions. In defining the product/service category for evaluation, the analyst first identifies the leading uses for the products/services in this market. What needs are end- users looking to fulfill, when considering products/services in this market? Use cases should match common client deployment scenarios. These distinct client scenarios define the Use Cases. The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities. These capabilities are generalized groups of features commonly required by this class of products/services. Each capability is assigned a level of importance in fulfilling that particular need; some sets of features are more important than others, depending on the use case being evaluated. Each vendor’s product or service is evaluated in terms of how well it delivers each capability, on a five-point scale. These ratings are displayed side-by-side for all vendors, allowing easy comparisons between the different sets of features. Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0: 1 = Poor: most or all defined requirements not achieved 2 = Fair: some requirements not achieved 3 = Good: meets requirements 4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements 5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the product ratings are multiplied by the weightings to come up with the product score in use cases. The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for any product; therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situation or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a product before making a product/service decision. Page 1 of 12 Critical Capabilities for General-Purpose, High-End Storage Arrays 10/1/2015 http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1RO1Z8Z&ct=140310&st=sb
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Critical Capabilities for General-Purpose, High-End Storage Arrays
20 November 2014 ID:G00263130
Analyst(s): Valdis Filks, Stanley Zaffos, Roger W. Cox
VIEW SUMMARY
Overview
Key Findings
With the inclusion of solid-state drives in arrays, performance is no longer a differentiator in its
own right, but a scalability enabler that improves operational and financial efficiency by facilitating
storage consolidation.
Product differentiation is created primarily by differences in architecture, software functionality,
data flow, support and microcode quality, rather than components and packaging.
Clustered, scale-out, and federated storage architectures and products can achieve levels of scale,
performance, reliability, serviceability and availability comparable to traditional, scale-up high-end
arrays.
The feature sets of high-end storage arrays adapt slowly, and the older systems are incapable of
offering data reduction, virtualization and unified protocol support.
Recommendations
Move beyond technical attributes to include vendor service and support capabilities, as well as
acquisition and ownership costs, when making your high-end storage array buying decisions.
Don't always use the ingrained, dominant considerations of incumbency, vendor and product
reputations when choosing high-end storage solutions.
Vary the ratios of SSDs, Serial Attached SCSI and SATA hard-disk drives in the storage array, and
limit maximum configurations based on system performance to ensure that SLAs are met during
the planned service life of the system.
Select disk arrays based on the weighting and criteria created by your IT department to meet your
organizational or business objectives, rather than choosing those with the most features or
highest overall scores.
What You Need to Know
Superior nondisruptive serviceability and data protection characterize high-end arrays. They are the
visible metrics that differentiate high-end array models from other arrays, although the gap is closing.
The software architectures used in many high-end storage arrays can trace their lineage back 20 years
or more.
Although this maturity delivers high availability and broad ecosystem support, it is also becoming a
hindrance with respect to flexibility, adaptability and delays to the introduction of new features,
compared with newer designs. Administrative and management interfaces are often more complicated
when using arrays involving older software designs, no matter how much the internal structures are
hidden or abstracted. The ability of older systems to provide unified storage protocols, data reduction
and detailed performance instrumentation is also limited, because the original software was not
designed with these capabilities as design objectives.
Gartner expects that, within the next four years, arrays using legacy software will need major re-
engineering to remain competitive against newer systems that achieve high-end status, as well as
hybrid storage solutions that use solid-state technologies to improve performance, storage efficiency
and availability. In this research, the aggregated scores among the arrays are minimal. Therefore,
clients are advised to look at the individual capabilities that are important to them, rather than the
overall score.
Because array differentiation has decreased, the real challenge of performing a successful storage
infrastructure upgrade is not designing an infrastructure upgrade that works, but designing one that
optimizes agility and minimizes total cost of ownership (TCO). Another practical consideration is that
choosing a suboptimal solution is likely to have only a moderate impact on deployment and TCO for the
following reasons:
Product advantages are usually short-lived and temporary. Gartner refers to this phenomenon as
the "compression of product differentiation."
Most clients report that differences in management and monitoring tools, as well as ecosystem
support among various vendors' offerings, are not enough to change staffing requirements.
Storage TCO, although growing, still accounts for less than 10% (6.5% in 2013) of most IT
budgets.
NOTE 1
Z/OS SUPPORT
This research compares storage arrays that support
z/OS mainframe environments with arrays that do not.
This difference in the presence or absence of z/OS
support is taken into account only in the array
ecosystem ratings, where it contributes positively to
arrays supporting z/OS, and has no influence on arrays
not supporting z/OS. It has no influence on other
ratings or the rating weights used in the tool.
CRITICAL CAPABILITIES METHODOLOGY
This methodology requires analysts to identify the
critical capabilities for a class of products or services.
Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative
importance for specific product or service use cases.
Next, products/services are rated in terms of how well
they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score
that summarizes how well they meet the critical
capabilities for each use case is then calculated for
each product/service.
"Critical capabilities" are attributes that differentiate
products/services in a class in terms of their quality
and performance. Gartner recommends that users
consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the
most important criteria for acquisition decisions.
In defining the product/service category for evaluation,
the analyst first identifies the leading uses for the
products/services in this market. What needs are end-
users looking to fulfill, when considering
products/services in this market? Use cases should
match common client deployment scenarios. These
distinct client scenarios define the Use Cases.
The analyst then identifies the critical capabilities.
These capabilities are generalized groups of features
commonly required by this class of products/services.
Each capability is assigned a level of importance in
fulfilling that particular need; some sets of features are
more important than others, depending on the use
case being evaluated.
Each vendor’s product or service is evaluated in terms
of how well it delivers each capability, on a five-point
scale. These ratings are displayed side-by-side for all
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