6 Hot Storage Techs for 2015

Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
SNAPSHOT 1
Flash storage widely
used for a variety of
apps
EDITOR’S NOTE / CASTAGNA
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
VM STORAGE
Storage built
with virtual servers
in mind
STORAGE REVOLUTION / TOIGO
Hypervisor SANs:
More hype than
SAN?
STORAGE
DECEMBER 2014, VOL. 13, NO. 10
SNAPSHOT 2
Solid-state buyers
favor hybrids that
mix flash and disks
HOT SPOTS / BUFFINGTON
Cloud gateways
make cloud backup
easy
QUALITY AWARDS
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices
as top tape libraries
READ-WRITE / TANEJA
Reference architec-
tures are more than
just marketing tools
MANAGING THE INFORMATION THAT DRIVES THE ENTERPRISE
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Ready for prime time and prepared
to accelerate your data center

STORAGE • DECEMBER 2014 3
HERE’S A SHORT quiz:
In a virtualized data center:
A. Storage is the problem
B. Storage is the solution
C. Storage is both the solution and the problem
D. None of the above
It’s a trick question—all of the answers are correct.
That’s because in most data centers the bottleneck that
might be choking performance could be a moving target,
given all the variables involved. Storage vendors are apt
to suggest the network is the weak link, while the net-
work crowd is quick to say storage is the sluggard. And
both are likely to accuse servers of being the choke points
with all those virtual machines (VMs) keeping the CPU
pinned near 100% while draining every last bit and byte
of memory.
So, it’s kind of an “all of the above” situation, depend-
ing on your particular infrastructure, the applications
you’re running and your performance expectations. Any
slightly past-its-prime storage array/application server/
network switch could be the culprit, which makes it
easy to pin the blame on hardware. If performance is
lousy, there must be a clunky bit of hardware behind the
slowdown, right?
Well, right or wrong, that’s the idea vendors of all stripes
are apparently having a lot of success convincing many of
us of. If there’s a problem, hardware is the nemesis: Hard-
ware bad. Software good.
The whole software-defined technology movement is
based on that kind of thinking. Put a layer between users,
their apps and the hardware, and the problem is solved.
Hardware becomes less important—less of an issue—and
we gain all kinds of flexibility and agility because the
software doesn’t care about all that hardware toiling away
underneath.
I can see how people would want to believe that. Odds
are your days are filled with battling both hardware and
software. So if you could eliminate one of them—well, sort
of eliminate—wouldn’t life be easier?
Software-defined advocates are likely to argue that
EDITOR’S LETTER
RICH CASTAGNA
Smarter hardware
is the key to
making SDS work
Software-defined storage (SDS) depends
on hardware innovation.
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us

adding a new layer of software that puts some distance
between you and the hardware simplifies operations, saves
money and reduces the reliance on hardware products. To
that I say: Maybe, maybe and maybe.
For me, the least-convincing argument for software-de-
fined whatever is the one that seems to be mentioned most
often by vendors: “It’s the same type of technology Google
and Facebook use.” Now isn’t that convincing? I’m sure
your company has about a billion servers like Google and
Facebook, a few billion square feet of data center to house
them, and a million or so engineers on hand to assemble
all the required parts. How many companies even come
close to “Web-scale” as the marketers like to say?
The other dent in the software-defined litany is the
idea that adding a layer that wasn’t there before will solve
everything. Sure, it can provide an easier user interface,
and maybe eliminate some of the clumsier configuration
gymnastics that tend to contort even veteran storage
jockeys. But even with a slick top layer added, you’ll still
have to get under the hood from time to time, so maybe
you won’t be all that removed from the hardware after all.
But I think the strongest evidence that storage and
other hardware isn’t about to disappear or become less
important is that the whole software-defined thesis—
whether it’s storage or networks or servers—relies on one
key condition: that hardware continues to develop and get
faster, bigger and better.
We wouldn’t be talking about virtualized servers if Intel
hadn’t cooked up multi-core CPUs at a hyper-Moore’s Law
pace.Orifnetworksdidn’tskipalongfrom1Gbpsto10Gbps
to 25 Gbps and 40 Gbps. And it’s hard to imagine anything
remotely approaching software-defined storage if flash
hadn’t burst upon the scene a few years ago and then
developed into more form factors than we had ever seen
before.
Wonder why VMware requires flash in the servers it
endeavors to turn into storage arrays with its Virtual SAN
product? Maybe it’s because without that advanced stor-
age hardware the software-defined storage array might
not deliver sufficient performance. And now VMware
is trying to bring its software-defined storage to a wider
market under the EVO:RAIL moniker by partnering with
hardware vendors.
Still, most software-defined storage products are still
quite limited in the number of nodes and capacity they
can provide, and also limited in delivering performance.
But that will change, because storage hardware is getting
better.
And it’s not just a matter of the hardware getter faster;
it’s also getting smarter. Intel is churning out chips
tweaked and tuned for specific environments and use
cases. Storage, too, is getting smarter. One of the reasons
software-defined storage can forsake hardware controllers
for software versions is that a lot of that intelligence is now
baked into the media, especially solid-state devices.
So it doesn’t matter if you think storage is the problem
or the solution. Let’s just hope storage vendors continue
on their development paths and keep making storage
devices that get smarter and smarter, because the future
of software-defined data centers will rely on intelligent
hardware. n
RICH CASTAGNA is TechTarget’s VP of Editorial/Storage Media Group.
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us

I HAVE BEEN testing some product alternatives in the serv-
er-side or software-defined storage space, comparing them
to solutions promoted by leading hypervisor vendors,
including VMware and Microsoft. On this journey, I
recently met up with StarWind Software, an outfit based
in the Boston area, with development in Kiev, Ukraine.
They’re also the company that arguably invented virtual
SAN technology (though they failed to trademark the
term), so they deserve some serious consideration.
HYPERVISORS HYPE THEIR SAN APPS
The first question that needs to be addressed is why a
virtualization administrator would prefer to move outside
the comfort zone of a “one throat to choke” relationship
with his/her preferred hypervisor vendor to consider a
virtual SAN product from a third party. The thought of
buying a “pre-integrated” hardware/software stack from a
single source has enormous appeal—at least to anyone too
young to remember life in an IBM data center circa 1980.
I am that old, however. In my first data center job, the
entire IT hardware/software stack was dominated by Big
Blue and you deviated from its prescribed architecture at
your own risk. IBM had become a de facto standard and
everyone had to comply with its rules for plugging and
playing with the IBM stack if they wanted any purchase
whatsoever in an IBM-dominated world.
That lock-in contributed a lot of great technology, but
it also helped to make IT an extremely expensive compo-
nent of the business. Over time, those costs set the stage
first for a flirtation with IT outsourcing (service bureau
computing) during the Reagan recession, and ultimately
for the distributed computing “revolution” of the 1990s.
Today, hypervisor vendors seem to be taking a page
from the old “one vendor is best” playbook to make the
case for a new single-vendor model for the data center:
hypervisor-controlled computing. In the worst-case sce-
nario, we run the risk of locking ourselves into another
master/slave relationship where we’re the ones chained
to the oars. At best, we just make the operational side of
our data center worse than it already is.
STORAGE REVOLUTION
JON TOIGO
Software-defined
storage that
makes sense
A hypervisor-based virtual SAN
might seem convenient—until you
run up against its limitations.
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us

If, and this is quite likely, we end up using multiple hy-
pervisors in our data center (in addition to having some
critical apps that aren’t virtualized at all), we’re going
to end up with multiple silos of data behind different
hypervisor software-defined storage (SDS) strategies
along with some “legacy storage.” VMware pretty much
locks up access to its storage with its Virtual SAN, exclud-
ing all non-VMware servers. Microsoft at least enables
SMB access to the storage it controls provided it’s config-
ured as a scale-out file server.
HYPERVISOR SAN GOTCHAS
What if you could simply deploy a third-party SDS that
supported all applications, virtualized or not, with their
data? That’s what a few companies, including StarWind
Software, claim they can do. They provide block and file
access to their virtual SAN storage to all comers. Sounds
pretty good.
Moreover, when you dig down into VMware, you
quickly learn that its SDS freezes out a lot of smaller firms
and even some large ones. For the big guys, VMware offers
no path to an all-silicon data center. You scale by adding
disk to nodes and nodes to clusters. Flash can be used in
the mix, but it isn’t included in scale-out capacity. That
will irritate some large IT shops that see an all-silicon
future.
Meanwhile, smaller firms are likely to be put off by
VMware’s storage node requirements. First, you need a
minimum of three nodes with all their storage maintained
in an identical configuration, even as things scale. To
start, you’re looking at a combined hardware and software
licensing cost of between $30K and $40K per node. That’s
quite a bite out of a small shop’s IT budget. It might even
be the entire budget for some modest environments.
So, for small and large firms, the VMware one-stop
shop may already seem too expensive or limited. And
from a technical perspective, many architects are put off
by the lousy way VMware SDS uses flash from a write
perspective.
Depending on your virtual machine stack, you’ll be
hammering your flash memory cache with small writes,
which is to say you may burn out expensive flash devices
more quickly than you thought. An alternative is to co-
alesce your writes, and stack them up in DRAM until you
can write them efficiently to flash in fewer but longer con-
tent write operations. This functionality already exists in
StarWind Software’s product. VMware advises us to wait
another year or so.
Microsoft, by the way, has some limitations that may be
off-putting to architects with a strategic view. Like VM-
ware, Microsoft’s SDS approach, called Clustered Storage
Spaces, isn’t terribly friendly to flash when used as a write
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
DEPENDING ON YOUR
VIRTUAL MACHINE STACK,
YOU’LL BE HAMMERING
YOUR FLASH MEMORY CACHE
WITH SMALL WRITES.

cache. In fact, the vendor’s deduplication increases the
number of writes since data is first written as is and then
subsequently reduced by the dedupe algorithm. For those
who want dedupe technology, the inline capability in the
StarWind product is arguably more robust.
Another thing Microsoft shares with VMware is its
penchant for nodal equipment definitions that might
make the infrastructure too pricey for a smaller firm. This
starts with the requirement that each node have external
SAS JBODs (Microsoft uses some of the SAS technology to
lock files and volumes, which is one of the points VMware
uses to argue why it is not truly software-defined), which
are quite a bit pricier than their SATA cousins. StarWind
supports both, plus PCI Express flash devices.
As you can see, hypervisor vendors are building out
their SDS solutions in a manner that both addresses the
architectural requirements of some of their customers—
perhaps the majority—and favors the vendor’s concept of
how SDS should work. An SDS-only vendor is in a better
position to provide complementary support for hypervisor
operations while helping users to (1) avoid getting locked
into a particular vendor’s concept and architecture, and
(2) realize an integrated storage environment that will
support a number of workload types and their storage
requirements.
StarWind Software, by the way, is only one potential
solution to the issues raised above, but it has earned brag-
ging rights for being the first provider of virtual SANs long
before VMware or Microsoft seized on the idea. n
JON WILLIAM TOIGO is a 30-year IT veteran, CEO and managing
principal of Toigo Partners International, and chairman of the Data
Management Institute.
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
MICROSOFT REQUIRES EACH
NODE TO HAVE EXTERNAL SAS
JBODs BECAUSE IT USES SOME
OF THE SAS TECHNOLOGY TO
LOCK FILES AND VOLUMES.

IF YOU’VE BEEN wondering what newfangled technology
will show up in your data center in 2015, read on. For 12
years, Storage magazine has celebrated the rite of passage
into a new year by highlighting the half-dozen or so hot
storage technologies we think will have a real impact on
data center operations in the coming year.
As in years past, our list veers sharply in the direction
of practicality—most of our hot techs are “newish” rather
than brand-spanking new because we want to focus on
those technologies that have attained a level of maturity
that shows us they’re proven and generally available.
This year’s list reflects the profound impact solid-state
has had on storage systems with enterprise-class all-flash
arrays, flash caching and hybrid storage arrays all among
2015’s hot technologies.
Rounding out our bevy of noteworthy technologies are
VMware Virtual Volumes (VVOLs), which may revolu-
tionize storage provisioning and configuration; affordable
and speedy cloud-based disaster recovery (DR); and server
SANs that transform servers into arrays.
VMWARE VIRTUAL VOLUMES
Virtual Volumes is a natural fit as a hot data storage
technology for 2015, and could probably qualify for a few
other lists, such as most eagerly anticipated and most
HOT TECHS FOR 2015
Hot storage
techs for 2015
These half-dozen techs are leading edge
and poised to help transform your data center.
BY THE STORAGE MEDIA GROUP STAFF
ZOZULINSKYI /FOTOLIA
HOME

Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
long-awaited storage technologies. Who wouldn’t want
something that eliminates the need to use LUNs and NAS
mount points to provision storage? That’s what VMware
and storage array vendors promise VVOLs will do, and
they say VVOLs are due any day now. They were part of
the VMware vSphere 6 beta, which is expected to become
generally available in the first quarter of 2015.
VVOLs give each virtual machine (VM) its own volume
on the storage array to store services such as snapshots,
replication and thin provisioning. That allows a VM to
have its own storage services and policies.
VVOLs build on VMware vStorage APIs for Array Inte-
gration (VAAI) and vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness
(VASA) initiatives. VAAI allows hypervisors to offload
functions to storage systems, while VASA provides visibil-
ity between the hypervisor and the array. VVOLs talk to
the storage system directly through VASA instead of using
LUNs or NAS mount points, and work as storage contain-
ers with a data store, storage services and metadata. The
containers align with individual VMs, so VVOLs change
the main unit of storage management from a LUN to a
VM object.
NetApp(FAS),Hewlett-Packard(3PAR)andDell(Equal-
Logic) say they’ll have arrays with VVOLs enabled as soon
as VMware makes the technology generally available.
EMC, the majority owner of VMware, is sure to follow and
plans to support VVOLs in its ViPR software-defined stor-
age platform. Smaller vendors have also disclosed VVOLs
strategies. For instance, all-flash array vendor SolidFire
plans to enable its quality of service to guarantee storage
performance to every VM through VVOLs.
“If you manage storage, VVOLs need to be in your con-
versation,” said Greg Schulz, founder and senior advisor
at StorageIO in Stillwater, Minn. “You need to get up to
speed on it. Every storage vendor better have a VVOLs
story. Having VVOLs will be table stakes, just like having
a LUN or a file share.”
Newer storage companies, such as VM-centric array
vendor Tintri and hyper-converged vendors such as Nu-
tanix and SimpliVity, architected their systems from the
start to avoid using LUNs and mount points to provision
storage. VMware’s Virtual SAN (vSAN) hyper-converged
software will support VVOLs in its next version. But legacy
storage systems need to rework their arrays to support
VVOLs with services such as snapshots, replication and
thin provisioning.
“VVOLs are an inevitable progression of per-VM storage
capabilities proven out by Tintri, and now embraced by
Virtual SAN and others,” said Mike Matchett, a senior an-
alyst at Taneja Group in Hopkinton, Mass. “Unfortunately,
layering or retrofitting VVOLs support onto traditional
arrays has proven challenging in the details.”
ENTERPRISE-CLASS ALL-FLASH ARRAYS
Performance-boosting all-flash arrays (AFAs) are poised
for greater adoption across a wider range of workloads
now that most of the major vendors and startups have
bolstered their products with additional capacity options
and enterprise storage and data reduction features.
Capabilities such as snapshots, clones and replication
(Continued on page 11)

Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
C+
Next-generation
solid-state
storage
We stitched together two new flash techs—3D NAND and non-volatile
memory express (NVMe)—under one heading. While interest is high for both,
neither took off as predicted in 2014.
B+
Primary
storage data
deduplication
It took a couple of engineering marvels—solid-state storage and brutally
powerful CPUs from Intel—but we finally saw primary storage dedupe make
a breakthrough in 2014.
A-
Hyper-converged
storage
There still might be a bit more hype than reality in hyper-converged systems,
but this category gained some traction with hardware, software and all
conceivable combinations popping up.
B+
Backup
appliances
Despite Symantec deep-sixing its Backup Exec appliance, these
all-in-one backup machines are still going strong with new players like Dell,
HP, Unitrends, StorServer, Barracuda and others joining the fray.
C+
OpenStack
storage
Lots and lots of talk, and more and more traditional storage vendors are
building in OpenStack APIs, but we’ve seen a lot more tire kicking than
actual implementations.
B-
Cloud-integrated
storage
Our vision of arrays transparently tiering into cloud services might have
been premature, but with EMC scarfing up TwinStrata and Microsoft taking
possession of StorSimple, those links are inevitable.
Report card: Grading last year’s predictions
Anyone can make predictions, but it takes a bunch of serious storage writers to look back and grade their previous
prognostications. Here’s a report card on how we think we fared with last year’s hot storage technology predictions.

Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
have become commonplace in AFAs. Plus, the combina-
tion of inline compression and deduplication, and the
declining cost of flash have lowered the price of AFAs
to the point they may be considered for general-purpose
workloads.
The Great Atlantic Pacific Tea Company supermarket
chain—better known as AP—made a long-term invest-
ment in IBM’s FlashSystem V840 in mid-2014 to replace
end-of-life disk arrays. AP expects to run multiple data-
bases for mission-critical applications on the V840 and see
benefits in performance and a reduced data center foot-
print, according to Richard Angelillo, the company’s vice
president of information services. AP licensed IBM’s
optional inline compression to potentially increase the
capacity from 40 TB usable to 200 TB effective.
“The value of AFAs relative to pure [hard disk drive]
HDD boxes is much more evident—and you hit ROI
faster—if you’re loading multiple applications onto the
array as opposed to just buying it to speed up a single
application,” wrote Eric Burgener, a research director in
IDC’s storage practice, in an email. Framingham, Mass.-
based IDC predicts all-flash arrays will ultimately replace
traditional arrays with their HDDs, Burgener noted.
Tim Stammers, a senior analyst at New York-based 451
Research, said the AFA market will show a 42% compound
annual growth rate through 2018, when it reaches an
estimated $3.4 billion. A 2013 survey of more than 200
enterprise storage professionals done by 451 Research’s
InfoPro service showed just 8% had deployed or piloted
all-flash arrays. This year, the percentage rose to 11%, and
another 19% said they expect to deploy AFAs within 18
months, Stammers said.
All-flash array vendors claim potential users need to
consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) and price per
IOPS rather than simply the price per gigabyte (GB). But
Marc Staimer, president of Dragon Slayer Consulting in
Beaverton, Ore., said the usable price per GB will need to
fall to the ballpark range of HDDs, especially in public per-
ception—and not simply with the “hand-waving voodoo
magic of dedupe and compression”—for AFAs to take off.
Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at Taneja
Group, said the battleground for all-flash arrays and hybrid
systemsisthetraditionalarrayrunning15,000rpmHDDs.
“Nobody should be buying HDD-only systems anymore.
They’re all going to be hybrids or all-flash arrays,” he said.
CLOUD-BASED DISASTER RECOVERY
Disaster recovery is one of the more costly and critical
projects for IT, which makes the cloud a particularly
attractive alternative to in-house deployments. As users
have become more comfortable with cloud storage ser-
vices such as backup, cloud-based DR offerings have pro-
liferated for those who want to step up their use of cloud
data protection services.
A cloud-based disaster recovery service requires rep-
licating full data sets or entire VMs to the cloud. The
services use server virtualization to access the storage in
the cloud to effectively create a secondary data center.
These offerings support server images and production
data backup from a customer’s site to the provider’s cloud.
(Continued from page 9)

Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
Prepackaged disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offer-
ings make failing over to the cloud even easier and poten-
tially less costly with pay-per-use pricing models.
“With disaster recovery, the TCO seems to hold steady
in favor of using the cloud,” said Taneja Group’s Matchett.
“Until you need it, the data is cold. One thing people are
talking about is restoring in the cloud; if you have virtual-
ization and backup virtual machines, then you can restore
that VM in the cloud if the primary site is unavailable.”
Matchett said inroads have been made with tools that
convert or migrate VMs to the cloud.
“There are tools that work at the level of the application
blueprint where more complex application architectures
can be spun up,” he said.
James Bagley, a senior analyst at Storage Strategies Now
in Austin, Texas, said there’s been an increase in the past
year in the number of DRaaS offerings, and they’re more
upmarket with features such as automation, network rep-
lication and the ability to transform hypervisors into the
ones running in the cloud.
“There can be issues with taking an existing environ-
ment and having it stand up in the cloud,” Bagley said.
“Different hypervisors and network settings are usually
the bugaboo there.”
Dragon Slayer Consulting’s Staimer said disaster recov-
ery is more than just recovery of the data, meaning users
need to broaden their evaluations of DRaaS offerings.
“It’s more than just mounting the data,” Staimer said.
“How are you connecting to the user? Do they do network
manipulation to allow access? Are they providing network
recovery user access? What percentage of customers can
they take care of at one time and for how long? A lot of
people who are getting into this don’t know what they’re
getting into.”
Nonetheless, cloud-based DR can offer astounding
recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives
that are within the financial reach of even the smallest
companies.
FLASH CACHING
Flash storage has the ability to reduce latency and boost
IOPS, but solid-state hardware alone won’t necessarily
do the trick. That’s where flash cache software comes in,
providing intelligence and automated management that
enables critical applications to be served from a higher
performing tier of storage.
The emergence of flash cache as a hot technology par-
allels the increased density of applications, particularly
in data centers with large installations of transactional or
analytic databases.
Flash caching vendors are winning converts by demon-
strating that they can reduce the management burden
while boosting overall system performance, said Jim
Handy, a semiconductor analyst at research firm Objective
Analysis in Los Gatos, Calif.
“Enterprises that have postponed adding flash to their
systems are now becoming convinced that flash caching
software can take away the last of the problems they wor-
ried about,” Handy said.
Momentum in 2014 came from disruptive vendors like
PernixData, which added the capability to pool server

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Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
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IBM and Dell are
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RAM for cache in virtualized environments, and from
established hardware vendors like HGST, which unveiled
its ServerCache software for Windows Server and Linux
operating systems.
Flash cache can be deployed in tandem with HDDs
in a single server, as a component within a shared stor-
age array or aggregated in a virtual pool across multiple
servers. The flash software uses algorithms that examine
historical access patterns of applications and targets flash
at data blocks most in need of acceleration. The cache
mechanism temporarily stores a copy of the hottest data
on NAND memory chips, enabling files to be quickly
retrieved while also freeing up production bandwidth.
Stamford, Conn.-based analyst firm Gartner estimates
the market for flash cache software could top $350 million
by 2019, with a compound annual growth rate in the teens.
The high cost of dedicated storage provided the impetus
that gave rise to software-based flash cache, said David
Very, very warm … but not quite hot yet
TECHNOLOGY TEMPERATURE READING
Triple-level cell (TLC), 3D
and memory channel flash
These three techs are the best bets to squeeze even more life out of NAND
flash, but it’ll take time for fabs, vendors and users to catch up.
On-premises file sync
and share
It makes sense: Give mobile users a secure cloud to swap and sync files,
but IT is reluctant to add yet another service.
40 Gbps Ethernet As Ethernet goes, so goes NAS, iSCSI, Hadoop, convergence and so on—but
shifting gears to speedier networking takes time.
Cloud-to-cloud backup Last year we said cloud-to-cloud backup wasn’t quite hot yet … and it still isn’t.
But with more services popping up in the cloud, backup concerns are growing.
Ultra-high capacity media With a 10 TB tape drive from IBM and an 8 TB hard disk from HGST, it seems
the sky’s the limit for media capacities, and these high-capacity devices have
specialized roles.

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Flash storage
used for a wide
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Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
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architectures are
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About us
Russell, a Gartner vice president of storage technologies
and strategies.
“People are tired of overprovisioning. They don’t want
to buy more Fibre Channel disk just to be able to meet the
IOPS,” Russell said. “We live in a scarcity world and more
of the spotlight is on storage, especially the server vendors
whose margins have been hit hard.”
As all-flash arrays struggle to gain broad traction, flash
caching has emerged as an interim method for speeding
up performance on specific application workloads.
“In most environments, only about 10% to 15% of data
is active at any point in time,” said George Crump, presi-
dent of IT analyst firm Storage Switzerland. “Buying 10%
to 15% of your capacity in flash, and having it automati-
cally move the write data to cache at the right time is a
very economical way to deploy flash.”
NETWORKING SERVER-BASED STORAGE
Traditional shared storage poses a number of problems in
today’s virtualized world. The management of disparate
storage entities is cumbersome, buying hardware to ac-
commodate growing data is maxing out IT budgets and
VMs have to battle each other for adequate IOPS. Those
are all difficulties networking server-based storage tech-
nology can help ease, and a reason why more enterprises
will be considering it in 2015.
Also referred to as server-attached storage or server
SAN, this technology uses software to abstract the com-
ponents of a traditional shared storage architecture away
from the hardware. The storage is directly attached to the
host server, while the software runs as a virtual machine,
pooling the physical capacity so that all VMs have access.
That means expensive hardware is no longer a neces-
sity; commodity servers, storage and networking can
be used while still attaining adequate performance and
capacity, and scaling becomes much more cost effective.
But perhaps the biggest draw of server-based storage
technologies is the management capability. In traditional
SAN environments, management features are specific to
arrays. Server SANs abstract those features, spreading
them across the aggregated capacity.
“The basic trend comes down to simplicity,” said Stuart
Miniman, principle research contributor at research firm
Wikibon. “Having just one platform layer that handles
the whole infrastructure without having to manage it is
what’s attractive.”
In a 2013 report, Wikibon said the revenue from the en-
terprise server SAN market in 2013 totaled $270 million,
and predicted a rapid migration from traditional to server
SAN environments to begin in 2018.
One thing that’s apparent today is that more vendors,
both established and startups, are continuing to make
networking server-based storage plays.
According to Miniman, much of that activity can be at-
tributed to VMware hyper-converged products. “VMware
has a pretty important place in the ecosystem, so when
they say ‘Let’s get rid of the storage array and have this
new way of simplifying IT,’ people start to notice,” he said.
VMware last year launched vSAN, highly anticipated
hyper-converged software that pools physical capacity to
store VMs.

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Flash storage
used for a wide
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Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
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architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
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“There are a ton of startups in this space,” Miniman
said. “There’s everything from the big players like [Hew-
lett-Packard] HP and EMC, to Dell doing almost every
single solution in the space through partnerships and
OEMs, and then there’s Nutanix, Nexenta and Fusion-io.”
At VMworld this year, VMware expanded on its serv-
er-based storage software platform in a way that allows
hardware vendors to get on board with EVO:RAIL. The
reference architecture provides a form factor for hardware
partners to build on while using the vSAN architecture for
management and provisioning.
HYBRID STORAGE ARRAYS
Hybrid flash arrays that mix HDDs and solid-state drives
(SSDs) are the leading option for enterprise flash de-
ployments today—still well ahead of all-flash arrays and
server-side flash.
According to a recent IDC report, 51% of enterprises
with at least 1,000 employees have already added flash
to their storage environment. Of that group, 84% have
deployed some kind of hybrid system. Sixty-six percent
said they took a DIY approach by adding SSDs to existing
arrays, while 18% opted for a new hybrid array.
Purpose-built hybrid flash array deployments will likely
increase this year. Whether designed from the ground up
or re-architected for flash, these arrays offer better per-
formance and reliability than a DIY hybrid array because
they’re designed to make the best use of flash rather than
treating the drives as if they were traditional spinning
disks. Every major storage vendor offers hybrid flash ar-
rays today, and most offer a variety of choices. EMC sells
scalable hybrid VNX and VMAX systems in a variety of
capacity and performance levels. The company also offers
hybrid flash systems aimed at specific workloads such as
the EMC Isilon Solutions for Hadoop Analytics and the
EMC Isilon Video Surveillance Solution. And depending
on the configuration, hybrid systems are less expensive
than all-flash arrays.
Other than cost, the main limitation of all-flash arrays
is capacity. Until recently, all-flash arrays offered enough
capacity to handle certain application workloads but not
enough to serve an entire enterprise. That’s changing, but
it’s still far from the norm. Capacity is, of course, much less
of an issue in hybrid systems running high-performance
flash alongside hard disk storage. NetApp’s FAS8080 EX
scales to 5.76 PB of spinning disk and 36 TB of flash, for
example.
Most organizations have one or two applications, such
as virtual desktop infrastructure, which require very high
performance, while the rest of their apps are perfectly
happy accessing data on traditional disk drives. This
makes hybrid arrays appealing to many organizations to-
day. As the price of flash continues to decline and capacity
grows, all-flash arrays may take the lead, but for now the
hybrid array is king. n
ANDREW BURTON, RICH CASTAGNA, GARRY KRANZ, SONIA LELII,
DAVE RAFFO, CAROL SLIWA and SARAH WILSON are the members of
TechTarget’s Storage Media Group who contributed to this article.

D Which apps are flashy?
Snapshot1More than half of companies already use flash for a variety of apps
Home
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6 hot storage
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Flash storage
used for a wide
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Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
D Does your company currently use
solid-state storage?
* MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PERMITTED
18+51+31+s
31%
18%
51%
D How has solid-state storage been
deployed in your company?*
Database
applications
Virtualization
Online transaction
processing
Virtual desktop
infrastructure
Big data
analytics
ERP
Web and
application serving
Finance/
HR applications
CRM
Science/
Engineering apps
Messaging
Yes
No, but
we’re
evaluating
No, and we
have no
plans
48% 52%
35% 41%
26% 21%
21% 27%
19% 21%
14 14
14 18
14 13
11 11
8 10
7 9
n CURRENTLY
USING FLASH
n PLAN TO USE
FLASH
Hybrid HDD-
flash array
In
servers
All-flash
arrays
Caching
appliance
64%
40%
30%
14%

WITH APOLOGIES TO John Lennon and his great song, Imag-
ine, here’s a 21st century twist on the tune with more than
a passing nod to storage:
Imagine no RAID groups
It’s easy if you try
No LUNs to mess with
Volumes gone bye-bye
Imagine all the admins
Sleeping well at night …
While not nearly as catchy as the original, it does make
a point: Purpose-built virtual server storage has some
significant differences from SAN and NAS. Rather than
using the familiar constructs of RAID, LUNs and volumes
on external shared storage arrays, virtual server storage is
predominantly characterized by federated direct-attached
storage (DAS) or purpose-built appliances. With most
implementations, methods other than RAID are used to
ensure data integrity and the storage software manages
the relationship between the application server (a virtual
machine) and the related data. This new architecture
may actually improve data availability while simplifying
Purpose-built
virtual server
storage
Vendors are offering storage systems specifically
engineered for virtual servers with an approach
that’s fundamentally different from SAN or NAS.
BY PHIL GOODWIN
VIRTUAL SERVER STORAGE
HOME
EMIELDELANGE/FOTOLIA

the storage administrator’s life. At least, that’s what VM-
specific storage is supposed to do.
Certainly, any modern-day storage can be configured
to serve virtual machines. As a result, industry messaging
can get a bit confusing. Terms like VM-ready and VM-
aware have no industry standard definition, so vendors
are free to use those phrases to mean whatever they want.
Moreover, just because a system, such as software-defined
storage (SDS), is built on top of a hypervisor doesn’t mean
it’s uniquely suited to a virtual environment. To get past
the label, IT managers need to look for products that cor-
relate an application server (VM) directly with the related
data, not a LUN or volume. If a product provisions LUNs
and volumes in the traditional manner, it doesn’t strictly
stand up as a VM purpose-built system as we’re using the
term here. Given that the majority of IT organizations are
more than 50% virtualized in their Windows/Linux en-
vironments—with many approaching 90% virtualized—
this is an emerging market that should attract more than
passing interest from storage managers.
STORAGE THEN AND NOW
Some IT managers may question whether it makes sense
to revisit the internal DAS architecture of yesteryear. SAN
and NAS evolved from DAS architecture because manag-
ing storage siloes attached to servers was so difficult and
typically very costly. This was principally driven by the
evolution from relatively few mainframe-centric servers
to distributed computing with hundreds of servers. SAN
and NAS provided a way to centrally manage storage,
improve utilization and enhance storage agility. Thus,
SAN and NAS represented a significant revolution in
storage management for distributed systems.
The server revolution to virtualized computing has had
as much impact on storage as distributed systems had
earlier. Virtual computing has evolved faster than storage
has been able to keep up. At first, accommodating VMs
was no big deal. A LUN allocation was a LUN allocation,
and the storage system didn’t care if it was physical or
virtual. However, as VM migration evolved, the limits
of SAN and NAS became apparent. While migrating the
VM became trivial, having storage pinned to LUNs and
volumes was a real anchor that dragged down the agility
desired by organizations.
In addition, the ability to spin up VMs in a matter of
minutes has contributed to significant performance defi-
ciencies. Adding VMs on the fly to a volume can quickly
oversubscribe the available aggregate IOPS. VMs can hog
the performance of the disks, negatively impacting the
other VMs assigned to the volume. This is called the “noisy
neighbor” problem. Organizations typically respond
by adding spindles, which are costly and may be poorly
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
MIGRATING VMs BECAME
TRIVIAL, BUT STORAGE PINNED
TO LUNs AND VOLUMES
DRAGGED DOWN THE AGILITY
DESIRED BY ORGANIZATIONS.

utilized as a result. To truly realize the benefits of virtual
computing, storage solutions need to evolve beyond just
SAN and NAS.
VIRTUAL SERVER STORAGE ARCHITECTURES
The virtual server storage market is in its early stages and,
as such, products are predominantly offered by emerging
vendors, though established vendors are entering the mar-
ket. To be truly successful, these products need to offer
the best of both worlds: the direct relationship between
the data and application server, like DAS combined with
the convenience of centralized storage management, and
the robust storage functionality found on SAN and NAS.
These systems should also complement the agile nature
of virtual computing without compromising performance
or availability.
Given that this market segment is in its early evolution,
it’s characterized by highly differentiated products and
dueling technologies. All have their particular strengths
and target audiences, and give IT managers a wide range
of solutions to choose from. Labels such as converged,
hyper-converged and other monikers are bandied about,
but without standard definitions, labels alone won’t help
IT managers to understand how products are positioned.
These products fall, more or less, into one of three
groups:
n Software-only
n Integrated appliance
n Storage appliance
Tintri’s VMstore and Tegile Systems’ HA-series and
T-series arrays are examples of storage appliances, but they
should not be lumped in with more traditional SAN/NAS
arrays. Both have purpose-built operating systems (OSes)
optimized for use in a VM environment. Tintri’s OS allows
all storage functions to be scheduled through the VM.
Its internal file system treats each virtual machine as an
individual entity and federates the storage into a single
name space. Storage in VMstore is a combination of flash
and hard disk drives (HDDs), but Tintri guarantees that
99% of I/Os will be serviced by high-performance flash.
Tegile offers a hybrid array as well as an all-flash array.
Its IntelliFlash software optimizes the media and data
movement within the device. OS storage provisioning
and monitoring at the VM level to manage capacity and
IOPS performance is done by virtual machine rather than
by volume.
EMC’s ScaleIO and the Maxta Storage Platform (MxSP)
are two software-only solutions in this market. ScaleIO is
billed as “100% hardware agnostic.” It can run in a hyper-
visor—including VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix
XenServer or KVM—or on a bare-metal OS such as Linux.
While it can use storage arrays, EMC suggests the lowest
Home
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Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
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Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
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About us
TINTRI AND TEGILE BOTH HAVE
PURPOSE-BUILT OPERATING
SYSTEMS OPTIMIZED FOR
USE IN A VM ENVIRONMENT.

total cost of ownership is achieved using DAS.
Although MxSP is a software product, Maxta provides
reference architectures of servers, storage and network
equipment. Users aren’t limited to those configurations,
but the reference architectures are pre-validated by the
company. MxSP is designed for DAS, which can be a
combination of solid-state drives (SSDs) and HDD. The
Maxta Distributed File System, which provides a global
namespaceandsupportsVMDKs,isalog-basedfilesystem
that supports block data movement across tiers.
EMC ScaleIO is a block-based, scale-out system that
doesn’t use a file system. The product has two main com-
ponents: a ScaleIO Data Client (SDC) and a ScaleIO Data
Server (SDS). Each one can be installed on any server, but
the SDC kernel module must be installed on any node that
requires data access. The SDS can be installed on nodes
with DAS capacity. EMC touts having demoed up to 11
million IOPS with ScaleIO, while using just 20% CPU
overhead.
Nutanix’s Virtual Computing Platform is an example
of an integrated appliance that includes compute, storage
and software in each node. The minimum configuration
is three nodes to provide sufficient resilience across a pool
of resources in a shared-nothing architecture. Nutanix
offers its own appliance or pre-qualified configurations
using Dell servers. The Nutanix Distributed File System
(NDFS) aggregates all nodes. An SSD tier is required,
where all data writes are logged. Every node has access to
the metadata, which uses MapReduce to enhance reliabil-
ity and recoverability. Like all of the other products in this
category, storage is provisioned at the VM level and NDFS
manages data locality relative to the VM for optimized
performance. Best-practice guidelines recommend a 10
Gbps Ethernet network for connectively between nodes.
IMPLEMENTING VM-SPECIFIC STORAGE
Storage services such as deduplication, compression, thin
provisioning and the like have become table stakes among
storage products. It’s no different among purpose-built
virtual server storage systems, where storage managers
can expect these capabilities to be built in. One major area
of difference is how data is protected. Since RAID is not a
part of these architectures, different products use various
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
VM storage vs. traditional
SAN/NAS: Five differences
n No more RAID, LUNs or volumes required
n Application servers are tied to associated
data, not volumes
n No “noisy neighbor” issues associated
with shared volumes
n Performance not tied to spindle count
n Data integrity and recovery generally
facilitated by a distributed data mechanism

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Toigo: Hypervisor
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6 hot storage
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Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
means to ensure data integrity and recoverability.
EMC ScaleIO, for example, uses a two-copy distributed
“mesh” mirroring methodology to ensure recoverability
and eliminate single points of failure. Each node has an
authoritative mapping of system components to facilitate
recovery. This map requires just 4 MB of memory to hold
the metadata of up to 10 PB of actual data. In addition,
data is striped across all available nodes, which signifi-
cantly reduces rebuild times and reduces the risk of a
double device failure.
Maxta MxSP always replicates data synchronously
across nodes, even geographically; asynchronous capabili-
ties are also available. Although the data may be replicated
across geographically dispersed locations, the purpose is
not so much for disaster recovery (DR) as it is for high
availability (HA) and application availability, not just data
availability.
Nutanix recently announced its Metro Availability
functionality across data centers. Systems within 400 km
of each other can achieve a zero recovery point objective
and near-zero recovery time objective with the feature. It
is useful for maintenance operations, HA and DR.
In some respects, purpose-built virtual server storage
systems embody a disruptive technology because they
change some fundamental architectural precepts. As
such, they will initially be siloes within the data center.
But make no mistake; this is a key storage technology of
the future. Traditional SAN and NAS will be predominant
for some time, but an architecture that simplifies storage
management and complements virtual computing is in-
evitable. Storage managers will do themselves a favor by
learning about virtual server storage systems now. n
PHIL GOODWIN is a storage consultant and freelance writer.

Snapshot 2
Need for speed prompts flash purchases; hybrid arrays are first choice
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than SAN?
6 hot storage
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Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us
D What factors are most important
when evaluating solid-state
products?
D What need will you address with
solid-state storage?*
51%
29%
25%
25%
24%
21%
13%
12%
1. Speed/Performance
2. Compatibility
3. Price
4. Read I/O capability
5. Write I/O capability
6. Features and functionality
Performance for existing app(s)
Performance of storage for virtual servers
New server virtualization project
New application deployment
Optimize/Consolidate storage
New VDI deployment
Performance of existing VDI
Other
* MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PERMITTED* MULTIPLE SELECTIONS PERMITTED
D How do you plan to implement your
new solid-state storage?*
Hybrid HDD-
flash array
In servers All-flash
arrays
Caching
appliance
61%
43%
37%
31%
Plan to
purchase
67 TB

IBM and Dell
dominate tape
library user ratings
Perennially a strong competitor, IBM earns the top
spot among enterprise tape libraries for the
second time, while Dell snares its first midrange win.
BY RICH CASTAGNA
OF ALL THE storage technologies one might find in a modern
data center, tape probably gets the least respect. But the
media is still appreciated by the hundreds of respondents
to our annual Quality Awards for tape libraries who took
time to provide feedback on the libraries they use.
The inevitable pronouncements of tape’s demise are un-
erringly premature, as tape storage systems continue to be
the most convenient and cost-effective way to get backup
data off-site and tucked away securely. Although many
backup mavens tout cloud storage as a tape replacement,
tape is still likely to have a price advantage over cloud
storage. While the price to store a gigabyte of data might
be initially cheaper in the cloud than on tape, the charge
for keeping that data in the cloud is recurring. Storing a
tape in an abandoned salt mine is likely to cost far less on
a monthly basis.
Tape technology also continues to march on, with ev-
er-higher throughput and capacity with each new gener-
ation. IBM’s TS1150 tape drives and media, for example,
can store a whopping 10 TB of data, and the LTO roadmap
was recently extended to include 25 TB (LTO-9) and 48
TB (LTO-10) media capacities.
This year, 321 users completed our survey, providing 473
product evaluations.
QUALITY AWARDS | TAPE LIBRARIES
HOME

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Storage built
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servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
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Taneja: Reference
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more than just
marketing tools
About us
Overall Rankings
Enterprise: Among the higher end tape libraries evaluated
in the Quality Awards, IBM has been a strong contender,
finishing among the top three for overall rankings in all
nine Quality Awards surveys to date. This is the second
time IBM has won it all. IBM’s overall 6.39 tally put it well
ahead of the other finalists, with Quantum and Oracle
placing second and third. Quantum’s margin over Oracle
was the slimmest possible—just 0.01 point—effectively
resulting in a dead heat. Both Quantum and Oracle have
prevailed in this category in previous surveys.
IBM led for all five rating categories, with winning
margins ranging from 0.05 to 0.55. But the result wasn’t
particularly surprising considering IBM’s pedigree as a
tape pioneer and a tape tech leader. Quantum and Oracle
divvied up second-place category finishes, with Quantum
netting two and Oracle three.
Midrange: With five finalists in the midrange tape library
field, the finish was extremely close, with only 0.14 sepa-
rating the top three vendors. But Dell (6.15) eked out a vic-
tory over IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP)—6.10 and 6.01,
respectively—for its first trip to the winner’s circle after
coming close last year with a strong second-place finish.
This is the fourth time Dell has finished in the top
three. Second-place IBM notched its ninth consecutive
top-three finish. Last year’s winner, HP, rounded out this
closely packed trio.
Dell scored highest in three of the rating categories,
with IBM finishing first in the other two. In two of the
categories in which Dell prevailed, IBM finished second.
HP had a consistent showing that included second place
in two categories and third place in three.
IBM
Quantum
Oracle
HP
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.39
5.97
5.96
5.67
Enterprise tape libraries: Overall rankings
6.00: To date, the second-lowest overall
average score for enterprise tape libraries.
Dell
IBM
HP
Tandberg
Oracle
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.10
6.15
6.01
5.67
5.58
Midrange tape libraries: Overall rankings
5.90: The lowest overall average score
since the first two surveys for tape libraries.

Sales-force Competence
Enterprise: Our enterprise tape library purveyors had a
nip-and-tuck competition in the sales-force competence
rating category. IBM’s 6.14 score was enough to top Ora-
cle’s 6.09, which, in turn, just barely slipped by Quantum
at 6.07. This was the most hotly contested rating category
for the enterprise group of products. Of the six rating
statements in the category, IBM led on three: 6.52 for hav-
ing a knowledgeable sales support team, 6.27 for knowing
about customers’ industries and 6.11 for keeping users’
interests foremost. Oracle was strong for all statements
and earned the highest mark (6.31) for sales reps who un-
derstand their customers’ businesses. Quantum’s 6.16 led
the pack for the statement “My sales rep is flexible,” and
its 5.87 was the highest score for sales reps who are easy
to negotiate with. Midrange: Dell (6.17) overwhelmed the competition for
sales-force competence by notching the top scores on five
of the category’s six rating statements. Dell’s best marks
were for “The vendor’s sales support team is knowledge-
able” (6.47) and “My sales rep understands my business”
(6.30). Second-place IBM (5.89) had the best score (6.00)
for “My sales rep keeps my interests foremost.” IBM also
received a 6.22 for knowledgeable sales support teams.
HP was third, with a category score of 5.70 vs. Oracle’s
5.66. HP’s best rating was for the knowledgeable sales sup-
port team statement (5.87); Oracle earned a 6.24 on that
statement, its highest mark, and another 6.00-plus rating
for reps who understand users’ businesses (6.05). All five
finalists had their best marks for knowledgeable support
teams, with Tandberg earning a 6.06 for that statement.
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Dell
IBM
HP
Oracle
Tandberg
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
5.89
6.17
5.70
5.66
5.23
Midrange tape libraries: Sales-force competence
IBM
Oracle
Quantum
HP
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.14
6.09
6.07
5.39
Enterprise tape libraries: Sales-force competence
6.17: The best statement score for this
group as a whole for “The vendor’s sales
support team is knowledgeable.”
5.73: The average score for this category,
which tied for the second-lowest score ever.

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Initial Product Quality
Enterprise: IBM swept the initial product quality category
rather handily by outscoring the competition on all six
rating statements with consistently high marks ranging
from 6.38 to 6.66. There was a substantial gap between
IBM’s 6.52 category average and second-place finisher
Quantum’s 6.01; HP tallied a 5.87 to wrest third place
from Oracle (5.72). IBM netted its top score for one of
the survey’s key rating statements: an impressive 6.66
for “This product delivers good value for the money.”
IBM garnered similarly high results for ease of use (6.61)
and user satisfaction with the level of professional ser-
vices a product requires (5.58). Quantum cruised into
second place powered by three 6.00-or-higher scores,
highlighted by a 6.19 for ease of installation. HP had
one statement rating over 6.00, a 6.12 for ease of use,
and also scored well on the value statement (5.88). Midrange: All the finalists in the midrange tape library
group fared well for initial product quality with four of
the five finalists notching scores exceeding 6.00 on all six
statements. Dell was a category winner once again (6.45),
flexing its muscles by beating the field on four of the
statements, with third-place HP (6.28) and IBM taking
one apiece. Tandberg (6.30) slid into second ahead of HP
with a set of six very consistent scores, ranging from 6.10
to 6.38. Dell stood out for products that are easy to install
(6.76), easy to configure (6.57) and that deliver good value
for the money (6.44). Tandberg’s best rating also came for
ease of installation (6.48). HP’s highest mark (6.30) was
for the statement “I am satisfied with the level of profes-
sional services this product requires.”
Dell
Tandberg
HP
IBM
Oracle
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.30
6.45
6.28
6.23
5.65
Midrange tape libraries: Initial product quality
IBM
Quantum
HP
Oracle
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.52
6.01
5.87
5.72
Enterprise tape libraries: Initial product quality
6.15: The best score earned by these finalists
was for ease of use.
6.27: Best overall category showing,
highlighted by this group average for
easy installation.

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Product Features
Enterprise: There may be uncertainty about tape’s role in
storage environments, but there’s little doubt the technol-
ogy continues to advance. Overall, the enterprise products
in the survey put up their best numbers in the product
features rating category, with a group average of 6.16.
Category winner IBM demonstrated that strength with
a 6.46 score built on taking top honors on seven of the
eight category statements. IBM fashioned its victory with
high ratings such as a 6.72 for product performance, a 6.67
earned for scalability and a 6.62 for the overarching state-
ment “Overall, this product’s features meet my needs.”
Second-place Oracle picked up its best mark (6.44)
on the features statement, and added a 6.38 for products
that are well-designed. Quantum came in third with all
6.00-or-higher scores, including a group-leading 6.00 for
use interface.
Midrange: Dell’s final category win was earned for its fea-
ture set. Its 6.36 score led IBM (6.15) and HP (6.14), which
finished in a virtual tie. Dell was just slightly less dominat-
ing than IBM was in the enterprise group, winning six of
the eight category statements, highlighted by a stunning
6.71 for “Overall, this product’s features meet my needs.”
Dell also earned honors for management features (6.57),
performance (6.46) and user interface (6.41).
IBM led the pack with a 6.26 score for having well-
designed products, but its top score came on the general
features statement (6.36). HP received a 6.45 rating on
the same statement. HP’s other good ratings came for
performance (6.22) and management features (6.20).
Tandberg finished out of the top three, but had the
best mark for loading/ejecting tape efficiently (6.19).
Dell
IBM
HP
Oracle
Tandberg
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.15
6.36
6.14
5.94
5.72
Midrange tape libraries: Product features
IBM
Oracle
Quantum
HP
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.46
6.19
6.13
5.87
Enterprise tape libraries: Product features
5.90: While enterprise users gave a thumbs
up to tape library features, the user
interface had the lowest overall average.
5.85: Scalability received the lowest overall
statement score for the group.

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Product Reliability
Enterprise: IBM enjoyed its widest margin of victory by
outscoring the field on all seven rating statements in the
product reliability category on the way to rolling up a tally
of 6.39. IBM’s highlights include its highest mark (6.85)
for products that require very few unplanned patches or
updates, a 6.73 for meeting service-level requirements,
6.48 for rarely being the cause of backup failures and a
sturdy 6.38 for having very few bugs. IBM has finished out
of the top three in this category only once in nine years.
Oracle notched its top score on the unplanned patches
and updates statement (6.23) to go along with a 6.13 for
service-level agreements. HP nosed out Quantum, 5.69 to
5.64, to place third with its highest grade—a 5.81—com-
ing for the statement “Patches/updates can be applied
non-disruptively.” All of the other products received their
lowest scores on that statement.
Midrange: In a tightly contested product reliability race,
IBM emerged as the midrange leader with a slim 6.03 to
5.98 victory over HP. At 5.92, Dell was a close third, as
the top three were bunched up within 0.11 points of each
other. Oddly, IBM had top ratings on only two of the seven
category statements; second-place HP and third-place
Dell each had two and tied on another.
IBM prevailed for non-disruptive patches/updates and
for providing comprehensive upgrade guidance. But its
best score was a 6.30 for meeting service-level require-
ments.HPledforproductsthatrarelycausebackupfailures
(6.04), and for easy and intuitive error handling (5.76).
Dellhadthehigheststatementscore(6.51)forservice-level
requirements and a 6.26 for very few unplanned patches/
updates. HP and Dell tied for having very few bugs (6.11).
IBM
HP
Dell
Tandberg
Oracle
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
5.98
6.03
5.92
5.55
5.34
Midrange tape libraries: Product reliability
IBM
Oracle
HP
Quantum
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.39
5.84
5.69
5.64
Enterprise tape libraries: Product reliability
5.89: The lowest category average score
posted for reliability.
5.43: The Achilles’ heel for midrange tape
libraries seems to be error handling.

Technical Support
Enterprise: Over the years, IBM has fared very well for
technical support on Quality Awards surveys, regardless
of the product category. This time around is no different,
with IBM putting up the best scores for all eight tech
support statements. This win also means IBM has an un-
broken string of top-three finishes in all nine tape library
surveys. On its way to the winner’s circle, IBM posted
a 6.86 for delivering technical support as contractually
specified, backed by a pair of 6.62s for resolving problems
in a timely manner and having knowledgeable support
personnel, and a 6.51 for taking ownership of problems.
With a 6.01 category total, Quantum placed second,
with its best rating coming for knowledgeable support per-
sonnel (6.38). Oracle finished third, with some very solid
scores, including a couple of 6.30s for the knowledgeable
personnel and ownership statements.
Midrange: IBM duplicated its enterprise win with similar
results in the midrange tape library technical support cat-
egory (6.18). It garnered the top tallies on seven of eight
statements. HP had the other statement high score on its
way to another strong second-place finish (5.96), again
nosing out Dell (5.87). As it did in the enterprise group,
IBM posted its best result for delivering support as prom-
ised (6.37), complemented by a 6.29 for issues that rarely
require escalation and a 6.28 for having knowledgeable
third-party partners.
HP’s 6.19 for taking ownership of problems led the
pack, but its best score was a slightly higher 6.20 earned
on the delivering support as promised statement. That was
also Dell’s strongest statement (6.34), which topped 6.00
for “This product is easy to service” (6.10).
5.61: Enterprise tape vendors may need to
spend time with customers based on this
group score for providing adequate training.
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IBM
HP
Dell
Tandberg
Oracle
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
5.96
6.18
5.87
5.55
5.32
Midrange tape libraries: Technical support
IBM
Quantum
Oracle
HP
0 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00
6.44
6.01
5.94
5.55
Enterprise tape libraries: Technical support
5.43: This average score suggests midrange
tape vendors must do more to train users.

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Would You Buy This Product Again?
AFTER ASKING FOR detailed service, functionality and reliability ratings, we ask our survey respondents a simple question:
Given what you know now, would you buy this product again? Although the responses to this question may sometimes
seem at odds with the rest of the survey, this time they’re essentially consistent. n
Enterprise: IBM garnered the highest score, with 93%
of its users stating they would repeat their tape library
purchase. Quantum and Oracle placed second and third,
respectively, just as they did in the overall rankings.
Midrange: Dell and HP swapped their overall first- and
third-place midrange tape library positions in this cate-
gory, but the top three finishers were separated by a mere
percentage point.
RICH CASTAGNA is TechTarget’s VP of Editorial/Storage Media Group.
HP
IBM
Dell
Tandberg
Oracle
89%
90%
89%
81%
79%
IBM
Quantum
Oracle
HP
0 20 40 60 80 100%
93%
82%
78%
77%
Enterprise tape libraries:
Would you buy this product again?
0 20 40 60 80 100%
Midrange tape libraries:
Would you buy this product again?
94%: The highest “buy again” mark was
achieved by HP all the way back on the
second Quality Awards for tape libraries.
90%-plus: HP’s midrange tape libraries
have earned four 90% or better “buy again”
scores over the nine surveys fielded to date.

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About the Quality Awards
The Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Quality Awards are designed to identify and recognize products that have proven
their quality and reliability in actual use. Results are derived from a survey of qualified readers who assess products in five
main categories: sales-force competence, initial product quality, product features, product reliability and technical support. Our
methodology incorporates statistically valid polling that eliminates market share as a factor. Indeed, our objective is to identify
the most reliable products on the market regardless of vendor name, reputation or size. Products are rated on a scale of 1.00 to
8.00, where 8.00 is the best score. A total of 321 respondents provided 473 tape library evaluations.
Products in the survey: The following vendors/model lines of enterprise-class and midrange tape libraries were included in this
Quality Awards survey. The total number of responses for each finalist is shown in parentheses.
ENTERPRISE
n Hewlett-Packard ESL/EML Series (44)
n IBM TS3400/TS3500/TS4500 (67)
n Oracle StorageTek SL3000/SL8500 (32)
n Overland Storage NEO 8000 Series*
n Quantum Scalar i500/i2000/i6000 (34)
n Spectra Logic T950 or T-Finity*
MIDRANGE
n Dell PowerVault Tape Backup 124T, TL2000/TL4000 or ML6000 Series (78)
n Hewlett-Packard MSL Series (86)
n IBM TS3100/TS3200/TS3310 (55)
n Oracle StorageTek SL150 (19)
n Overland Storage NEO 200s/400s, NEO 2000e Series/NEO 4000e Series*
n Quantum Scalar i40/i80*
n Spectra Logic T50/T120/T200/T380/T680*
n Tandberg Data StorageLibrary T24/T40/T80/T120/T160 or StorageLoader Series (21)
* RECEIVED TOO FEW RESPONSES TO BE INCLUDED AMONG THE FINALISTS

THERE ARE A myriad of data protection appliances available,
many of which defy the early definition of a purpose-built
backup appliance (PBBA). Today, there are at least four
types of data protection appliances:
n (Real) backup appliances: Includes both the backup
engine and some amount of storage.
n Storage/Deduplication appliances: Target devices that
are fed by backup/archive software or directly from some
production platforms.
n Business continuity/Disaster recovery (BC/DR) or
failover appliances: Similar to backup appliances, but
along with the backup engine and data is a hypervisor or
other means to resume functionality without restoring
locally or via the cloud.
n Cloud gateway appliances: Similar to storage appli-
ances, they are fed from an outside source but seamlessly
offer cloud capacity in what appears to be local disk
storage. Cloud gateway appliances somewhat resemble
virtual tape libraries (VTLs) from a few years back.
Twenty years ago, everyone wanted better performance
and reliability than what tape could offer at the time, but
backup software could not directly interface with disk
systems. So, some vendors created VTLs, disk systems
that appeared to be tape libraries. Backup software knew
how to access tape, and thus disk-based backup became
commonplace.
Today, many folks want the economics of cloud, but
not all backup software can write directly to the cloud.
Some vendors are creating cloud gateways, hybrid cloud
solutions that present cloud storage as if it were a local
disk system. And because backup software now knows
how to write to disk systems, cloud-based backup moves
several steps forward.
In both cases, the storage market led a data protection
evolution to a new medium by way of emulation.
There are some differences, of course. The goal of
HOT SPOTS
JASON BUFFINGTON
Are cloud
gateways
the new VTLs?
Cloud gateways offer great benefits,
but they could go the way of the VTL
without innovation from vendors.
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moving to disk is heightened performance and reliability,
while the aim of going to the cloud is an increase in eco-
nomics and site durability. But economics shouldn’t come
at the expense (pun intended) of what disk still brings to-
day in performance/reliability, so good cloud gateways are
focused on solving the latency problem of cloud services
through a combination of deduplication/compression
within the appliance, as well as serious WAN optimization
technology for the network transmission.
To be clear, I’m an advocate of cloud gateways because
not everyone is ready to throw out every part of their exist-
ing backup solution to go to a backup-as-a-service (BaaS)
offering. Instead, folks can extend their data protection
strategy to the cloud, while keeping their currently de-
ployed backup agents and backup servers with scheduled
jobs. Additionally, staff requires little to no additional
training because backup operations remain the same; the
cloud gateway drops right into the existing environment.
Like most other IT evolutions, after a few years of this
approach, users may choose to move further down that
road. But because it’s difficult to imagine any data cen-
ter-grade cloud solution that doesn’t require a local copy
for fast restores, a disk-extended-to-cloud model makes
sense for the long haul—and cloud gateways offer that
now.
However, because some cloud gateways only appear
as disk, the backup software can’t leverage any additional
agility or capabilities that come from the cloud repository
itself. Some backup software vendors are moving past that
and developing software that can write data directly to
cloud repositories, much like those vendors that stopped
relying on VTL emulation and began writing to disk sys-
tems natively. But those solutions must integrate with and
manage each medium (local disk, tape and cloud storage)
asynchronously.
There is a perception that VTL is an antiquated meth-
odology that doesn’t wholly utilize the features of the
native medium (disk), but it’s still widely deployed. It
took 15 years for VTLs to be mostly displaced by native
disk access methods (CIFS, NFS and API), but it’s unlikely
backup vendors will take nearly that long to fully embrace
cloud-access protocols.
So the questions for cloud storage gateway vendors are
as follows:
n Can you offer gateways with deduplication that is on
par with other local disk solutions and differentiate
your products with features such as superior WAN
optimization?
n Does your product offer optimized local storage, and
also fully enable the utilization of cloud storage features?
Vendors that don’t innovate beyond the initial emula-
tion scenario should expect the same long-term fate as
VTL. For those that do continue to innovate with ever-
broadening cloud-centric integration features in mind,
gateways are as interesting in the long term as they are
attractive and immediately usable in the short term. n
JASON BUFFINGTON is a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy
Group. He blogs at CentralizedBackup.com and tweets as @Jbuff.
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REFERENCE ARCHITECTURES HAVE always been important,
but in this era of software–defined everything, they play
a much bigger role for IT and systems integrators. But
the first step is to define the term reference architecture. I
checked out Wikipedia for a definition and pulled out a
couple of key passages to explain its meaning (I added the
italics for emphasis):
n “A reference architecture in the field of software archi-
tecture or enterprise architecture provides a template
solution for an architecture for a particular domain.
It also provides a common vocabulary with which to
discuss implementations, often with the aim to stress
commonality.”
n “Adopting a reference architecture within an organiza-
tion acceleratesdeliverythrough the re-use of an effective
solution and provides a basis for governance to ensure
the consistency and applicability of technology use
within an organization.”
Let me put these excerpts in perspective by using a few
examples.
Before the software-defined storage (SDS) era, when
you might buy a VNX storage array from EMC, all the soft-
ware and hardware came from EMC. If you bought repli-
cation, thin provisioning and snapshot software, you were
assured it would all work together. EMC was dealing with
a contained set of products and controlled all of them. But
EMC still provided you with a set of guidelines to ensure
you got the best experience from the implementation.
Also, they likely provided several reference architectures
that described what to do/not to do, and how to configure
the servers and network switches to get a certain level of
performance for a given application, such as SAP. Even
when EMC controlled all aspects of storage, there was still
a need for reference architectures.
SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE
AIDED BY REFERENCE ARCHITECTURES
Now let’s take an example of a classic SDS product and see
READ/WRITE
ARUN TANEJA
Why reference
architectures
matter
Software-defined and hyper-converged
storage don’t eliminate the need
for vendor reference architectures.
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how a reference architecture becomes even more import-
ant. DataCore SANsymphony was probably the industry’s
first example of software-defined storage. SANsymphony
logically sat in front of a wide variety of arrays from differ-
ent vendors, and was designed to maximize utilization and
bring uniformity to the mish-mash of functionality built
into each array. Some arrays might have been overused
while others were underutilized; functionality varied and
even if they performed the same function, they performed
it differently. SANsymphony corralled the disparate hard-
ware and provided a common way of delivering storage
services. DataCore probably limited support to a set of
products defined in a hardware compatibility list. In add-
ition, the firm likely provided a set of guidelines, based
on its own experience and the experiences of its cus-
tomers. It possibly also supplied certain reference archi-
tectures for specific application areas. These reference
architectures were more critical than those supplied by
array vendors, providing templates, sets of guidelines and
best practices.
HYPER-CONVERGED SYSTEM USERS
NEED GUIDANCE, TOO
Even in the case of hyper-converged appliances—where
compute, storage, networking, server virtualization, data
protection, WAN optimization, data deduplication and
other technologies are all built into a single node—there’s
still a need for a reference architecture. Convergence and
hyper-convergence are designed to make infrastructure
deployment and day-to-day management easier. But
vendors of those products provide reference architectures
for a variety of applications and deployment sizes so users
can reap the benefits of convergence quickly. Of course,
a key feature of hyper-convergence is flexibility, so if per-
formance isn’t adequate, you can add another node. But
initial design still matters, and some of those issues can
be resolved by having the right reference architecture for
a given application or mix of applications.
Eventually, I believe hyper-converged vendors will de-
velop specific models for targeted workloads of a particu-
lar size and users will simply pick the right model without
having to worry about reference architectures. But until
we get there, reference architectures matter.
TRIED, TESTED AND TRUE
Reference architectures are templates of what works well
together for specific use cases; they inject the experience
of developers and users so new users don’t stray down
blind alleys. Reference architectures encompass best prac-
tices, cite dependencies, warn you if certain combinations
are problematic and accelerate delivery of results from an
IT infrastructure.
Reference architectures have always been important to
IT. But with software-defined everything, the number of
potential interactions becomes infinitely greater and the
need for a reference architecture increases accordingly. n
ARUN TANEJA is founder and president at Taneja Group, an analyst
and consulting group focused on storage and storage-centric server
technologies.
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us

TechTarget Storage Media Group
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COVER IMAGE AND PAGE 8: ZOZULINSKYI /FOTOLIA
Home
Castagna:
Software-defined
storage relies on
smart hardware
Toigo: Hypervisor
SANs: More hype
than SAN?
6 hot storage
techs for 2015
Flash storage
used for a wide
variety of apps
Storage built
with virtual
servers in mind
Solid-state buyers
seek speed, favor
hybrid arrays
IBM and Dell are
users’ choices as
top tape libraries
Buffington: Cloud
gateways make
cloud backup easy
Taneja: Reference
architectures are
more than just
marketing tools
About us

6 Hot Storage Techs for 2015

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6 Hot Storage Techs for 2015