Competitive Landscape: Primary Storage Systems for VMware

Market Analysis and StatisticsG00230718

13 April 2012

Competitive Landscape: Primary StorageSystems for VMwarePushan Rinnen, Roger W. Cox, Dave Russell

This report presents the current state of the major storage systemplatforms in terms of their support for VMware and discusses relevantfuture trends.

Key Findings■ The majority of the top seven storage vendors have done a decent job in implementing VMware

vCenter plug-ins and vSphere Storage API support, although some are doing a better job thanothers.

■ Aside from vCenter plug-ins, the most popular storage-array-based features in the VMwareenvironment include remote replication, space-efficient cloning, automated tiering within anarray, solid-state drive (SSD) implementation, and multipathing support for vSphere.

■ Vendors' unique value propositions for their storage platforms' support of VMware are often thesame as their innate design strengths for all primary applications.

■ VMware's native storage enhancements may commoditize storage for small VMwaredeployments.

■ Although VMware will continue to add and enhance native storage functions for small andmidsize businesses (SMBs), it will likely offload many storage functions to external storage arraysto increase virtual machine (VM) density and boost performance in large environments, whileseeking to retain the management and control of many of these functions.

RecommendationsCompanies selling external storage arrays into the VMware environment should:

■ Continue offering timely integration with vSphere storage APIs to stay competitive and maintaincustomer loyalty

■ Continue to innovate to boost their storage performance, efficiency, and ease of management forboth storage administrators and vCenter administrators

■ Evaluate the benefits of adding enhanced backup/recovery functions to their basic snapshot andreplication features, such as adding automated snapshot management, application integrationand centralized reporting

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Analysis

Competitive Situation and Trends

Gartner conducted a short vendor survey among major storage vendors to evaluate different aspects of VMware

support from their main storage platforms. We asked about their most popular storage features being used for

VMware virtual servers and hosted virtual desktops. We also asked about their storage integration with VMware

vStorage APIs, such as vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) and vSphere Storage APIs for Storage

Awareness (VASA).

Popular Storage Array Features for VMware

All vendors cited the foundation and architectural strengths and distinctions of their storage platforms as the

popular array features for VMware. In aggregate, however, we see the following features showing up most

frequently in our survey responses:

■ vCenter plug-ins for storage — These plug-ins for VMware, offered by many storage platforms, allow vCenteradministrators to gain more insight into the storage deployment associated with the VMs, such as an end-to-end view of mappings from VMs to data stores to LUNs. They empower vCenter administrators to provisionstorage to VMs, set up remote replication for VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM), and performadditional trouble-shooting capabilities.

■ Remote replication supporting VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) — As VMware didn't support nativereplication prior to the vSphere 5.0 launch in 2011, its SRM relies on array-based replication engines to movedata across systems or sites for high availability and disaster recovery purposes.

■ Space-efficient cloning — This feature is instrumental in saving storage capacities and increasing speed ofprovisioning VMs from days to minutes, especially for test/development and hosted virtual desktopenvironments, such as VMware View.

■ Automated tiering within an array — All vendors offering automated tiering with their arrays mentioned thisfeature as one of the popular features in VMware environments. This feature allows data to be stored on theappropriate storage tiers based on their workload requirements and the cost and performancecharacteristics of the tier.

■ SSD implementations — This feature is often cited to boost storage input/output (I/O) performance and solvevirtual desktop boot storm issues while reducing disk spindle counts. It's also an essential element forautomated tiering.

■ Multipathing support for vSphere — This feature automates the configuration of multiple redundant networkconnections to storage arrays to enable fault-tolerant network load balancing and helps improve storageperformance and scalability.

Many vendors talked about their integration with vStorage API for Multipathing and vStorage API for SRM.

Moreover, vendors often highlight their storage systems' innate or unique value propositions as popular features

for VMware. For example:

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■ Dell highlighted EqualLogic's Automated Data Tiering and Compellent's Data Progression as among themost popular features for VMware users.

■ EMC included FAST VP for VMAX and VNX and VNX's single-instance store and compression.

■ HP highlighted 3PAR's wide striping and Mesh Active Clustering and LeftHand's Network RAID and PeerMotion.

■ Hitachi Data Systems talked about its Dynamic Provisioning and Dynamic Tiering technologies in parallelwith its Storage Virtualization capabilities.

■ IBM highlighted XIV's automatic load balancing and aggregated cache and Storwize V7000's Easy Tier.

■ NetApp mentioned primary storage deduplication, MultiStore and Data Motion.

■ Oracle discussed Axiom's QoS and ZFS Appliance's D-Trace.

VAAI Support

To create tighter integration with storage arrays and optimize performance for ESX hosts, VMware has been

working with the industry-leading storage system vendors to develop a set of vSphere Storage APIs called VAAI,

introduced in vSphere 4.1 and 5.0. VAAI offloads several storage-related functions from ESX hosts to storage

arrays; it boosts host performance and increases the possibility of adding more VMs on the same host.

While vSphere 4.1 VAAI is mostly applicable to storage area network (SAN) arrays, vSphere 5.0 extended to

network-attached storage (NAS) systems some of those I/O offloads that apply to Network File System (NFS)

data stores. vSphere 5.0 also introduced a couple of new primitives. The major VAAI primitives from vSphere 4.1

and 5.0 are as follows:

■ Full copy — The task of copying a VM can now be done by VAAI-compliant arrays with drastically reducedhost I/Os, increasing performance (such as with Storage vMotion and template deployment).

■ Hardware-assisted locking — This task, when done by the SAN array, can offer more-granular block-level(vs. volume-level) locking and provides the possibility to increase the size of the data store and the numberof VMs within a data store without worrying about performance issues. This doesn't apply to NFS datastores as they already have the granularity.

■ Block zeroing — With this feature, the vSphere host can avoid sending repetitive commands to the SANarray about writing zeros for faster VM creation and formatting and improved storage capacity utilization. HPclaims that its 3PAR is the only product in the industry that has zero detection built in its application-specificintegrated circuit (ASIC).

■ Out-of-space alerts and space reclamation for thin-provisioned storage — Available from vSphere 5.0, whenused together with VAAI-compliant SAN arrays, this primitive adds a new advanced warning about the out-of-space condition and also informs the array about the freed-up space so that the array can reclaim it. Thisprimitive doesn't apply to NFS data stores, as NFS correctly reports free space.

■ Linked clones — vSphere 5.0 added a VAAI primitive to replace vSphere's linked clone function with NAS-based cloning for VMware View and vCloud Director.

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Most of the major storage vendors and platforms have done a good job with timely support of the VAAI

primitives, with some (such as IBM and Dell Compellent) still working on the out-of-space alert primitive. For the

linked clone offload to NAS, it's only supported by NetApp and EMC's VNX. EMC VNX/VNXe and NetApp's FAS

series stand out with both SAN and NAS protocol support. Oracle is the only vendor that doesn't offer VAAI

support with its Pillar Axiom and ZFS Storage Appliance.

VASA Support

To help vCenter administrators to better coordinate server-storage decisions, vSphere 5.0 introduced a new set

of APIs called VASA to gain more information on storage arrays. VASA-compliant storage arrays allow vCenter

administrators to be more productive in deploying VMs and make more storage-intelligent decisions about VM

placements.

VASA allows array vendors to expose to vCenter their storage configurations, functions and characteristics. This

information will allow vCenter to make automated, policy-driven storage management or profile-driven

recommendations (such as for Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler). Array vendors must create a provider

plug-in to enable VASA reporting, and it's up to the array vendors to decide which features or characteristics to

expose to vCenter.

The aggregate survey results show that the following storage features are most commonly exposed to the

vCenter via VASA:

■ Drive type — What type of hard-disk drives the storage array contains, such as high-performance drives orlarge-capacity drives.

■ Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) protection — Whether the array has RAID protection or not;few specify RAID levels.

■ Logical unit number (LUN)/volume replication — Whether a LUN or volume is replicated or not; a few showreplication configuration and state.

With HP's 3PAR, LeftHand and EVA storage arrays, they also expose to vCenter whether storage is thin-

provisioned or not. EMC's VMAX/VMAXe tells vCenter administrators whether multitiered storage is used or not.

Gartner believes that portfolio vendors that sell both servers and storage will be more open to expose their

storage functions to vCenter, whereas storage-centric vendors (with the exception of EMC, which owns the

majority of VMware) will be less open in order to protect their storage control.

Market Players

While almost all storage vendors claim that their storage arrays support VMware well, we chose to focus on the

most widely deployed storage platforms from major storage vendors around the globe, namely:

■ Dell — EqualLogic and Compellent

■ EMC — Symmetrix, VNX and Isilon

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■ HP — 3PAR, LeftHand and EVA

■ Hitachi Data Systems — USPV/VSP, AMS and HNAS

■ IBM — DS8000, XIV, Storwize 7000 and DS5000

■ NetApp — FAS Series

■ Oracle — Pillar Axiom and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance

The vast majority of the storage platforms on the list report that over 50% of their respective customers use that

platform to support VMware virtual server environments, with the exception of EMC Isilon, Hitachi Data Systems

HNAS, IBM DS8000 and Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. The results are not surprising, because Isilon, HNAS

and ZFS Storage Appliance were developed mainly as NAS systems for file services. Isilon's and HNAS's

VMware support initiatives were fairly recent — just before their acquisitions by EMC and Hitachi Data Systems,

respectively. Oracle has been focusing on integrating the ZFS Storage appliance with Oracle Database

applications, most of which are not run in the VMware environment. IBM's DS8000 is commonly used in the

mainframe and high-end Unix server environments, which has very low penetration by VMware.

As hosted-virtual-desktop deployments are still not a mainstream in the market today, all storage vendors

surveyed estimated low storage usage for VMware View, ranging from 3% to 15% of their storage customers. We

believe 3% to 5% is a more realistic range and that 15% is likely higher than reality and maybe the result of

misinterpretation of the survey question.

The Future of Competition

Looking at the future competition in terms of storage capabilities for VMware virtual environments, Gartner

believes that such competition will not only continue among external storage array vendors, but will also arise

between what VMware offers natively from the host side and what the arrays offer from the storage side. Another

competitive factor is the integrated VMware solutions, such as EMC's Virtual Computing Environment (VCE)

Vblock, HP's VirtualSystem and NetApp's FlexPod.

VMware Storage Initiatives

In the past two years, VMware has started adding more storage capabilities natively on its platform, such as Site

Recovery Manager, Storage vMotion, Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), vSphere Replication,

vSphere Profile-Driven Storage, VMware Data Recovery, and vSphere Storage Appliance. For the new storage

features offered by vSphere 5.0, see Gartner report "New Storage Initiatives From VMware's vSphere 5.0 and

Why They Matter."

While many of these storage feature functions are complementary with storage arrays, they do require storage

arrays to support VMware storage APIs for seamless integration. In the end, it's all about control. The more

storage features exposed to the vCenter, the more they will empower vCenter administrators to manage storage

together with servers. Storage vendors that want to appeal to broader user profiles should not be conservative

about exposing their storage features to the vCenter. This applies especially to vendors and products targeting

SMBs, which tend not to have a dedicated storage team.

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Other VMware storage features, such as vSphere Replication and vSphere Storage Appliance, are in direct

competition with storage arrays, although the competition is still new and weak. However, one Gartner user

survey on virtualization in 2011 showed an increasing interest in adopting native features from server

virtualization vendors, indicating that users are more open-minded when deploying a new virtualized

environment.

Integrated VMware Solutions

Converged technology infrastructures where vendors are tightly integrating servers, networking and storage

technologies with management software and VMware represent an alternative to buying what users may consider

to be discrete best-of-breed technology. Optimized for utilization and cost efficiencies, converged technology

infrastructure solutions hold the promise of resolving management complexity and lowering the risk

interoperability issues, as well as simplifying service and support problem resolution. Notable examples of this

approach include Dell's vStart, HP's VirtualSystem, NetApp's FlexPod and VCE's Vblock.

Dell's vStart Virtual Infrastructure is a preconfigured, tested and validated solution that is optimized to support

VMware environments. There are three vStart models — vStart 50, vStart 100 and vStart 200 — that scale out as

customer VM needs grow. The external controller-based (ECB) disk storage system that is part of these vStart

models is the EqualLogic SAN storage system, which supports the VAAI and VASA. As part of the vStart solution,

Dell has integrated the EqualLogic Host Integration storage tools and Dell Server Management Plug-in into

vCenter.

The HP VirtualSystem portfolio includes three offerings that are individually sized to support a specific number of

VMware VMs, ranging from 750 VMs to 6,000 VMs. Fully integrated with vSphere 5.0, the converged

configurations include from 28 to 128 vSphere licenses and Insight Control Storage Module for vCenter 6.3. The

ECB disk storage systems that are part of the HP VirtualSystem include the P4000 LeftHand SAN arrays and the

3PAR F and V series, both of which support VAAI and VASA.

Based on a partnership between NetApp, Cisco and VMware, the VMware vSphere built on FlexPod includes

Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), Cisco's Nexus switches, NetApp's FAS3200/6200 unified storage

systems, and VMware vSphere 5.0 virtualization software in a single integrated package. Various VMware

vSphere built on FlexPod configurations are available, which can scale performance and capacity up and out to

meet needs that range from the midrange to the enterprise. Featuring core functionality features such as

deduplication, FlexClone, SnapShot and SnapManager, all NetApp FAS series platforms support VAAI and VASA.

Management tools include Cisco's UCS Manager and NetApp's OnCommand Management Suite, both of which

are tightly integrated with VMware's vCenter 5.0. While support is coordinated, users are required to execute a

validated support contract with each vendor.

VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with minority investments by VMware and Intel, was an early entrant as a

provider of converged technology infrastructures to support VMware environments. Its Vblock integrated

infrastructure platform portfolio, composed of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), and Nexus and MDS

switches, EMC VNX and VMAX disk storage systems, and VMware vSphere 5.0 virtualization software, can scale

to handle the requirements of midsize to very large VMware deployments. Emphasizing their core functionality,

such as FAST VP and hardware accelerated Fast Clones, the EMC VNX and VMAX ECB disk storage systems

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support VAAI and VASA. Management tools include EMC's Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI), Unisphere, ProSphere

and Ionix Data Center Insight, and Cisco's UCS Manager, all tightly integrated with VMware vCenter 5.0.

Future Competitive Focuses

No matter what kind of storage infrastructure for VMware is developed, users are most likely to choose their

VMware storage infrastructure based on the following areas:

■ Performance

■ Storage efficiency

■ Ease of management

■ Backup/recovery

Performance

Storage performance will be a hotly contended area among various vendors. As storage benchmark results are

typically based on heavily tuned, specially configured hardware and software features, it's difficult to find apples-

to-apples comparisons. However, it's generally true that when storage arrays take over storage-related functions

from the host, the host can increase the VM density by dedicating more resources to applications. Storage array

vendors should develop user case studies to demonstrate real-world deployments in terms of VM density. Aside

from helping increase host performance by offloading storage functions, storage vendors are expected to

continue investing in storage designs involving solid state drives and scalable file systems for the more

demanding environment. They should also provide clear best-practice papers for users to understand the

performance impact of various features and configurations.

Storage Efficiency

Storage efficiency is an area where external storage arrays are likely to continue to shine. Storage array vendors

have developed for years various storage efficiency algorithms running on their controllers, such as thin

provisioning, deduplication, compression, and space-efficient snapshots and cloning. Such knowledge and

techniques are not easily transferrable to the host operating environment or may consume too many host

resources. Therefore, besides performance, storage efficiency is another key area of investment for array vendors

in order to continue their unique value propositions.

Ease of Management

Ease of management goes beyond an intuitive graphical user interface. It's more about integration with the

VMware framework to make the job easier for different administrators who manage storage. And it's about

automating repetitive or inefficient operational processes, such as enabling vSphere Profile-Driven Storage.

One major problem of managing storage in the VMware environment is the misalignment of the granularity level

between the vSphere side and the storage side, which makes it impossible to assign different policies at the VM

or application level. VMware revealed at the VMworld in October 2011 that it is working with key storage array

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partners such as Dell, EMC, HP, IBM and NetApp to develop a new storage model. This new model promises to

support VM-level granularity policy setup and simplify management.

Backup/Recovery

While VM density continues to rise on hypervisors, backup/recovery remains a major challenge for many

organizations, as the physical server has limited physical resources (CPU cycles, memory and I/O bandwidth) to

be shared by all of the VMs. As a result, Gartner is seeing an increased adoption of snapshots and replication to

augment, or even replace traditional backup processes.

For large VMware environments, it's most common to see users using array-based snapshots and replication, as

storage arrays can handle a large volume of data and offload the data collection process from the vSphere

server, which can then dedicate more resources to servicing production applications. However, array-based

snapshots that are not used in conjunction with additional management modules often lack some of the basic

features that are taken for granted in a backup application, such as application integration, centralized reporting

and an integrated catalog for easy search of the individual items and for data versioning. Therefore, Gartner

believes that storage array vendors should continue to enhance their snapshot and replication solutions in the

following areas:

■ Application consistency for VM backups

■ Automated discovery of new VMs via continued vSphere API support

■ An updated understanding of the current VM locations via continued vSphere API support, as VMs aremobile and can move from server to server

■ A catalog-based backup solution that's integrated with its array's snapshot and replication technologies andcan support VM configurations

Array vendors should also pay close attention to what VMware is doing with backup/recovery and disaster

recovery, as many users prefer using VMware native tools because of tighter integration, lower cost and

heterogeneous hardware support. VMware in 2011 introduced its native software-based replication tool with

vSphere 5.0 Site Recovery Manager, which will likely cannibalize some array-based solutions, especially for

SMBs.

If VMware or OS vendors such as Microsoft start offering improved and more scalable backup/recovery

solutions, it could change the market dynamics. They could become disruptive, in that the buying center is

changed from the storage team to the server organization — something already happening for VM protection,

and in fact, through bundling, could essentially make backup appear to be free of charge.

Competitive Profiles

Competitive profiles provide a way to compare the major storage platform providers. This report focuses on the

top seven storage system vendors because they represent the mainstream market trends; small storage system

vendors can learn from their "big brothers" and benefit from the overall trends.

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Dell

Company/Product Overview

Investing in R&D and M&A to accelerate growth and span of reach, Dell is on a journey to transition from a pure

product sale organization that largely resold other vendors' products to becoming a company that provides

integrated solutions based on its intellectual property (IP). Recognizing the importance of storage as part of its

emerging IT solution portfolio, Dell has expanded its ECB disk storage IP portfolio through acquisition.

Complementing the market-leading iSCSI entry-level EqualLogic external disk storage system, the February 2011

acquisition of Compellent provides a competitive midrange-to-high-end modular ECB disk storage system with

advanced data management service software replacing the Dell:EMC co-branded systems previously sourced

from EMC.

Dell is the sixth-largest ECB disk storage system vendor in the world. The Dell EqualLogic and Dell Compellent

are the main primary storage platforms for VMware. In 2011, Gartner estimates that Compellent revenue grew

144% year over year, accounting for 27% of the combined EqualLogic and Compellent revenue. Both the

EqualLogic and Compellent platforms support VAAI primitives; however, only the Dell EqualLogic supports VASA.

Dell reports that VASA support for Dell Compellent is scheduled for availability in mid-2012.

Product Marketing Strategy

Stressing ease of use, performance, and technological features, Dell positions its ECB disk storage platforms as

best-in-class offerings. For example, Dell markets EqualLogic storage as a "versatile and uncomplicated"

platform with all-inclusive software pricing and more-advanced VMware integration; it markets Compellent

storage as "self-optimized and powerful" platform with more-advanced storage tiering. While EqualLogic targets

IT generalists, Compellent targets organizations with dedicated storage administrators.

As Dell has broadened its IT portfolio through an aggressive acquisition program beyond clients and servers, it is

increasingly adopting an "end-to-end" marketing strategy that emphasizes superior value via a converged

infrastructure composed of Dell server, networking, storage and management technology in partnership with

leading independent software vendors (ISVs), such as VMware.

How Dell Competes

Generally, Dell prefers to sell an integrated IT solution in which the ECB disk storage products are packaged with

server and networking sales. But, considering that a rather large base of Dell server customers has the Dell:EMC

co-branded CLARiiON CX and AX series (previously sourced from EMC) installed, Dell is actively pursuing a

competitive replacement program offering either the Dell Compellent or Dell EqualLogic storage systems as

appropriate.

As a volume reseller of VMware software, Dell emphasizes the overall interoperability integration with its ECB disk

storage solutions and VMware vSphere software. Dell, with its EqualLogic product line, is one of the few storage

vendors that have been working closely from the beginning with VMware to define vSphere storage APIs and are

therefore an early adopter of the APIs.

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EMC


The largest external storage array vendor in the world, EMC offers three primary storage platforms that can

support VMware virtual environments. They are Symmetrix VMAX/VMAXe, VNX/VNXe and Isilon. The VMAX/

VMAXe product line continues to be EMC's flagship product for the high-end enterprise and consolidated data

centers; its revenue constitutes over 50% of the three platforms' combined revenue in 2011 and grew 11.5%

year over year, based on Gartner's estimates. EMC's midrange modular storage is represented by its unified

VNX/VNXe product family, introduced in the first quarter of 2011. It has been replacing the two separate

CLARiiON and Celerra product lines. The combined hardware revenue for VNX/VNXe, CLARiiON and Celerra

grew 20.6% in 2011 year over year, according to Gartner's market share statistics. EMC's Isilon platform grew

revenue in triple digits in 2011, but this platform has limited adoption for VMware support, as its key strength lies

with managing a large amount of unstructured data. Both Symmetrix and VNX platforms fully support VAAI and

VASA.


Although EMC owns the majority of VMware, it has allowed VMware to function independently in terms of

support for heterogeneous storage systems. Nevertheless, the majority ownership can project a biased image of

tighter integration between VMware and EMC's storage offerings in users' minds. Aware of that potential bias,

EMC's marketing tends to stay away from the ownership fact and focus on its storage platforms' value

propositions, such as FAST VP. VMAX is targeting data centers with the most comprehensive consolidation in

mind, such as consolidating both physical and virtual server storage and consolidating both open-system and

mainframe storage. It's also positioned for the environment with the most demanding storage performance

requirements. VMAXe is a light version of VMAX and doesn't support mainframe. VNX/VNXe offers customers the

additional choice of NFS data stores for fast, efficient VM-level cloning, whereas Isilon offers a highly scalable

NFS data store with easy management.

How EMC Competes

EMC has the largest direct storage sales force among all storage vendors. With VNXe, it also grew its channel

partners tremendously. For VMware environments, EMC highlights the fact that it has a single vCenter plug-in,

called Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI), for both its VMAX and VNX families. VSI can automatically discover VMAX

or VNX arrays and populate the basic information vCenter needs and allow vCenter administrators to provision

and manage SAN/NAS storage, such as replicating a writable snapshot of a data store or a VM. VSI also simplify

the manual process of VMware SRM fail-back.

Other EMC and VMware integration for EMC's primary storage includes its ProSphere and Ionix Data Center

Insight, which offer mapping information from VMs down to disk drives, service dependencies among different

elements, and compliance reporting.

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HP


HP is a leading global IT and infrastructure supplier for consumers, SMBs and large enterprises. It is the fourth-

largest external storage array vendor in the world. Although it offers four primary storage platform families for the

VMware environment (P4000 LeftHand, P6000/EVA, 3PAR and P9000), its marketing and sales focus is on 3PAR

and LeftHand. Gartner estimates 3PAR's hardware revenue growth in 4Q11 was 157.2% over 4Q10 while

LeftHand's year-over-year hardware revenue growth in 2011 is estimated at 22%. Both platforms support

VMware VAAI primitives, VASA, application-consistent VMware-aware snapshots, SRM, vCenter management

plug-ins and Pluggable Storage Architecture.


HP focuses most of its product marketing for VMware on 3PAR and LeftHand platforms. HP targets different

VMware user markets with these two storage families. The LeftHand P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance and the

LeftHand P4300 target the SMBs and branch offices that don't have a SAN infrastructure or are planning to have

a starter SAN. The company targets midmarket VMware users mainly with the 3PAR F-Class and LeftHand

P4500. For heavy VMware users in the high-end enterprise arena, HP promotes 3PAR's T-Class and V-Class

series as "next-generation, federated Tier 1 storage" for agility and efficiency. For VMware VDI deployments, HP

promotes the LeftHand and 3PAR, with the P4800 SAN for BladeSystem being the storage in the HP Client

Virtualization integrated system due to its tight integration within the BladeSystem architecture.

How HP Competes

HP touts P4000 LeftHand's and 3PAR's key design differentiators when competing in the VMware environment.

For LeftHand, HP focuses on storage clustering for linear performance, capacity scalability, network RAID and

multisite SAN, in conjunction with VMware High Availability or VMware Fault Tolerance. For 3PAR, HP competes

on its controller scalability and wide striping for consistent performance in a mixed workload environment —

typical for VMware — and a suite of thin technologies, including the built-in zero-detection capability of the 3PAR

ASIC for creating thin Eager Zeroed Thick VMDKs and Thin Persistence capabilities for reclaiming storage

capacity when deleting or moving VMs.

On both platforms, HP also promotes unified management functionality with the Insight Control for vCenter

Management Plugs-ins across storage, servers and networking and VMware-aware, application-consistent,

snapshot-based online data protection.

Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems


Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems is the fifth-largest storage system vendor in the world. Although Hitachi Ltd. has a

broad technology portfolio, Hitachi Data Systems is Hitachi's subsidiary selling storage solutions in the Americas,

EMEA and Asia/Pacific excluding Japan. In recent years, Hitachi Data Systems has been successful in going

beyond its traditional image of a "big iron" storage hardware supplier and achieved significant software and

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service revenue (nearly 50% in 2011). It recently announced its vision for a journey from building an infrastructure

cloud to building a content cloud and then an information cloud.

Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems has two main product families to serve VMware primary storage: high-end

monolithic USPV/VSP and midrange modular AMS. Gartner estimates that its USPV/VSP hardware revenue grew

28% in 2011, accounting for 66% of the combined revenue of the two families. The AMS product revenue, on the

other hand, remained flat in 2011. Both the USPV/VSP and the AMS platforms support key VAAI primitives. Their

VASA support is expected in 2012. The September 2011 acquisition of BlueArc signaled that Hitachi Data

Systems is getting more serious with its NAS strategy, which is likely to include VMware support with NFS data

stores.


VMware support is part of Hitachi Data Systems' broader product marketing strategies, which focus on the

storage virtualization technologies based on its ISPV/VSP platform to consolidate separate islands of storage

infrastructure for various applications. Unlike some of its peers, which created VMware integrated solutions,

Hitachi Data Systems chose to focus on Microsoft with its Microsoft HyperV Fast Track and Hitachi Exchange

Converged Solution. Although the Hitachi NAS (HNAS) product line based on BlueArc has a low attach rate to

VMware today, we expect Hitachi Data Systems to start marketing HNAS as a viable NAS solution for VMware in

2012 with its scalable file system and space-efficient cloning technologies.

How Hitachi Data Systems Competes

Hitachi Data Systems has been focusing more on software and service capabilities, channel partner programs

and emerging global markets with successful results in the past few years. Hitachi Data Systems claims that its

storage virtualization is able to offer up to 65% of capacity reclamation on existing storage assets, which include

many heterogeneous arrays from different vendors. For VMware environments, Hitachi Data Systems stresses

the benefits of its core storage functions, namely Hitachi Dynamic Tiering and Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning for

increased VM density and automated performance load balancing, as well as 99.999% guaranteed uptime and

no single point of failure.

IBM


With 14.2% market share in 2011, IBM is the second-largest ECB disk storage system vendor in the world. Its

general-purpose ECB disk storage system portfolio consists of five disparate platforms — DS8000, XIV Storage

System, Storwize V7000, DS5000 and N series. Representing approximately 30% of IBM's 2011 ECB disk

storage market, the DS8000 is mainly deployed with IBM System z and IBM Power Systems, with limited

installations supporting VMware. Presently, the DS8000 does not support VAAI or VASA. As a group, the IBM

XIV, Storwize V7000, DS5000 and N series focus on the midrange and high-end modular disk storage market.

This group increased year-over-year revenue by only 5% in 2011, based on Gartner's estimates. While the

Storwize V7000, XIV and DS5000 target the block-access ECB disk storage market, the N series addresses the

file-access market.

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The XIV Storage System, Storwize V7000 and the N series are the most popular products in the IBM ECB disk

storage system portfolio that natively support a VMware environment. Each brings a different set of attributes

that make them an attractive alternative for VMware infrastructures. IBM stresses the advantages of the XIV grid

architecture because of its ability to provide predictable and consistent performance with low resource overhead.

Moreover, the XIV supports VAAI and VASA, as well as vCenter and SRM plug-ins. The advanced data service

software, such as thin provisioning, Easy Tier and virtualized storage, as well as unified storage, are the points of

emphasis made by IBM for the Storwize V7000. However, while the Storwize V7000 supports VAAI and has

vCenter management SRM plug-ins, it does not presently support VASA. Even though the N series is a unified

ECB disk storage system supporting both file- and block- access infrastructures, IBM markets the N series as its

primary general-purpose file-access ECB disk storage platform. The N series provides comprehensive support

for VMware environments and fully supports VAAI or VASA.

How IBM Competes

There is considerable overlap in IBM's ECB disk storage product portfolio. Accordingly, IBM has to be extremely

crisp in its product positioning and messaging. For VMware infrastructures, IBM provides the following guidance

to its worldwide field organizations:

■ Emphasizing its price/performance attributes, the XIV is targeted at the high-end enterprise, nonmainframesegment.

■ The Storwize V7000 is the block-access platform of choice for midrange VMware environments and isincreasingly promoted as IBM's unified ECB disk storage system of choice.

■ While the N series is a unified ECB disk storage platform, IBM positions it as the file-access platform ofchoice for midrange to enterprise VMware environments.

■ The DS5000 is an ECB disk storage system that offers good price/performance with basic data managementservices.

NetApp


Propelled solely by organic growth, NetApp is the third-largest provider of external controller-based disk storage

systems in the world. It offers an integrated unified storage architecture that simultaneously supports file- and

block-access protocols with common management and data service software. The NetApp Data ONTAP platform

scales seamlessly from its entry-level FAS2200, through the midrange FAS3200, and up to the high-end

FAS6200. This platform is supported by a rich library of software that addresses utilization efficiency, data

protection, multitenancy, high availability, and data retention and archiving for organizations ranging from large

enterprises to SMBs. In 2011, Gartner estimates that NetApp's FAS systems grew revenue by 18.9%. NetApp

has done a noteworthy job of integrating its value-added software with VMware core functionality, as well as

being an early implementer of applicable VAAI and VASA. The company believes that the number of its

customers using NFS to support the VMware environment has gone up substantially to about 50% to leverage

the ease of management for NFS data stores.

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Emphasizing utilization efficiency, ease of use, common data service software for file- and block-access

applications, and optimum time to value messaging, NetApp presents its FAS storage systems as best-of-breed

offerings. This fundamental position is augmented by tight integration with leading ISVs, including Microsoft,

Oracle, SAP and VMware, to create unified solutions for targeted industries.

How NetApp Competes

NetApp employs a diversified go-to-market strategy embracing value-added resellers (VARs), system integrators

(SIs), distributors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that generate over 70% of its annual revenue.

Beyond relationships with leading global distributors, NetApp also benefits from its reseller and OEM

relationships with Fujitsu Technology Solutions (FTS), Fujitsu and IBM. These indirect sales channels are

augmented by NetApp's direct sales force, which concentrates on a small number of multinational accounts that

require global support.

Aside from early integration with VMware vStorage APIs and popular array-VMware integrations, such as remote

replication and a vCenter plug-in, NetApp likes to highlight its other core value propositions. It claims that its

deduplication function for primary storage can save VMware virtual server customers over 60% of storage

capacity on average, and its FlexClone function, which supports the VMware linked clone offload, can save

significant time by provisioning a large amount of VMs in minutes. NetApp's Snapshot and SnapManager

technologies are VMware-aware and support different levels of granularity for easier management. Other

integrations with VMware include MetroCluster with VMware HA and Fault Tolerance, as well as MultiStore with

VMware vShield.

Oracle


Oracle's entry into the ECB disk storage market stems from its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2009 and

Pillar Data Systems in June 2011. Oracle offers two primary ECB disk storage platforms for VM infrastructures:

ZFS Storage Appliance and the Pillar Axiom. Both systems offer a broad set of controller-based data

management service software to address the storage infrastructure needs of midsize to enterprise markets.

Market traction for the ZFS Storage Appliance is improving, with 2H11 growing 8.2% over 2H10. Gartner's

revenue estimates for Pillar Data Axiom are almost $20 million for the second half of 2011.


While both the ZFS Storage Appliance and Pillar Data ECB disk storage systems are able to support both block-

and file-access protocols simultaneously, the ZFS Storage Appliance is targeted at the NAS market while the

Pillar Axiom is Oracle's lead offering for the SAN market. When selling the ZFS Storage Appliance into a VMware

environment, Oracle emphasizes its advanced set of data service functions coupled with the Hybrid Storage

Pools to enhance performance and comprehensive storage analytics. Presently, the ZFS Storage Appliance does

not support VAAI or VASA. For VMware infrastructures, Oracle highlights the Pillar Axiom Quality of Service (QoS)

feature, which is used to assign storage resources to match the VM physical server resource allocation, as well

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as its support for multitier hard-disk drives and solid-state drives. The Pillar Axiom does not support VAAI or

VASA.

How Oracle Competes

The Pillar Axiom is recommended when customers want to discreetly provision and manage quality of service

among VMs. The ZFS Storage Appliance is recommended when automated performance management with deep

storage analytics is required.

References and Methodology

Gartner established the preliminary inclusion criteria for this report and conducted a vendor survey among all the

players that potentially were to be profiled in this report. Other sources of information include vendor briefings

with Gartner in the past years and relevant Magic Quadrant survey responses in the past, as well as vendors'

public websites.

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