COM J. Krischer, R. Passmore, S. Zaffos

Transcription

1 J. Krischer, R. Passmore, S. Zaffos Research Note 8 October 2002 Commentary Disk Storage Vendors and Products at a Glance Through 2001, EMC and Compaq Computer have dominated the monolithic and modular storage markets respectively. However, growing competition is changing the storage landscape, leading to better deals for buyers. There are two types of storage subsystems monolithic and modular. Gartner uses the term "monolithic" to describe high-end storage arrays that are large enough to handle most applications in a single box and can scale capacity and performance/connectivity as application needs grow. Typical products include EMC's Symmetrix, IBM's Enterprise Storage Server (ESS), Hitachi Data Systems' (HDS') Lightning and Storage Technology's (StorageTek's) Shared Virtual Array (SVA). The most important feature of monolithic systems is that they provide a single storage entity to manage and can move and allocate any physical piece of storage to any host-side connection. Monolithic storage systems usually provide better functionality than modular subsystems. Monolithic storage was named when applications were run on single servers, or clusters of servers, where scaling an application meant buying a more powerful server or adding additional nodes in the cluster. As applications began to be deployed over multiple servers, multiple host connections were deployed to allow physical sharing of the storage across not just clusters, but also independent servers. Today, with Fibre Channel as the interconnect, monolithic arrays have grown to handle small storage area networks (SANs) in a single box, both with and without Fibre Channel switches, and, more recently, with the switches embedded in the box (see "External Monolithic-Disk Magic Quadrant: 2002 Update," M ). The alternative, modular arrays such as Compaq's Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), EMC's CLARiiON and Sun Microsystems' T3, can scale both capacity and performance/connectivity, but only by deploying multiple modular arrays in parallel. The result is multiple entities to manage, and clear boundaries between physical storage and interconnects. Therefore, enterprises are now faced with a wide choice of storage subsystems both monolithic and modular. Figure 1 shows Gartner Dataquest's storage revenue figures for 1998 to 2001, combining monolithic and modular revenue for the major vendors active in these markets. The success of HDS and IBM in the high-end storage market is a reflection of increased management attention, their ability to deliver functionality equivalent to EMC's, aggressive pricing, and enterprises' desire to keep their storage environments competitive. Gartner Entire contents 2002 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Figure 1 High-End Storage Market, Revenue ($M) Change (%) Market Share (%) Vendors EMC 3,159 4,099 5,348 3, Compaq StorageWorks 975 1,314 1,841 1, IBM 1,290 1,074 1,378 1, Hitachi Ltd./HDS 1,555 1,587 1,523 1, Hewlett-Packard , Fujitsu Ltd Sun Network Storage , NEC Dell PowerVault NCR StorageTek Source: Gartner Dataquest To help enterprises make informed choices about storage products, we provide an overview of what's on offer from vendors of monolithic and modular subsystems. Some vendors have products in both categories. Vendors of Monolithic, High-End Multiplatform Storage EMC EMC is the largest vendor in the high-end storage market. It achieved this by being the first to market with a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) product (subsequently enhanced to provide many value-add features and functions), aggressive sales and marketing, and superb service and support. EMC was the first mainframe storage vendor to: Deliver multiplatform connectivity Focus on the Unix and Windows NT market segments Deliver remote copy Deliver nearly nondisruptive data migrations Competitors reacted to EMC's success, and their loss of market share, by delivering products with comparable functionality, dedicating marketing and sales resources to storage, and entering into creative partnerships to improve distribution and time to market. In the face of stronger competition mainly from HDS, IBM, Sun (which resells HDS products) and Hewlett-Packard (HP), which provides a Hitachi subsystem under an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement EMC reduced prices and assigned more resources to the mainframe market to defend its market share. In September 2001, EMC announced the 8000 series, which has a larger, newly designed cache. Compared with its predecessor (the 3000/5000 series), the 8000 series has increased capacity, larger connectivity and better functionality for example, dynamic support for Parallel Access Volume/Multiple Allegiance (PAV/MA). However, EMC has not yet responded to recent product announcements from HDS and IBM. Until it does, expect EMC to continue pricing hardware very aggressively and shifting revenue into software. 8 October

3 Consistent with this strategy, EMC has purchased several storage software vendors and announced that it intends to make its storage software more open. WideSky was introduced in October 2001, with the aim of expanding EMC's software management capabilities to include a variety of heterogeneous storage, storage resource and network systems. Until then, EMC's software was restricted to its own hardware products, and WideSky is a necessary first step in implementing the strategy of becoming a storage software company. At a time when revenue from controller-related software features is endangered by fierce competition mainly from HDS and IBM multiplatform storage management opens up new business opportunities. Fujitsu Technology Solutions (FTS) FTS (formerly known as Amdahl) is no longer selling its Eternus GR series of storage offerings and is again focusing on reselling EMC storage. The Eternus GR series' lack of success was due to a variety of factors: ruthless price competition, limited scalability relative to its competitors, "me too" functionality and ineffective sales and marketing. As a reseller of Sun equipment and Primepower Solaris-compatible servers, expect FTS to concentrate on its installed base and bundled bids. HP HP used to be an EMC reseller, but, since May 1999, it has had an OEM partnership with Hitachi Ltd. In the first full year of this partnership, HP equaled the revenue previously received as an EMC reseller, but with higher margins. However, since September 2000, HP's momentum in selling the XP series has slackened, due to internal organization changes and the Compaq acquisition. The major flaw in HP's high-end storage strategy is its relatively weak presence in non-hp platforms and its lack of S/390 expertise. For SAN-attached storage, HP is claiming, with some justification, more openness than EMC and better management tools than HDS. HP SANs work with OEM products from a variety of vendors, in addition to EMC, and with Compaq's Enterprise Network Storage Architecture (ENSA). ENSA and HP's Federated Storage Area Management (FSAM) have converged and HP will move forward with the ENSA name while retaining the FSAM value proposition of complete SAN management independent of storage or platform. In July 2002, EMC and HP announced an agreement to cross-license certain storage system application programming interfaces (APIs). In addition, the companies will define cooperative support levels so that end users of their respective storage management products can be assured that each vendor will provide support for their configurations. In August 2002, HP also signed a storage API-swap agreement with IBM (but not for all subsystems), which will allow HP's Common Information Model (CIM) and Bluefin-based storage management applications to provide cross-hardware support. In September 2002, HP signed an equivalent agreement with HDS. In the short to mid-term, expect HP to continue enhancing its StorageWorks CommandView to provide product differentiation from HDS and Sun. HDS HDS was the second vendor (after EMC) to ship multiplatform connectivity for mainframe-type storage subsystems, but until its OEM agreement with HP, it lacked credibility in the high-end Unix and Windows NT/2000 markets. HDS's withdrawal from selling mainframes in March 2000 had a major impact on the company's financial results and forced it to restructure and cut its workforce. However, it has quickly and 8 October

4 effectively transformed itself into a storage company. HDS quickly became EMC's major challenger in accounts where high availability, scalability and performance top the requirements list. In addition to direct sales, HDS has expanded indirect channel sales since In August 2001, Sun, Hitachi Ltd. and HDS announced a three-year distributor agreement to market cobranded HDS 9900 storage systems. This agreement, together with the OEM agreement with HP, firmly entrenches Hitachi monolithic storage systems in the high-end Unix market. Since refocusing on storage and introducing its Lightning 9000 series in June 2000, HDS and its partners have successfully positioned the Lightning as an architecturally advanced storage system delivering unsurpassed data availability and scalability. In May 2002, HDS announced two new high-end storage subsystems the 9980V and the scaled-down 9970V (HP and Sun announced these products at the same time as HP SureStore XP1024/XP128 and Sun StorEdge 9980/9970). The Hi-Star architecture used in the 9960 had already captured the market's imagination by increasing the internal bandwidth to 6.4 GB/sec. The V-series took this even further, to 15.9 GB/sec, and also provides "virtual channels." At the same time as announcing the 9880V, HDS also announced: TrueNorth, a strategy to simplify storage area management. The HiCommand Management framework and product suite, which provides a vision of policybased management across heterogeneous software and hardware storage products. IBM IBM's ESS, or "Shark," has been available since September IBM has used aggressive pricing and bundling to buy market share and position ESS as an attractive alternative for users needing full-featured, high-end, low-cost storage. So far, IBM has shipped more than 10,000 units with a total of 22 petabytes. Client feedback indicates that Shark is performing as advertised, or better, with respect to data availability and throughput, leaving just two remaining issues: usable scalability and the time needed to nondisruptively update microcode. In July 2002, IBM announced two new ESS models the 800 and 800 Turbo. By deploying larger caches, faster microprocessors and increasing the number of processors to 2x6 (for the 800 Turbo) and 2x4 (for the 800), IBM has significantly increased the bandwidth. The 3,200MB/sec bandwidth of the 800 models (more than twice the 1,150MB/sec of the F models) will allow IBM to install larger capacities in a single subsystem. If IBM performance claims are validated in the marketplace, the ESS 800 and 800 Turbo will reposition ESS as second only to HDS's 9980V in usable throughput and scalability. IBM has also built the ESS to compete on price by using standard components. These products, and the April 2002 announcement of cooperation with HDS in storage development, will enhance IBM's position as a high-end storage supplier. Gartner Dataquest's figures show that, in 2001, IBM increased its market share from 8.4 percent to 12.6 percent of the worldwide external RAID-based subsystems. StorageTek On 21 August 2002, StorageTek introduced its next-generation V2X, which has more than 11 terabytes capacity, more than double that of the V960. The V2X builds on the V960, providing a new Fibre Channel back-end, several microcode enhancements and architectural improvements. Like its predecessors, the V2X includes StorageTek's SnapShot software, a log-structured file system that simplifies storage 8 October

5 management and increases usage rates, and data compression. StorageTek has also worked with software vendors to take advantage of these features. Innovative Data's Fast Dump Restore (FDR) product reduces backup time by backing up compressed data. Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) also moves compressed data across remote links to improve performance and reduce bandwidth needs. Although the V2X does not put StorageTek in the lead with respect to either performance or capacity, it protects customers' investments in virtual storage functionality and is a very attractive product in mainframe environments. Sun Sun was late in discovering the business potential of storage. In 2001, the company's server revenue was three times that of its storage revenue, at a time when enterprises were spending between 30 percent and 50 percent of their hardware budgets on storage. However, since 4Q01, Sun has increased sales in both midrange and high-end storage products. Sun's T3 array, announced in June 2000, was intended to recapture Solaris external storage from EMC Symmetrix systems. The failure to do this prompted Sun to review its storage strategy. It made executive changes and signed an agreement with HDS to comarket the HDS The agreement, announced in August 2001, between Sun, Hitachi and HDS provides Sun with a high-end storage product that competes directly in the enterprise-class storage segment. Sales in the first year of the agreement with HDS have exceeded initial expectations, and so far the deal seems to be delivering solid results for Sun. The two companies are working well together, and Sun's indirect channels are regularly bidding 9900s. Both companies' approach to the partnership has been very pragmatic. Sun even labeled the 3900 and 6900 subsystem (based on the T3) to match and integrate with the 9900 in one storage line. In August 2002, Sun was the first systems vendor to announce a SAN management product that complied with the CIM. Vendors of Modular Storage Since the mid-1990s, companies such as EMC, Digital Equipment (subsequently absorbed into Compaq, then into HP), Data General (now EMC CLARiiON), HDS, MTI Technology, LSI Logic and XIOtech have competed vigorously to provide the storage connected to server vendors' platforms. The low end remains dominated by the server vendors themselves, but the mid-to-high end is open to third-party competition. Third parties are also competing to provide storage for all SANs. Recognizing this, the remaining server vendors have announced support for other vendors' platforms (IBM and HP in 1999, Dell Computer in 2000 and, finally, Sun in 2001). The result, for users looking for storage in a multiplatform environment, is an unprecedented breadth of offerings and prices, and increasing functionality. All the high-end storage vendors offer modular products through direct sales, OEM relationships or reseller agreements. Note that although we describe the two markets separately, modular and monolithic storage arrays are offered in head-on competition in many situations. The offerings from vendors with significant shares in the modular storage market are described below. Dell 8 October

6 In 2000, Dell was gaining share rapidly in the Intel server market and established a separate storage business to fend off the challenge of third-party storage vendors. In 2001, it began to attack other server vendors' storage, particularity in the Intel space, and entered into a strategic relationship with EMC. This deal gives Dell exclusive rights in the small-and-midsize business (SMB) and government sectors with the CLARiiON product line. After a brief foray into SAN appliances and its own modular RAID arrays, the CLARiiON offering gives Dell products that can match the capacity and deliver the most popular features required in the market, whether direct or SAN-connected. Given Dell's strategy of establishing storage as a commodity by driving costs down to the lowest possible, the only drawback for users is the lack of support for Unix, and Dell's relative lack of experience in mission-critical environments. EMC EMC entered the modular array business several years ago when it acquired Data General and its CLARiiON product line. With the introduction of the FC4700 family in 2000, EMC improved performance, and offered limited point-in-time and remote-copy capabilities. In August 2002, the introduction of the CX600 tripled the performance of EMC's offerings and enhanced the virtualization, point-in-time and remote-copy features. Throughout this period, EMC has improved the range of SAN capabilities, and now has common software for managing across its Symmetrix and CLARiiON families. The CX600 allows EMC to claim performance leadership in the modular space, and at least until HP's Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) ships its promised features, has wrested functional leadership from the new HP's StorageWorks products. HP HP/Compaq is the largest storage vendor (based on capacity shipments) and continues to sell very aggressively in the midrange, providing intense competition to the large subsystems. Compared with other server vendors, Compaq had the highest market share of storage connected to its own servers, and in 2001 sold twice as many SAN ports as its nearest competitor. It also had an increasing share of the storage market for non-compaq platforms. Platform support is still somewhat limited, but HP has endorsed the former Compaq StorageWorks products as both the brand and the strategic architecture for modular storage moving forward. StorageWorks has proven functional leadership in the midrange storage market. Previous HP offerings (from the MA8000 to the EMA16000) provided several controller-based features: point-in-time copy and remote copy, logical unit number (LUN) masking, and a call-home capability. HP's latest offering, the Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) has increased performance, scalability and virtualization, and promises improvements to point-in-time, replication and platform support by the end of HP's Virtual Array (VA) series, also rich with virtualization features, will continue to be offered, but development activities have been refocused on the EVA architecture, which HP claims will be expanded through 1Q04 to provide a wide price/scalability span. HDS HDS's modular product is the 9200, or "Thunder." Though competitive "on paper," the 9200 has not gained the same sort of market share as the 9900 series. There seem to be two issues: a lack of indirect channels with comparable market impact to those for Sun or HP products; and insufficient attention given to the 9200 by the sales force. IBM and StorageTek 8 October

7 IBM and StorageTek both resell modular disk products supplied by LSI Logic (though LSI claims its MetaStor division is still actively marketing its products). IBM is the most aggressive in selling the Fibre Array Storage Technology (FAST) products into the market, and gained share in StorageTek's primary Unix and NT storage offering is the D178, a full Fibre Channel storage system with remote and point-in-time copy. The D-series products complement StorageTek tape, robotics and monolithic storage businesses, and are used as the primary vehicle for building SANs. The D-series is functionally competitive, offering both point-in-time and remote-copy functionality, is attractively priced, SAN-certified and obviously supports a broad range of heterogeneous platforms. Early indications are that StorageTek is gaining some momentum with the D178 and that the relationship with LSI is working well. Sun Earlier in 2002, Sun's network storage business unit combined its T3 product with Vicom's switch hardware and virtualization software to create the StorEdge 3900 and 6900 respectively. On its own, the T3 is just another entry disk subsystem. When performance enhanced, though, the T3 makes a good building block for a modular system. Supplementing the StorEdge 6900 with Solaris-based point-in-time and remote copy achieves two strategic objectives: it provides better alternatives to the previous generations of Sun's disks, and it provides Sun with a base platform for future architectural enhancements. Sun has been slower than most to bring SAN capabilities to the market, and this product, along with the HDS product mentioned above, finally give Sun a presence. Our view is that these offerings will likely reverse Sun's loss of storage market share in XIOtech/Seagate Technology XIOtech is owned by Seagate Technology, which gives it financial stability. Combined with aggressive marketing and selling, this is beginning to make the company visible to users. XIOtech's modular disk product, probably best described as a "SAN in a box," can be configured to the capacities of larger subsystems, and offers many of the value-added features found in larger systems at competitive prices. XIOtech was particularly quick to understand the need for virtualization features and deliver them to the market, along with very easy to use point-in-time and remote-replication capabilities. Bottom Line: The storage subsystems market is currently a buyer's market. Never before has there been so much viable competition in all segments of the market. When asking a vendor for a proposal, make it clear that you will also be negotiating with the competition. Take advantage of value-added features where they will return good business value, but buy less-featured products if they will do the job. Ask for proposals from at least three vendors. If this situation is leveraged skillfully, users can manage their storage costs more effectively, an essential prerequisite for coping with the huge growth in storage requirements being experienced by all types of enterprise. 8 October