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Aberdeen Garners Best-in-Class Small Enterprise Storage Array
- DCIG, LLC and Foskett Services Evaluate Storage Arrays to provide
an Invaluable Comprehensive Resource Guide to Help Evaluate Best Options for Storage Array Needs -
Santa Fe Springs, California, April 4,
2011: The advent of server virtualization and virtual server operating
systems has forced end users in small enterprises to fully evaluate what
solutions available offer the most features at the best price for their
environments. Typically, for end users looking for high-end enterprise
class disk arrays, there is an abundance of resource options and
evaluation guides. Up until now, there were few, if any, resources
available to eliminate painstaking and involved research to help end
users come up with a short list of small enterprise storage array
options to best meet their needs.
In the latest in an on-going series of Insider Buyer’s Guides, DCIG, LLC
and Foskett Services, collaborated to assess available options and
compile a comprehensive guide of small enterprise storage arrays that
are affordable, easy to deploy and reliable and perform well. The
Expanded Edition of the DCIG 2011 Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyer’s
Guide is designed to take the heavy lifting out of determining what
solutions are available and provide a resource to assess the value of
each array and feature just as an end user might. While the Buyer’s
Guide ranks products in terms of completeness of their feature set,
appropriateness of each solution is based on end user need, environments
and application usage. In some circumstances it is very likely that a
lower-rated product may be a better solution for many applications and
use cases that do not require a broad set of features and options.
“The small enterprise storage array market has been largely ignored in
favor of large enterprise storage arrays,” said Jerome Wendt, co-author
and founder, DCIG, LLC. “Small enterprise solutions are not widely known
and even if an end user did research on their own, there have been few
ways available to make an objective buying decision. This Buyer’s Guide
can assist end users in making the all-important buying decision while
removing the mystery that shrouds how some small enterprise storage
arrays are configured.”
DCIG, LLC, and Foskett Services looked at over 50 features on 37
different offerings and solutions from nineteen different companies
across five categories: Storage controller, storage capacity, storage
network connectivity, availability and support. Solutions were ranked
“Recommended,” and/or “Best-in-Class,” “Excellent,” “Good,” and “Basic”
across functionality and capability with the intent to provide an
“at-a-glance” comparison from which users can select the most
appropriate solution for their existing needs with the Aberdeen AberNAS and Aberdeen AberSAN storage arrays achieving the #1 overall ranking
respectively in the two categories covered in this Buyer’s Guide.
“Those who know us, look upon Aberdeen as the best kept secret in the
storage marketplace. With our first place finish in the Expanded Edition
of the DCIG 2011 Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyer's Guide,
Aberdeen’s secret just might get out. We’ve historically enjoyed steady,
sustained growth, not to mention over 40% growth in 2010 over 2009, but
now things should get even more interesting.” Aberdeen's President and
CEO Moshe Ovadya
Aberdeen will have the Best-in-Class
AberSAN unified storage enterprise storage array on display in booth
#6039 at the ISC West International Security Conference and Exhibition,
taking place at the Sands Expo and Convention Center, April 5-8. The
AberSAN will also be on display during the NAB trade show at the Las
Vegas Convention Center in booth #N2834 from April 11-14, 2011.
“This Buyer’s Guide from DCIG will be a very valuable resource as I look
for products in this space,” said Tony McGivern, at Adeptra, Inc. “The
one page data sheet on each storage array is very useful. They give me a
quick overview with sufficient detail to be able to pick one or two
candidates based on what I need but without reams of information about
the ones I wasn’t interested in.”
The criteria for a storage array's inclusion in this Buyer's Guide were
as follows:
• It had to allow networked storage connectivity (FC, iSCSI, and/or NAS)
to multiple servers
• It had to support at least eight (8) internal hard disk drives (HDDs)
• There had to be sufficient public available information to make a
meaningful decision
• The model had to be shipping by March 1, 2011
• It had to be approximately priced between $5,000 and $30,000
Some of the key findings that came out of the research that went into
preparing this Expanded Edition of the DCIG 2011 Small Enterprise
Storage Array Buyer's Guide include:
• 86% of the arrays support both 1 Gb Ethernet and the iSCSI protocol
• 52% of the arrays support FC (4 Gb or higher)
• Only 38% of the arrays support 10 Gb Ethernet
• Only 24% of the arrays support NAS
• All arrays that support NAS also support iSCSI
• 67% offer support for a single storage controller
• 47% offer support for dual storage controllers
• 19% offer support for either single or dual storage controller
configurations
The Expanded Edition of the DCIG 2011 Small Enterprise Storage Array
Buyer’s Guide Top Five solutions in the $5,000 to $15,000 model category
include (in alphabetical order): Aberdeen LLC AberNAS 260/360 Series,
D-Link Corp DSN-5110-10, Dell PowerVault MD3200i/MD3220i, EMC VNXe3100,
and PROMISE Technology, Inc. VessRAID 1000i Series.
Aberdeen has since released an upgrade
to the Best-in-Class
AberNAS LX Series
storage appliance to feature a 64bit Linux-based OS and a grand
capacity scalability of 8 Exabytes, featuring the recently validated
Hitachi’s 3TB Ultrastar 7K3000 disk drives. The Linux-based OS
offers ongoing and broad-based support from the worldwide Linux open
source community, combined with unique VMware Ready features.
The Expanded Edition of the DCIG 2011 Small Enterprise Storage Array
Buyer’s Guide Top Ten solutions in the $15,000 to $30,000 model category
include (in alphabetical order): Aberdeen LLC AberSAN Z20/Z30/Z50, Dot
Hill Systems Corp. AssuredSAN 2700 series, EMC VNXe3300, HP StorageWorks
P2000 G3 10GbE iSCSI/FC, StoneFly, Inc. Voyager TSC16 and Winchester
Systems Inc. VX-2300/3400 and SX-2300/3400 series.
“Customers have responded favorably to
the AberSAN ZFS Shared Storage solution, powered by NexentaStor
software, and DCIG’s ‘ Best in Class’ ranking further affirms that
OpenStorage solutions are gaining significant traction in the market,”
said Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta Systems.
“What our research indicated is there is an embarrassment of riches in
the small enterprise storage array solution space,” said Stephen Foskett,
founder and principal at Foskett Services. “Small enterprise solutions
are far more than stripped down versions of larger enterprise arrays.
This Buyer’s Guide helps end users spend less time on research and more
time on narrowing the best options to handle their evolving
requirements.”
Disclosure and Methodology:
The raw data featured in this Buyer's Guide primarily came from two
sources: an online survey completed by manufacturers, and publicly
available information on the Web. DCIG and Foskett Services attempted to
validate all of the information contained in this Buyer's Guide with all
manufacturers contacted after the research was done, in order to verify
our findings. Once the raw data was compiled, DCIG and Foskett Services
assessed the value of each array as an end user might. Relative merits
of various approaches each array offered for data protection, high
availability, performance and other key attributes were considered and
judged accordingly. This Guide is not intended to be a substitute for
bringing individual storage arrays in-house and testing them with
specific applications.
Resources:
DCIG Blog: http://www.dcig.com
Foskett Services Blog:
http://www.foskettservices.com/category/commentary
Aberdeen:
http://www.aberdeeninc.com
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Media Contacts:
About Aberdeen:
Aberdeen LLC is a leading manufacturer of servers and
storage. Delivering exceptional performance, unparalleled reliability
and outstanding value, Aberdeen’s award winning products are deployed
every day by IT departments in many of the world’s largest
organizations. More information about Aberdeen is available at
www.aberdeeninc.com.
Day to day announcements from Aberdeen
can be found on Twitter: @aberdeenllc.
About DCIG:
DCIG, LLC, is an analyst firm with headquarters in Texas, focusing on archive,
backup, retrieval and storage systems. DCIG’s analysts provide both sponsored
and unsponsored analysis. DCIG’s sponsored analysis is available in the form of
blogs, case studies, executive white papers, special reports and full-length
white papers. Its unsponsored analysis is available in the form of contributed
articles, blog entries and Buyer’s Guides. DCIG’s goal is to provide evaluations
on sponsoring and non-sponsoring companies and their technology and products to
consumers, public relations firms, business analysts and other companies. DCIG
distributes industry, company and product analysis by way of viral marketing and
community building using the burgeoning BLOG infrastructures created worldwide.
About Foskett Services:
Foskett Services is a provider of information technology and business strategy
solutions. After spending over a decade providing consulting and analysis
services to enterprise IT organizations and infrastructure vendors, Stephen
Foskett launched his own services organization to face this wave of change
head-on. This group applies core best practices for managing IT systems to the
emerging post-PC world. |
