Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide ($5,000) by DCIG

The Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG), a provider of IT storage analysis and guidance, announced a midrange storage systems buyer’s guide, featuring detailed product comparisons across more than 20 storage vendors and 70+ storage arrays. New for 2010, the DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide provides product comparisons among the widest range of storage array options and identifies the winners and losers across five categories, including FC/iSCSI, FC only, iSCSI only, hardware and software.

The DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide provides 100+ pages of detailed information and analysis across the broadest range of midrange arrays from the industry’s leading storage providers. The guide is intended to narrow down the playing field to develop a list of competitive products that have comparable features to meet specific application or business needs. Developed to be the go-to resource for IT professionals, the Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide provides direct comparisons of storage systems classified as midrange arrays and delivers insight into the range of offerings available on the market.

DCIG provides detailed selection criteria
and recommends the guide be used to:

• Eliminate the painstaking research associated with coming up with a short list of possible midrange arrays
• Do apples-to-apples comparisons of midrange arrays from different storage vendors
• Separate the apples from the oranges
• Provide perspective on how models from less well known vendors compare against with established and better known brands
• Normalize complex storage terminology
• Create a standardized data sheet
• Justify technical buying recommendations to business professionals

Additionally, the Guide identifies trends in midrange storage array innovation to showcase the latest developments in this space. For example, 100% of today’s midrange storage arrays include support for features such as hot swappable fans, power supplies and disk drives as well as LUN masking and some form of RAID. 70% of today’s storage arrays support SSD either natively or as part of a virtual storage pool that can be created using midrange arrays from that storage provider.

Other findings reveal the following:

• Over 50% of midrange storage arrays support thin provisioning
• Less than 10% of midrange arrays support de-duplication of primary storage
• Less than 30% of midrange arrays support MAID

Each midrange array in the 2010 DCIG Guide is scored and ranked as ‘Recommended’, ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ and ‘Entry Level’ based upon that score. On each midrange array, at least 60 different features were evaluated, weighted, scored and then ranked. DCIG has made it very simple for IT professionals to look at the scores in order to come up with a short list of products for consideration. Companies involved in selecting new storage systems are most likely familiar with EMC, HP, and IBM and maybe NetApp and HDS.

This creates a certain level of comfort when buying products from these companies and a certain built-in resistance to buying midrange arrays from companies that are perceived as unknown quantities. The DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide helps to remove some of that apprehension about buying from a less well known provider since organizations can clearly see how these models from lesser known companies compare with those that are well known.

David Stevens, a senior storage administrator with a large northeastern university said this after reviewing the Buyer’s Guide: “This will be very beneficial to all storage administrators who are trying to make a decision on what storage arrays to evaluate in their environment. The Buyer’s Guide is very upfront about what it has and has not done in analyzing the different midrange array models and goes into fairly gory detail in terms of how it arrives at the scores, ratings and rankings for each midrange array model.”

“The DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide gives users the opportunity to do ‘at-a-glance’ comparisons between many different midrange array models. Using these results, they can quickly come up with a short list of products that meet their specific needs and either go directly to a product evaluation stage with select midranges or even opt to get competitive bids on these products,” said Jerome Wendt, principal analyst, DCIG. “Organizations limiting themselves to only a few product options may be missing out on advanced features and capabilities now available in the market.”

The DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide is available immediately.