Flaw is in the qualifications
"...maximum raw storage capacity of 500TB."
Mid-range as more to do with performance and cost than capacity.
Beancounting firm DCIG has published a midrange storage array buyers' report – with one or two suppliers missing. DCIG states that its Buyers' Guide "weights, scores and ranks more than 100 features of seventeen (17) arrays from ten (10) different storage providers.” Its spiel continues: “These 17 storage arrays are drawn …
haven't bothered to look at the report myself but if the above is accurate it would exclude any currently shipping HPE 3PAR systems as the lowest end model 8200 supports 750TB raw.
But yet apparently the report includes HPE so I would assume that means 3PAR.. so maybe another double standard.
Not assessing capacity when reviewing midrange arrays makes no sense. Capacity is absolutely an evaluation criteria. If an organization's only concerns are performance and cost, it should buy an SSD and put it inside the server. The SSD will likely perform faster and cost far less than a midrange array.
Why use raw capacity as a measurement at all? I cannot think of a reason that it is relevant to anything or a basis of comparison compared to usable capacity pre data reduction. Effective capacity can be skewed by factoring in nonsense such as thin provisioning.
But no matter what, or how antiquated you think NTAP is, leaving them out of an analysis like this negates the relevance of the report.
DCIG uses raw capacity as a measurement as it is one of the few capacity metrics that DCIG can reliably and objectively assess. Metrics such as effective or usable capacity are influenced by a number of variables that DCIG finds subjective. Usable capacities can vary greatly between arrays depending on the data protection methodology applied to the flash and/or hard disk drives they use.
NTAP was simply not covered because none of its array models satisfied the inclusion/exclusion criteria for this particular Buyer's Guide Edition. NTAP models will appear in other forthcoming DCIG Buyer's Guide Editions that are based upon DCIG's research into enterprise storage arrays.
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