2019-20 · 6 the eight-step process used to rank the products 7 dcig comments and thoughts 7...

2019-20 ENTERPRISE DEDUPLICATION BACKUP TARGET APPLIANCE BUYER’S GUIDE By Jerome Wendt

The Insider’s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliances

E M P O W E R I N G T H E I T I N D U S T RY W I T H A C T I O N A B L E A N A LY S I S · W W W. D C I G . C O M

2019-20 ENTERPRISE DEDUPLICATION BACKUP TARGET APPLIANCE BUYER’S GUIDEThe Insider’s Guide to Evaluating Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliances

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction

3 Executive Summary

5 How to Use this Buyer’s Guide

5 Disclosures

6 Inclusion Criteria

6 The Eight-Step Process Used to Rank the Products

7 DCIG Comments and Thoughts7 Appliance Architecture: Scale-up

versus Scale-out 7 Scale-out Benefits and Limitations7 Scale-up Benefits and Limitations8 Virtual Appliances8 Pricing, Performance and

Data Deduplication Ratios9 Support for General-purpose Clouds9 Maturing Product Lines and Features 10 Time to Recovery for Applications,

Data, and Virtual Machines

10 DCIG Observations10 Recommended Ranking12 Excellent Ranking

14 Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance Rankings

16 Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance Products

17 Cohesity C3500

18 Cohesity C4300

19 Cohesity C4600

20 Dell EMC DD9300

21 Dell EMC DD9800

22 ExaGrid EX5000

23 ExaGrid EX7000

24 ExaGrid EX10000E

25 ExaGrid EX13000E

26 ExaGrid EX21000E

27 ExaGrid EX32000E

28 ExaGrid EX40000E

29 ExaGrid EX63000E

30 HPE StoreOnce 3620





35 NEC HYDRAstor HS8-5000 Series

Appendices

A-1 Appendix A—Definitions, Explanations and TerminologyB-1 Appendix B—Vendor Contact InformationC-1 Appendix C—DCIG Contact Information

© 2019 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved.

Licensed to HPE with unlimited and unrestricted distribution rights through December 2020.



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Introduction Enterprises rarely want to talk about the make-up of the infrastructure of their data centers anymore. They prefer to talk about artificial intelligence, cloud adoption, data analytics, machine learning, software-defined data centers, and uninterrupted business operations. As part of those discussions, they want to leverage current technologies to drive new insights into their business and, ultimately, create new opportunities for busi-ness growth or cost savings.

From a holistic perspective, this shift in focus represents meaningful progress. Business and IT professionals can finally sit down and identify the business problems that they want to solve or new opportunities they want to seize. Once identified, they can proceed with the implementation having the knowledge and confidence that the underlying data center technologies they need exist and work as expected.

The operative phrase here becomes “works as expected”, especially as it relates to enterprise deduplication backup target appliances. Expectations as to the exact features that an enterprise deduplication backup target appliance should deliver can vary widely.

Complicating this decision, enterprises have more choices than ever when it comes to optimizing and storing their backup data. They can use native deduplication features found in backup software. They can use Tier 2 storage systems, many of which currently include some form of deduplication. They may want to use virtual appliances in lieu of physical appliances. They may not even want to back up some of their data, preferring instead to archive it.

In the face of heightened business expectations and competing choices, the arguments to use an enterprise deduplication backup target appliance must be more compelling than ever. In this respect, enterprise deduplication backup target appliances, in many cases, fall short. This might explain why competing options continue to gain momentum as the lack of innovation and new features on these appliances give enterprises pause.

In one respect, if an enterprise only wants a deduplication backup target appliance that meet traditional data center requirements, every appliance covered in this Buyer’s Guide will meet those needs. They serve as a target for backup software. They analyze and break apart data in backup streams to optimize deduplication ratios. They replicate backup data to other sites and even to the cloud for archive, disaster recovery, and long-term data retention. While the appliances from each provider uses different techniques to accomplish these objectives and some perform these tasks better than others depending on the use case, each one does deliver on this objective.

But for enterprises looking for a solution that enables them to meet their broader, more strategic objectives, only HPE, and perhaps Cohesity, among the providers covered in this Buyer’s Guide, appear to be taking the appropriate steps to position enterprises for the software-defined hybrid data center of the future. Appliances from these two provid-ers better position enterprises to perform next generation data lifecycle management tasks while still providing enterprises with the necessary features to accomplish traditional backup and recovery tasks.

The question each enterprise must answer for itself when evaluating these appliances with these new features is, “How prepared is it to take advantage of data lifecycle

management, connectivity to the cloud, and virtual appliances?” If a company still largely does backups as it has always done them, then appliances with these features may be overkill for their requirements.





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Introduction (continued)

On the other hand, enterprises actively working toward creating a software-defined data center and wanting to automate seamless data movement between storage systems, deduplication appliances and the cloud so they can continue to build toward an intelligent data center, the choice between available solutions becomes quite evident.

It is in this context that DCIG presents its DCIG 2019-20 Enterprise Deduplication Backup

Target Appliance Buyer’s Guide. This Buyer’s Guide helps enterprises assess the enter-prise deduplication backup target appliance marketplace to help them identify which appliance may be the best fit for their environment. This Buyer’s Guide includes data sheets for 19 enterprise deduplication backup target appliances that achieved rankings of Recommended and Excellent. These products are available from five vendors including Cohesity, Dell EMC, ExaGrid, HPE, and NEC.

As in the development of all prior DCIG Buyer’s Guides, DCIG has already done the heavy lifting for enterprise technology buyers by:

• Identifying a common technology need with competing solutions

• Scanning the environment to identify available products in the marketplace

• Gathering normalized data about the features each product supports

• Providing an objective, third-party evaluation of those features from an end-user perspective

• Describing key product considerations and important changes in the marketplace

• Presenting DCIG’s opinions and product feature data in a way that facilitates the rapid comparisons of various products and product features

The DCIG 2019-20 Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance Buyer’s Guide drives time and cost out of the product selection process by enabling prospective buyers to more quickly identify a shortlist of products that meet their specific needs. In so doing, prospective purchasers can focus their product evaluation energies and move more quickly to the competitive bid process.

Note that this Buyer’s Guide is not intended to be a substitute for bringing individual products in-house for testing nor should readers assume that DCIG has done any hands-on testing of these products. Many end user license agreements associated with these products prohibit the publishing of testing results without first getting vendor approval. In-house testing or proof-of-concept implementations should still be done, if possible, since each product will perform differently under different workloads and data center environments.

DCIG hopes that this Buyer’s Guide meets its intended purpose in your environment.





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Executive Summary

The enterprise deduplication backup target appliances covered in this Buyer’s Guide edition continue to underscore the sentiment that these appliances reflect a maturing market segment. While there have been a few new products announced and some hardware updates to existing appliances, little on the hardware side has changed. It is on the software side that one sees the most change.

On the hardware side, only three vendors with products covered in this Buyer’s Guide brought new models to market since the last Buyer’s Guide Edition: Cohesity, ExaGrid, and HPE.

Cohesity makes its first appearance in this Buyer’s Guide. While it has offered appliances that could be configured as enterprise deduplication backup target appliances for some time, changes in how DCIG evaluates these appliances and the inclusion criteria for these appliances happened to work in Cohesity’s favor.

DCIG did place a greater emphasis on support for general-purpose cloud providers in this Guide which happens to represent an area of strength for Cohesity. It supports all major general-purpose cloud providers (AWS, Azure, & GCP) as well as OpenStack cloud imple-mentations. This feature functionality coupled with its support for multiple deduplication methods resulted in it making the cut for inclusion in this Guide.

In the cases of ExaGrid and HPE, they both respectively introduced new enterprise dedupli-cation backup target appliance models over the past year. ExaGrid introduced its EX63000E which, when fully scaled-out, can host over four petabytes of raw capacity and achieves over 400TBs of backup throughput in its performance benchmark tests.

HPE introduced four new StoreOnce models. On the hardware side, these new 3000 and 5000 series of StoreOnce products provide more cache, network ports, or storage capacity than its previous generation of products.

In the case of Dell EMC, there were no notable hardware changes to its Data Domain product line in the past 18 months. The primary change with NEC is its introduction of Fibre Channel (FC) support. Using FC connectivity, enterprises can for the first-time backup to an NEC HYDRAstor over their existing FC SAN.

On the software side, providers either did a ton of innovation or almost nil. HPE represents the leader in this space in terms of software innovation over the past 12 to 18 months. It made significant enhancements to its Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA). Its virtual appliance starts as small as 4TB in capacity and scales up to 500TB scaling in 1TB increments.

The improved scalability of the HPE VSA matches the growing appetite that enterprise have for virtual appliances that they may deploy in their software-defined data centers. Using virtual appliances such as the VSA, enterprises can deploy them on the most appropriate machine image (performance centric, capacity centric, or some mix of both.) Once deployed, they can move the virtual appliance to other hardware in their software-defined infrastructure should the virtual appliance’s capacity or performance requirements change over time.

HPE also significantly upped its game with its connectivity to the cloud. All its appliances offer connectivity to all major general-purpose cloud providers, save Google Cloud Platform, and each one supports managing varying amounts of cloud capacity, ranging from 63TBs to nearly 3.5PB on its StoreOnce 5650 model. In addition to its connectivity to the cloud, it provides enterprises with various options to manage this cloud capacity to include allow-ing other appliances to access it. HPE even includes software tools so that enterprises can qualify a cloud provider if it is not on the current HPE “approved” list of cloud providers.





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Executive Summary (continued)

Executive Summary (continued)Finally, HPE continues to make investments in its Recovery Manager Central (RMC) software to facilitate data movement and data life cycle management on its various stor-age platforms (3PAR, Nimble Storage, and StoreOnce). While this Guide does not cover storage platforms and management software, enterprises will derive much more intrinsic value from the StoreOnce platform when implemented alongside HPE’s storage platforms and management software.

It is in this context that DCIG presents its 2019-20 Enterprise Deduplication Backup

Target Appliance Buyer’s Guide. This Guide accomplishes the following objectives:

• Provides an objective, third-party evaluation of products by evaluating and ranking their features from an end user’s viewpoint

• Includes recommendations on how to best use this Buyer’s Guide and the products contained in it

• Evaluates the features of each product based upon criteria that matter most to help end users quickly identify which appliance is most appropriate for them

• Provides a standardized data sheet for each product so end users can do quick comparisons of the features supported and not supported on each product

• Gives any enterprise the ability to request competitive bids from different providers on comparable products





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How to Use this Buyer’s GuideThis Buyer’s Guide is intended to help users accelerate their product research and selection process—driving cost out of the research process while simultaneously increasing confidence in the results. The purpose of this Buyer’s Guide is NOT intended to tell users exactly which product(s) to purchase. Rather, it is to guide them in coming up with a list of competitive products that have comparable features that meet their specific needs.

Features, as displayed on each product data sheet, repre-sent the opinion of DCIG. DCIG encourages and strongly recommends every enterprise verify the functionality of the features that are of interest to it before making a buying decision. To help in that decision, this Buyer’s Guide gives enterprises a sense of how products compare with each other, as well as giving additional insight into what other product offerings are available on the market and the specific features they offer.

DCIG recommends that enterprises use this Buyer’s Guide in the following seven ways:

1. Eliminate the painstaking research normally

associated with identifying a shortlist of products

that meet their needs. This Buyer’s Guide evaluates products from 19 different products from 5 different vendors. Each product is ranked Recommended or Excellent based on standard deviation ranges. More than 100 different features were evaluated, so enter-prises only need to look at the rankings and features to come up with a shortlist for consideration.

2. Do apples-to-apples comparisons of products

from different vendors. It behooves enterprises to get competitive bids from multiple vendors. But that tactic only works well when enterprises know that they are receiving competitive bids on products that are roughly comparable. Using this Buyer’s Guide, enterprises can do a better job of accomplishing that objective.

3. Separate the apples from the oranges. Just as important as doing apples-to-apples comparisons is identifying when an orange is thrown into the mix. Sometimes it is difficult for an enterprise to know if it is truly getting a good deal when bids come in from vendors that include different products. Now enterprises can refer to the rankings and features of each product in this Guide so they can determine if the products being considered are comparable.

4. Gain perspective on how products from less

well-known vendors compare against established

and better-known brands. There’s a built-in level of comfort when buying products from well-known vendors. There’s also a built-in resistance to buying products from vendors that are perceived as unknown quantities. This Buyer’s Guide helps to remove some of that apprehension about buying products from lesser known vendors. Using this Buyer’s Guide, enterprises can see how these products stack up.

5. Normalize complex terminology. Every segment across industries has a proclivity to adopt acronyms and jargon that is specific to it. This Buyer’s Guide sifts through the acronyms and jargon and then normalizes these terms, providing a foundation for meaningful comparisons. Definitions for these normalized terms are provided in the Glossary at the end of this Guide.

6. Take advantage of standardized data sheets to

quickly compare products side-by-side. Product data sheets that vendors make available are rarely laid out in the same way or contain the same information. Some vendors even have data sheet formats that vary from product to product within their own portfolio. This Buyer’s Guide tackles this problem by creating a standard, easy-to-read data sheet for every product. In this way, product data sheets for individual products can be referenced and the features on them quickly compared.

7. Help justify buying recommendations to business

teams. An overall product ranking is included at the top of every product data sheet. This overall ranking summarizes in a single word how feature rich a product is compared to other products in the Buyer’s Guide.

DisclosuresOver the last few years the general trend in the United States has been for both large and boutique analyst firms to receive some or all their revenue from vendors.

DCIG is no different in this respect as it also receives payment for the assets it produces. The services that DCIG provides include battle cards, competitive intelligence reports, execu-tive white papers, white papers and special reports.

In the interest of transparency, some vendors included in this DCIG Buyer’s Guide are or have been DCIG clients. This is not to imply that their products were given preferential treat-ment in the Buyer’s Guide.





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In that vein, there are some important facts to keep in mind when considering the information contained in this Buyer’s Guide and its merit.

• No vendor paid DCIG any fee to research this topic or arrive at predetermined conclusions

• DCIG did not guarantee any vendor that its product would be included in this Buyer’s Guide

• DCIG did not imply or guarantee that a specific product would receive a preferential ranking in this Buyer’s Guide, before or after completion of research

• All research is based upon publicly available informa-tion, information provided by the vendor, and/or the expertise of those evaluating the information

• No negative inferences should be drawn against any vendor or product not covered in this Buyer’s Guide

• It is a misuse of this Buyer’s Guide to compare products included in it against products not included

Because of the number of features analyzed, there was no way for DCIG to accurately predict at the outset how individual products would end up ranking. DCIG wants to emphasize that no vendor was privy to how DCIG weighed individual features. In every case the vendor only found out the rankings of its product(s) after the analysis was complete.

Inclusion CriteriaThe DCIG 2019-20 Enterprise Deduplication Backup

Target Appliance Buyer’s Guide was derived from DCIG’s Deduplication Backup Appliance Body of Research that examined over 30 products that can be configured as target-based deduplication backup target appliances. The following criteria were used when determining whether to include a specific product in this Buyer’s Guide:

• Product is available and positioned to deduplicate backup data

• Sufficient information available to reach meaningful conclusions

• Product generally available by March 1, 2019

Ultimately, it is the professional judgment of the analysts

working on each DCIG Buyer’s Guide whether a product

meets the inclusion criteria.

The Eight-Step Process Used to Rank the ProductsTo rank each product included in this Buyer’s Guide, DCIG went through an eight-step process to come to the most objective conclusions possible.

1. DCIG established which features would be evaluated and which ones would not. Prior to selecting the features which would be evaluated, DCIG quantified, then “normalized” the list of available features such that a common name for each feature was established. In cases where a feature could not be objectively defined or understood, it was excluded from consideration.

2. The features were grouped into four (4) general categories. The features evaluated were grouped in these following four categories: Software, Management, Hardware, and Support.

3. A DCIG analyst internally examined the feature data for each product and completed a survey for it based upon the analyst’s own knowledge of the product and publicly available information.

4. DCIG identified a list of products that met DCIG’s definition for an Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance.

5. DCIG weighted each feature to establish a scoring rubric. The weighting of each feature was done by DCIG analysts. The weightings were used to reflect if a feature was supported and potentially how useful and/or important the feature was to end users.

6. Each product’s features were scored based on informa-tion gathered in the surveys. Features were marked as “supported”, “unsupported/undetermined” or listed specific data points such as maximum storage capacity or maximum number of Ethernet ports. Rankings were finalized after vendors had been given the opportunity to review their respective data sheets and respond to them.

7. Products were ranked using standard scoring tech-niques. A goal of each DCIG Buyer’s Guide is to establish clear lines of differentiation with conclusions that are arrived at objectively. To accomplish this goal, the mean score for all products was first determined and then a standard deviation from the mean calculated. DCIG developed an overall ranking for each product





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based on where that product’s overall internal score fit into the various standard deviation ranges.

8. Product feature data review worksheets were created

and sent to the vendors for review before publication. Each data sheet included in this published version of the Buyer’s Guide is derived from a feature data review worksheet that was sent to the vendor for its review and feedback. In every case, each vendor had an opportunity to review and update the content included on its respective data sheet(s). If the vendor did not respond with feedback on their respective data sheets, the lack of response was noted on the data sheet(s) covering their products.

Due to the large number of product features that DCIG evaluated, DCIG includes only a subset of the collected data on each data sheets. The feature data on the data sheets was selected, in part, based on the following crite-ria: 1) the most variability, 2) the greatest scoring weight, and 3) the greatest interest to prospective purchasers.

DCIG Comments and ThoughtsAppliance Architecture: Scale-up versus Scale-out

Two methods for adding storage capacity to an enterprise deduplication backup appliance exist: scale-up and scale-out. A scale-up architecture places a controller, which has compute and memory, in front of storage shelves, which may be internal or external to the appliance. Each storage shelf holds a fixed number of disk drives.

Enterprise deduplication backup target appliances that use this scale-up architecture require a minimum amount of capacity. If an enterprise needs more capacity, it adds more disk drives to these storage shelves, up to some prede-termined, fixed, hard upper limit. Enterprise deduplication backup target appliances that use this scale-up architecture range from 48 terabytes of maximum raw capacity to over two petabytes of maximum raw capacity.

A scale-out architecture is comprised of nodes that are logically grouped together using software that the vendor provides. Each node ships with preconfigured amounts of memory, compute, network ports, and storage capacity. The maximum raw capacities of the deduplication appliances in this Buyer’s Guide that use a scale-out architecture range from about 500 terabytes to nearly twelve petabytes.

Scale-out Benefits and Limitations

Using a scale-out architecture, sometimes referred to as a hyper-converged infrastructure, an enterprise can purchase more nodes as it needs them. Each time it adds a node to the solution, it provides more memory, compute, network interfaces, and storage capacity. This approach addresses enterprise needs to complete increased backup workloads in the same window of time since they have more hardware resources available to them.

This approach also addresses concerns about upgrades. By placing all nodes in a single configuration, as existing nodes age or run of capacity, new nodes with higher levels of performance and more capacity can be introduced into the scale-out architecture.

Once introduced, backup jobs can be redirected to these new nodes while the data stored on the existing nodes can be migrated in part or in whole to the new node. This approach requires nominal intervention in terms of staff time to configure and can often be completed non-disruptively.

This flexibility of this solution can potentially create some management overhead. Using a scale-out architecture, an enterprise should verify that as the number of nodes in the scale-out configuration increases, the solution has a means to automatically load balance the workloads and store backup data across all its available nodes. If not, an enterprise may find it spends an increasing amount of time balancing the backup jobs across its available nodes

An enterprise should also verify that all the nodes work together as one collective entity. For instance, an enter-prise should verify that the scale-out solution offers “global deduplication”. This feature deduplicates data across all the nodes in the system, regardless of on which node the data resides. If it does not offer this feature, the solution will still deduplicate the data but only on each individual node.

Finally, an enterprise should keep its eye on the possibility of “node sprawl” when using these solutions. These solutions make it easy to grow. However, an enterprise needs to plan for the optimal way to add each node as nodes can vary widely in their respective capacity and performance characteristics.

Scale-up Benefits and Limitations

Appliances that use a scale-up architecture have their own sets of benefits and limitations. Three features that currently working in their favor include:





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1. Mature

2. Well-understood

3. Widely adopted and used

One other broader backup industry trend currently also works in favor of scale-up architectures. More enterprises use snapshots as their primary backup technique. Using these snapshots as the source for the backup frees enter-prises to do backups at almost any time of the day. This helps to mitigate the night and weekend performance bottle-neck that can occur when forced to do all backups at the same using one of these appliances as the backup target.

An enterprise may encounter the following challenges when working with scale-up appliances.

First, it must size and configure the appliance correctly. This requires an enterprise to have a good understanding of its current and anticipated backup workloads, its total amount of data to backup, and its data retention requirements. Should it overestimate its requirements, it may end up with an appliance oversized for its environment. Should it under-estimate its requirements, backup jobs may not complete on time or it may run out of capacity, requiring it to buy another appliance sooner than it anticipated.

Second, all storage capacity sits behind a single controller. This architecture necessitates that the controller be sufficiently sized to meet all current and future backup workloads. Even though the appliance may support the addition of more disk drives, all backup jobs will still need to run through the same controller. Depending on the amount of data and how quickly backup jobs need to complete, this could bottleneck perfor-mance and slow backup and recovery jobs.

Virtual Appliances

Using a virtual appliance, an enterprise can avoid the need to deploy physical appliances dedicated to deduplicating backup data. Virtual appliances come in at about a quarter of the cost of a comparably sized physical appliance and offer all the same software features as physical appliances.

The deployment of enterprise deduplication backup target appliances configured as virtual appliances largely remains best suited for use in heavily virtualized remote and branch offices. The performance demands associated with dedu-plicating data in remote and branch offices as well as the amount of data to back up at these locations are generally much lower than in corporate data centers. These reduced

demands contribute to making virtual appliances well suited for these environments.

Their primary drawbacks, to date, have centered on their limited maximum capacities and the toll they extract on the underlying hardware. Until recently, the maximum capacity of the virtual appliances was no more than 100 TB making them undersized for use in most enterprise data centers.

The need for virtual appliances to share and compete for physical resources with other virtual machines on the host also contributed to the difficulty in deploying them. Deduplicating data consumes a great deal of compute cycles which could negatively impact other VMs on the same physical host. Deduplication also puts extra wear and tear on the underlying physical resources—specifically the hard disk drives—that may cause the HDDs to degrade more quickly.

However, the argument for using virtual appliances in enterprise data centers is broadening for multiple reasons. More enterprises have adopted software-defined data centers and general-purpose clouds. These environments offer more and better options for enterprises to manage the placement of virtual appliances to mitigate their perfor-mance impact on other VMs in the environment. These management options include a greater variety of compute resources that can be allocated to these virtual appliances during their periods of peak demand.

These changes in enterprise data centers are resulting in the availability of larger capacity virtual appliances, as evidenced by HPE’s recent introduction of its StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance that scales to 500TB in capac-ity. This large capacity virtual appliances give enterprises new flexibility to manage and host enterprise deduplication backup appliances like any another virtualized application in their environment.

Pricing, Performance and Data Deduplication Ratios

DCIG does not normally publish information about pricing, performance or, in the case of this Buyer’s Guide, data dedu-plication ratios. However, an exception was made about the inclusion of performance data in this Guide.

All the vendors, save one, publicly publish performance infor-mation about their enterprise deduplication backup target appliances. Further, the published performance data focuses on one performance metric: backup throughput, which is





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the most common use case for the appliances covered in this Guide. For this reason, DCIG elected to include each vendor’s performance data, where available, in this Guide.

As readers review this performance data, they should keep in mind that they may not achieve the same performance results as each vendor publishes. In many cases, vendors conduct performance tests and benchmark their products in environments that result in outcomes favorable to them.

The performance results that an enterprise experiences using the same appliance in its environment will vary. Variables such as the amount of data being backed up, the amount of changed and redundant data, data retention times, the backup software being used, the network infra-structure, and how the enterprise implements the appliance will all impact the performance they see. Further, DCIG did not validate these published performance numbers by attempting to run internal tests.

DCIG’s rationale for not including data deduplication and pricing information in this Guide remains the same as in prior Buyer’s Guides that it publishes. Many factors influence the final price including capacity purchased, services, extended warranties, negotiations, etc. Multiple factors also impact the deduplication ratios that an enterprise may achieve in its environment, which include data change rates, data retention periods, and the amount of data backed up, among others. These factors will differ for every every enterprise.

DCIG recognizes that data deduplication ratios, price, and performance are relevant and often key considerations when making a buying decision about an enterprise dedu-plication backup appliance. However, enterprises should exercise caution as they seek to convert any vendor’s published benchmarks into data points that are meaning-ful to their environment.

If possible, enterprises should test these solutions in their envi-ronment to get the best data deduplication and performance metrics. They should also obtain quotes from multiple vendors on multiple appliances to get the most competitive price.

Support for General-purpose Clouds

All products, save one, in this Guide support connectivity to general-purpose clouds such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, or an OpenStack compatible cloud. These appliances primar-ily give enterprises the flexibility to use the storage capacity in general-purpose clouds to provide long term retention for backup data and archives.

One noticeably way in which these products differ is in the maximum amount of storage capacity that they support in the cloud. In some cases, such as the appliances offered by ExaGrid, each one can support and manage the same amount of storage capacity in the cloud, up to a maximum of 2PBs of capacity in a fully scale-out ExaGrid deployment.

The amount of storage capacity in the cloud that the other products support will vary by the appliance. In the case of the Dell EMC Data Domain appliances covered in this Guide, the DD9300 supports up to 2.16PB of storage capacity in the cloud while its DD9800 provides support for up to 3PBs of stor-age capacity. The HPE models vary even more. The StoreOnce 3620 only offers support for up to 63TB while its 5650 model can support over 3.5PB of storage capacity in the cloud.

While enterprises should certainly consider the amount of storage capacity each appliance can store and manage in the cloud, they should also start to consider other broader ques-tions as to how to manage that data long term. For instance:

• Can other appliances from the same provider can access and manage that storage capacity in the cloud? If so, how do those processes work?

• What flexibility does the appliance provide to store data on different tiers of storage with the cloud provider?

• What additional networking costs are associated with retrieving data from the cloud?

• What are the retrieval times associated storing terabytes and petabytes in the cloud?

• Will a circumstance ever arise where an enterprise needs to recover all that data from the cloud?

Maturing Product Lines and Features

The deduplication backup target appliance market has largely stabilized, matured, and even shrunk in the last few years. The main “new” features that have surfaced on these appliances in the last 12-18 months have been increasing the amount of storage capacity in the cloud managed by these appliances and more attention given to more robust virtual appliances.

HPE has been the primary vendor leading in the innovation of these two areas. It has increased the amount of storage capacity that all its StoreOnce appliances can manage in the cloud. It has also dramatically increased the amount of storage capacity its StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance can manage to 500TB. This may make it suitable for deploy-ment in some enterprise data center environments and even possibly be a candidate for replacing physical appliances.





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Apart from HPE, other vendors have primarily announced new models with more robust hardware features (more memory, more storage capacity, more network ports, or support for new protocols.) But even the pace of innova-tion of hardware refreshes seems to have dramatically slowed. In at least two cases, providers had not refreshed the documentation on their websites in a couple of years indicating that little of substance has changed on their appliances during that time.

Time to Recovery for Applications, Data, and Virtual Machines

Time to recovery has taken on added importance in recent years. As enterprises reduce their IT staff while simultane-ously seek to accelerate and simplify IT administration by granting users the ability to do their own recoveries, they have a decreasing amount of tolerance for products that require long, complicated recoveries of applications, data, and/or virtual machines (VMs).

Solutions that give administrators the flexibility to run a recovery directly on the deduplication backup appliance is viewed as desirable by some. This option is most often used when recovering a VM as it negates the need to copy the VM from the appliance back to primary storage. In so doing, an enterprise can bring a VM back online much more quickly.

Using Cohesity, enterprises can initiate an instant recovery of any VM from any backup on its DataPlatform and run that VM on its platform for an extended period. However, to accomplish that feat, a company must also use Cohesity’s DataProtect software to create and store the backups on its DataPlatform.

Competing appliances from ExaGrid makes its landing zone available to any backup software product to enable enter-prises to access the most recent VM backups to perform instant recoveries. ExaGrid can also host applications on its appliances if required.

The HPE StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central (RMC) supports fast recovery via synthetic full backups. It directly mounts the snapshot on the host in order to meet short recovery-time objective (RTO) service level agreements. To create this automated, fast recovery requires the use of HPE’s StoreOnce deduplication backup appliances, its StoreServ storage arrays (3PAR or Nimble), and the use of HPE StoreOnce RMC to coordinate the data placement and data recovery.

DCIG ObservationsGeneral observations on all products in the DCIG 2019-20

Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance Buyer’s

Guide include the following.

All the appliances support the following features:

• 1:1 and N:1 fan-in replication

• Bandwidth throttling when replicating data from one appliance to another

• Concurrent backup of incoming data and replication of data to another system

• IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) for BIOS-level management

• Performance monitoring capabilities

• Periodic/scheduled asynchronous replication

• SMB and NFS network protocols

• Single controller configurations

• Variable length block deduplication

Recommended Ranking

The following eight (8) appliances earned the ranking of Recommended in this Buyer’s Guide:

• Dell EMC Data Domain 9800

• ExaGrid EX63000E and EX40000E

• HPE StoreOnce 5650, 5250, 5200, 3640, and 3620 models.

The models earning a Recommended ranking in this Buyer’s Guide arrived at this ranking by each taking slightly differ-ent design paths to get there. While each of these models fall under the categorization of an enterprise deduplication backup target appliance, they each now have specific use cases for where they tend to fit best.

Dell EMC Data Domain

The Dell EMC Data Domain 9800, from both a hardware and software perspective, remains largely unchanged since the last time DCIG evaluated this appliance. One area where the Dell EMC Data Domain appliances continue to exhibit leadership over its competitors is in asynchronous





11

replication. It supports multiple forms of asynchronous replication that give enterprises more control over when and how replication between its appliances occurs.

By way of example, its directory replication continuously replicates data. As changes occur on a source appliance, the appliance logs all those changes and replicates them as quickly as possible.

Those enterprises concerned about maintaining consistent, recoverable copies of data on both the source and desti-nation appliance may prefer to use its MTree replication option. This option takes periodic snapshots on the source appliance and only replicates the changes between each snapshot. It only exposes the source system’s most recent snapshot on the destination site after it finishes replicating all the source system’s snapshot data.

Enterprises may even opt to use its multi-streaming replica-tion feature to better utilize high-bandwidth WAN links. They can send multiple replication streams at the same time to increase throughput and shorten their time to disaster recov-ery readiness. Enterprises can set quotas on the maximum number of streams that a specific replication job, can use on the source appliance, destination appliance, or both.

While the Dell EMC Data Domain appliances have offered its replication features for many years, more enterprises want to keep data off-site for archive, disaster recovery, or long-term data retention. This may include replicating the data to secondary sites or to general-purpose cloud provid-ers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

To accomplish this feat, they will want replication software that provides them with efficient and effective options to move data to these cloud providers. The Data Domain appliances currently offer the widest and most robust set of replication features available from any provider to achieve these objectives.

Enterprises that want the most management control and flexibility to replicate backup data to other sites or the cloud will find the Dell EMC Data Domain appliances among the best suited to deliver on this task. Further, the Data Domain 9800 now scales to manage three petabytes of capacity in the cloud to facilitate the ability of enterprises to store, retain and manage more data in the cloud.

ExaGrid

ExaGrid similarly made very few changes to its product portfolio. ExaGrid did announce a new, larger capacity

appliance, the EX63000E, that, along with the EX40000E, both earned the ranking of Recommended. The new ExaGrid EX63000E ships with 144TB of raw capacity per node that, when scaled out, can reach over four petabytes of usable capacity.

ExaGrid reaches this high capacity using its scale-out GRID architecture. It again increased the maximum number of nodes it can support in this architecture from 25 to 32 nodes. These 32 nodes can consist of any of the different models it offers though, to achieve the four petabytes of total capacity, an enterprise would need to primarily use its EX63000E models.

ExaGrid’s appliances remain the only ones to keep a full, initial copy of backup data (not deduplicated) on its Landing Zone. ExaGrid’s Adaptive Deduplication technology starts to deduplicate data only after the data lands on the appliance.

By waiting to deduplicate data until after a backup job completes, ExaGrid’s published maximum performance numbers for backup throughput continue to outpace its competitors by a wide margin. Its published 432TB/hour for its EX63000E are more than six times its nearest competi-tor’s highest published performance benchmark.

As enterprises evaluate ExaGrid’s published performance benchmark for its EX63000E, they should remember that ExaGrid based it upon the cumulative throughput of 32 EX63000E nodes. Any of its competitors may achieve their maximum published performance metrics by simply deploy-ing a single appliance. For ExaGrid to match any of their maximum performance numbers, an enterprise may need to deploy at least two and perhaps up to five of ExaGrid’s EX63000E appliances.

A variable that works in ExaGrid’s favor is it bases its performance metrics on backup throughput without the use of any acceleration software. Acceleration software dedupli-cates data on the client which reduces data sent over the network and the overhead on the appliances.

All ExaGrid’s competitors use client-side acceleration soft-ware to calculate their highest throughput metrics. If client-side acceleration software is not an option or provides an enterprise with little or no benefit when backing up data, ExaGrid’s architecture should work in an enterprise’s favor to achieve very compelling backup performance metrics.

Keeping full initial copies of backups in an undeduplicated state such as ExaGrid also has some additional benefits.





12

Unlike appliances that only deduplicate inline, any ExaGrid system can restore from the most recent backup without going through the rehydration process. This accelerates data recovery and enables rapid virtual machine (VM) boots.

The best use case for ExaGrid’s appliances are those enterprises that use disk as their primary backup target (as opposed to using snapshots.) These enterprises will have applications that require high backup throughputs and have found client-side acceleration software of nominal value. Applications that will see the most benefit from ExaGrid’s solution are those that experience high data changes and tight backup windows. Also, those enterprises that antici-pate needing to host and run VMs on the backup target will find ExaGrid’s architecture well-suited for that use case.

HPE StoreOnce

HPE resembles the other providers as its enterprise dedu-plication appliances remain largely unchanged from the last Buyer’s Guide. The software available from HPE for its StoreOnce physical and virtual appliances did, however, more holistically embrace automation, software-defined data centers and cloud technologies.

HPE substantially enhanced the capabilities of its Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) increasing the total amount of capac-ity it could manage up to 500TB. HPE also changed how it licenses the product. Enterprises can start with a license for as little as 4TB of total capacity and then grow the licensing in increments as small as 1TB, up to 500TBs in total capacity.

These changes to its VSA are significant in two ways. First, it gives enterprises more flexibility to economically start small and then grow their use of the VSA as their backup needs dictate. Second, increasing the total capacity it can support to 500TB opens the door for HPE to use this appli-ance for larger backup environments as the total capacity that the VSA can manage exceeds the total capacity on all but two of its physical appliances.

The 500TB of capacity the HPE VSA can manage currently represents the largest total capacity of any virtual appliance that DCIG has evaluated available from any provider. While this is subject to change, this increase in total capacity under the VSA’s management reflects a broader industry trend. More enterprises want virtual appliances that they can deploy and use in their software-defined data centers.

In its current StoreOnce software, HPE also made provi-sions for the StoreOnce appliances to directly send and

retrieve deduplicated data to multiple general-purpose cloud providers. General-purpose cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure make no provisions to dedupli-cate data stored with them. Using HPE StoreOnce’s direct support for AWS and Azure as well as for Scality, enter-prises can use StoreOnce to first compress and dedupli-cate data before they store data in the cloud.

HPE also continued to enhance the integration between StoreOnce and its 3PAR and Nimble Storage product lines. Most of this integration takes place under the umbrella of the HPE Recovery Manager Central (RMC) software that helps companies coordinate and centrally the movement of data between 3PAR, Nimble Storage, and StoreOnce systems without needing backup software. These capa-bilities include the ability to directly recover data from StoreOnce systems to 3PAR or Nimble Storage arrays without going through the traditional recovery process.

The best use case for HPE StoreOnce systems is for those enterprises that want to create to create a software-defined data center that encompasses a hybrid cloud environment. Among the providers evaluated, HPE has moved substan-tially ahead of its competition in delivering on this ideal. While HPE currently requires enterprises to deploy its stor-age arrays on-premises to achieve these ends, it appears from the changes that HPE has made and is making that it is committed to delivering solutions that support enterprise caliber software-defined data centers

Excellent Ranking

Eleven products achieved an Excellent ranking in the DCIG 2019-20 Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance Buyer’s Guide. These products include the following:

• Cohesity C3500, C4300 and C4600 models

• Dell EMC Data Domain 9300

• ExaGrid EX30000E, EX21000E, EX13000E, EX10000E, EX7000, and EX5000 models

• NEC HYDRAstor HS8-5000 series.

Cohesity

The appliances from Cohesity represent the only ones evaluated in this Guide that can also function as inte-grated backup appliances. While DCIG solely evaluates





13

Cohesity’s appliances in this Buyer’s Guide in the context of their respective ability to function as a deduplication backup appliance, Cohesity’s inclusion of data protection software may prompt some enterprises to select it over competing solutions.

Based upon DCIG’s past conversations with Cohesity customers, many of them start by deploying its appliances as a deduplication backup target. Once deployed, they use its data protection software to protect their virtual machines as well as their Windows and Linux physical machines. They may start by protecting VMs and physi-cal servers that they perhaps could not previously afford to acquire backup software licenses to protect. They may also eventually use this software to reduce their overall backup software licensing costs.

Viewing it strictly in the context of a deduplication backup appliance, Cohesity’s appliances distinguish themselves by offering multiple ways in which to deduplicate data. Enterprises can choose to deduplicate data as the backup occurs (in-line), after the backup completes (post process), or not to deduplicate data at all if it does not deduplicate well.

Competing products only give their clients one option to deduplicate data or, if they offer a second option, it is to turn deduplication off, or bypass deduplication, for certain data types. This flexibility to choose the best deduplication for the data merits some consideration for those enterprises that wish this level of control.

By taking full advantage of this feature, enterprises can achieve higher deduplication ratios as well as avoid the overhead of trying to deduplicate data that does not deduplicate well. The decision enterprises must make is if they do not have the time to manage this feature or they do not understand their backup data all that well, will this deduplication flexibility that Cohesity’s appliances offer alone provide ample reason to select it over compet-ing solutions?

The best current use case for Cohesity’s appliance are those enterprises that need an enterprise deduplication backup appliance and who also have virtual and physi-cal machines for which they need an affordable backup software solution. Using Cohesity, they can address their current enterprise deduplication backup target challenges and positions them to more affordably protect their virtual and physical machines.

NEC

The NEC HYDRAstor HS8-5000 series of enterprise dedupli-cation backup appliances offer more storage capacity than any other appliance included in this Buyer’s Guide, scaling to over 11PBs of raw capacity. To balance both capacity and performance, it uses a scale-out architecture comprised of hybrid and storage nodes. The hybrid nodes offer perfor-mance and some capacity with the storage nodes almost exclusively devoted to delivering more storage capacity.

In the last year NEC did introduce Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity on its HYDRAstor. Noteworthy about this change, this connectivity does not come with a corre-sponding virtual tape library (VTL) interface. Rather, HYDRAstor simply presents its storage capacity as block storage to the backup server.

NEC opted not to offer a VTL option for its FC interface at this time as it sees limited to no demand from enterprise clients for the VTL feature. However, it did introduce FC as many of its clients have FC SANs and want to keep backup traffic on the FC network.

The best use case for the NEC HYDRAstor remains enter-prise shops that need a very scalable on-premises dedupli-cation backup appliance with support for both Ethernet and FC network connections.

Dell EMC & ExaGrid

The ExaGrid products ranked as Excellent complement the ExaGrid products ranked as Recommended. While these appliances scale to lower levels of raw capacity to meet the specific needs of small and midsized enterprises, enterprises have the option to mix and match any ExaGrid appliances in its scale-out GRID architecture. These lower capacity appliances give enterprises the option to scale-out at a more granular level or, optionally, start with these smaller appliances and then introduce larger capacity appli-ances should the need arise. Regardless of how an enter-prise starts with ExaGrid or which direction it takes longer term, these appliances give them the flexibility to grow as they need and then seamlessly move into a larger solution.

The Dell EMC Data Domain 9300 appliance resembles ExaGrid’s appliances in that it offers the same software features as its Recommended counterpart though it has fewer hardware resources. In every case, these appliances will offer amounts of storage capacity, memory, and networking ports more appropriate for smaller enterprise environments.





14

ENTERPRISE DEDUPLICATION BACKUP TARGET APPLIANCE RANKINGS





15

Overall Rankings

RANKING PRODUCT

R E C O M M E N D E D HPE StoreOnce 5650*

HPE StoreOnce 5250*

HPE StoreOnce 5200*

HPE StoreOnce 3640*

HPE StoreOnce 3620*

Dell EMC Data Domain 9800

ExaGrid EX63000E

ExaGrid EX40000E

E X C E L L E N T (continued) Cohesity C4600

Cohesity C4300

Cohesity C3500

Dell EMC Data Domain 9300

ExaGrid EX32000E

ExaGrid EX21000E

ExaGrid EX13000E

ExaGrid EX10000E

ExaGrid EX7000E

ExaGrid EX5000E

NEC HYDRAstor HS8-5000

*HPE’s products are listed first in the categories where its products appear. All other products are listed alphabetically.





16

ENTERPRISE DEDUPLICATION BACKUP TARGET APPLIANCE PRODUCTS




OVERALL RANK

17

SUPPORTED UNDETERMINED / UNSUPPORTED

Cohesity C3500EXCELLENT

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams

Concurrent Read MAX 800

Concurrent Write MAX 800

Concurrent Backup & Replication

Simultaneous Backup/Restores

Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX

Operate Independently

Deduplication

Method Inline; Post-Process

Implementation Target

Bypass Deduplication

Display Real-time Dedupe Ratio

Replication

Continuous

Directory Replication

Multi-streaming Replication

Periodic/Scheduled

Fan-in/Fan-out 1:1, 1:N, 1:N:N, N:1, N:N

Compression

Bandwidth Throttling

Separate Retention Period for Replicated Data

Dedicate One Controller to Replication

Hosting VMs on Appliance

Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon

Google Cloud Platform

Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management Not Disclosed

Native WAN Acceleration to Cloud

WAN Bandwidth Throttling to Cloud

Performance Monitoring

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser

Alerting/Notification Options Email, Syslog, SNMP, SMTP

Forecasted Capacity Reporting

FIPS Certified Encryption

Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts

Maximum Throughput (Published)

Native Not Disclosed

With Acceleration Software Not Disclosed

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 128GB

Controllers MAX/SYSTEM 1

Controller Configurations Single Controller; Scale-out

Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX / 2 / / FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / / IPMI

Processor Cores MAX 16

Raw Storage Capacity MAX 176TB

Usable Storage Capacity MAX 116TB

RAID Options Proprietary

Storage Networking Ports MAX 3

SSD Capacity MAX 7.68TB

SUPPORT

Automated Support Alerts Email, Phone, SNMP

Support Availability 24x7x365

Support Contact Methods Email, Knowledgebase, Phone, Webchat

Warranty 1 Year

Licensed to HPE with unlimited and unrestricted distribution rights through December 2020.© 2019 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. The information, product recommendations and opinions made by DCIG, LLC are based upon public information and from sources that DCIG, LLC believes to be accurate and reliable.

OVERALL RANK

18


EXCELLENT

Cohesity C4300

SUPPORT




Warranty 1 Year

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts




HARDWARE

Cache MAX 256GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix








SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication





Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Interfaces

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack






OVERALL RANK

19


MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts




HARDWARE

Cache MAX 512GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix








SUPPORT




Warranty 1 Year

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication





Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





EXCELLENT

Cohesity C4600


OVERALL RANK

20


SUPPORT




Warranty 1 Year

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser

Alerting/Notification Options Email, Syslog, SNMP



Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 20TB/hour

With Acceleration Software 41TB/hour

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 384GB


Controller Configurations A-P; Single

Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 20 / 20 / / FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / 8 / IPMI




RAID Options RAID 6



SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 96TB


Deduplication

Method Inline

Implementation Client; Master Server; Target



Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled

Fan-in/Fan-out 1:1, 1:N, 1:N:N, N:1

Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management 2.16PB




EXCELLENT

Dell EMC DD9300

Dell EMC did not respond to requests to review the content published on this page.Licensed to HPE with unlimited and unrestricted distribution rights through December 2020.© 2019 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. The information, product recommendations and opinions made by DCIG, LLC are based upon public information and from sources that DCIG, LLC believes to be accurate and reliable.

OVERALL RANK

21


SUPPORT




Warranty 1 Year

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 768GB


Controller Configurations A-P; Single

Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 20 / 20 / / FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / 8 / IPMI


Raw Storage Capacity MAX 1,250TB

Usable Storage Capacity MAX 1,000TB

RAID Options RAID 6



MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser

Alerting/Notification Options Email, Syslog, SNMP



Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 31TB/hour

With Acceleration Software 68TB/hour

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams


Concurrent Write MAX 1,885



Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 96TB


Deduplication

Method Inline

Implementation Client; Master Server; Target



Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled

Fan-in/Fan-out 1:1, 1:N, 1:N:N, N:1

Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management 3PB




RECOMMENDED

Dell EMC DD9800

Dell EMC did not respond to requests to review the content published on this page.Licensed to HPE with unlimited and unrestricted distribution rights through December 2020.© 2019 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such. The information, product recommendations and opinions made by DCIG, LLC are based upon public information and from sources that DCIG, LLC believes to be accurate and reliable.

OVERALL RANK

22


SUPPORT



Support Contact Methods Email, Phone, Webchat

Warranty 90 Days

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 256GB


Controller Configurations Single; Scale-out

Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 128 / 64 / / FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / / IPMI




RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser

Alerting/Notification Options Email, SNMP, SMTP



Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 34.56TB/Hour

With Acceleration Software 34.56TB/Hour

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled

Fan-in/Fan-out 1:1, N:1

Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





EXCELLENT

ExaGrid EX5000


OVERALL RANK

23


SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 256GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 76.08TB/Hour


ExaGrid EX7000EXCELLENT

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack






OVERALL RANK

24


SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 512GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 76.08TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





EXCELLENT

ExaGrid EX10000E


OVERALL RANK

25


MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 76.08TB/Hour


HARDWARE

Cache MAX 512GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





EXCELLENT

ExaGrid EX13000E


OVERALL RANK

26


SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 138.24TB/Hour


HARDWARE

Cache MAX 1,024GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





EXCELLENT

ExaGrid EX21000E


OVERALL RANK

27


SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 1,024GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 241.92TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





EXCELLENT

ExaGrid EX32000E


OVERALL RANK

28


RECOMMENDED

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 256TB/Hour

With Acceleration Software 256TB/Hour

SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 2,048GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 128 / 64 / / 64

FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / / IPMI




RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





ExaGrid EX40000E


OVERALL RANK

29


ExaGrid EX63000ERECOMMENDED

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX


Deduplication

Method Adaptive




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 432TB/Hour


HARDWARE

Cache MAX 4,096GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 128 / 64 / / 64

FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / / IPMI




RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

SUPPORT




Warranty 90 Days


OVERALL RANK

30


SUPPORT




Warranty 3 Years

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 96GB


Controller Configurations Single Controller

Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 4 / 8 / 8 / FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX / 8 / 8IPMI




RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser

Alerting/Notification Options Email, SNMP



Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 6TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 500TB


Deduplication

Method Inline

Implementation Client, Master Server, Target



Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled

Fan-in/Fan-out 1:1, N:1, 1:N:N, N:1, N:N

Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management 63TB




RECOMMENDED

HPE StoreOnce 3620


OVERALL RANK

31


SUPPORT




Warranty 3 Years

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 192GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 7TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 500TB


Deduplication

Method Inline




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





RECOMMENDED

HPE StoreOnce 3640


OVERALL RANK

32


MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native


HARDWARE

Cache MAX 384GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

SUPPORT




Warranty 3 Years

SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 500TB


Deduplication

Method Inline




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack





RECOMMENDED

HPE StoreOnce 5200


OVERALL RANK

33


SUPPORT




Warranty 3 Years

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 384GB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 22TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams





Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 500TB


Deduplication

Method Inline




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management 1,728TB




RECOMMENDED

HPE StoreOnce 5250


OVERALL RANK

34


SUPPORT




Warranty 3 Years

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 1TB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix





RAID Options RAID 6


SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 27TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams

Concurrent Read MAX 1,024




Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 500TB


Deduplication

Method Inline




Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled


Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management 3,456TB




RECOMMENDED

HPE StoreOnce 5650


OVERALL RANK

35


SUPPORT

Automated Support Alerts Email, SNMP

Support Availability Business Day

Support Contact Methods Email, Knowledgebase, Phone

Warranty 3 Years

HARDWARE

Cache MAX 2TB



Erasure Coding

Ethernet/FC Mix

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX 990 / 260 / / FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX 0 / 0 / IPMI

Processor Cores MAX 5,120

Raw Storage Capacity MAX 11,880

Usable Storage Capacity MAX

RAID Options

Storage Networking Ports MAX 1,320

SSD Capacity MAX

MANAGEMENT

Interfaces

API

Central Console

CLI

Mobile App

Web Browser




Report Types

Capacity

Performance

Replication

Threshold Alerts


Native 7.2TB/Hour


SOFTWARE

Backup Streams

Concurrent Read MAX 5,000




Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX 16TB


Deduplication

Method Inline

Implementation Client, Target



Replication

Continuous



Periodic/Scheduled

Fan-in/Fan-out 1:1, 1:N, N:1

Compression





Protocols

VTL

CIFS/SMB / iSCSI

NFS

Cloud Targets

Amazon


Microsoft Azure

OpenStack

Max Cloud Capacity Under Management




EXCELLENT

NEC HYDRAstor HS8-5000 Series



36

APPENDICESAppendix A: Definitions, Explanations and Terminology

Appendix B: Vendor Contact Information

Appendix C: DCIG Contact Information





A-1

Appendix A—Definitions, Explanations and Terminology

SOFTWAREBackup Streams

Concurrent Read MAX

Indicates the maximum published number of backup streams that can be read from the appliance at one time.

Concurrent Write MAX

Indicates the maximum published number of backup streams that can be written to the appliance at one time.

Concurrent Backup & ReplicationIndicates if the appliance can simultaneously ingest backup streams and replicate date to another appliance.

Simultaneous Backup/RestoresIndicates if the appliance can simultaneously ingest backup streams and restore date.

Virtual Appliance

Capacity MAX

If the vendor supports a virtual appliance, it indicates the maximum capacity of the virtual appliance.

Operate IndependentlyIf the vendor supports a virtual appliance, it indicates if the virtual appliance can operate independently of a physical appliance. A checkmark indicates it can. A shaded circle indicates a dependency on a physical appliance, that a virtual appliance is not offered, or the analyst could not determine.

DeduplicationMethodIndicates which method(s) the appliance uses to deduplicate data. Options include:

AdaptiveThe appliance first stores data to disk but, before the backup job is complete, it starts to deduplicate data.

Inline The appliance deduplicates data as it is ingested into the deduplicating backup appliance and before it is stored to disk.

Post Process The appliance first stores data to disk in its native or raw format and then deduplicates it.

Definitions, Explanations and TerminologyThis section contains brief definitions and/or explanations of the terms used when developing the data sheets found in the DCIG 2019-20 Enterprise Deduplication Backup Target Appliance Buyer’s Guide.

ImplementationsIndicates the options the appliance offers to deduplicate data. Options include:

ClientAn iteration of the appliance’s deduplication software resides on the client being backed up. As the backup occurs, data is first deduplicated on the client before being sent over the network to the target appliance.

Master or Media ServerAn iteration of the appliance’s deduplication software resides on the master server. This server hosts the backup software and manages the storage on which the backup data resides. As the backup occurs, the client sends the backup data to the master or media server. The server ingests the data and deduplicates it. It then sends the data to the target appliance to host it.

Target The appliance takes incoming backup data and attempts to deduplicate it.

Bypass DeduplicationIndicates that there is an option to turn deduplication on and off for specified backup jobs. This option is used to reduce system overhead and to avoid deduplicating data that is known not to deduplicate well or at all such as audio, image, and video files as well as encrypted data.

Display Real-time Dedupe RatioIndicates if the appliance displays the current deduplica-tion ratio of the data it hosts.

ReplicationContinuousA form of asynchronous replication that replicates data to a second appliance as soon as it is written to the primary appliance. The write does not wait to until the data is repli-cated to the second appliance to continue processing.

Directory ReplicationA form of asynchronous replication that only replicates data in specified directories on the primary appliance to the second appliance.

Multi-streaming ReplicationA form of asynchronous replication that combines multiple replication jobs into one and send them at the same time.





A-2

Appendix A—Definitions, Explanations and Terminology (continued)

Periodic/ScheduledA form of asynchronous replication that replicates data to the secondary location at pre-scheduled times (i.e. once every 15 minutes, once an hour, etc.) When the data is replicated, only the deltas since the previous job are replicated.

Fan-in/Fan-out Indicates in which directions an appliance can replicate data. Possible answer options are one-to-one (1:1), one-to-many (1:N), many-to-one (N:1), (one-to-many-to-many (1:N:N), and many-to-many-to-one (N:N:1). The total number of fan-in/fan-out options is displayed on the data sheet.

CompressionIndicates if the appliance compresses data as it replicates it.

Bandwidth ThrottlingIndicates if the appliance provides an option to throttle data replicated to another appliance.

Separate Retention Period for Replicated DataIndicates if the secondary appliance can manage and retain replicated data for different periods than the data residing on the primary appliance.

Dedicate 1 Controller to ReplicationIndicates if the appliance can dedicate a controller to the task of replication.

Hosting VMs on ApplianceIndicates if the appliance can host VMs for test, development, or recovery purposes.

InterfacesVTLIndicates if the appliance can present a virtual tape library (VTL) interface as a backup target.

CIFS/SMBIndicates if the appliance can present a CIFS or an SMB interface as a backup target.

iSCSIIndicates if the appliance can present a iSCSI block device interface as a backup target.

NFSIndicates if the appliance can present an NFS interface as a backup target.

Cloud TargetsAmazonIndicates if the appliance supports Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud backup target.

Google Cloud PlatformIndicates if the appliance supports Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as a cloud backup target.

Microsoft AzureIndicates if the appliance supports Microsoft Azure as a cloud backup target.

OpenStackIndicates if the appliance supports OpenStack S3 compliant storage devices as a cloud backup target.

Max Cloud Capacity Under ManagementIndicates the maximum of cloud capacity that may be presented to the appliance that it can manage.

Native WAN Acceleration to CloudIndicates if the appliance supports WAN acceleration to cloud providers.

WAN Bandwidth Throttling to the CloudIndicates if the appliance supports throttling the bandwidth of WAN connections to the cloud.

Performance MonitoringIndicates whether the appliance offers application software that reports on how the deduplication appliance is performing, and what may be done to improve its performance.

MANAGEMENTInterfaces

APIIndicates if the appliance offers APIs that can be used to programmatically manage it.

Central ConsoleIndicates if the appliance offers a central console that can used to manage multiple appliances.

CLIIndicates if the appliance offers a command line interface (CLI)

Mobile AppIndicates if the appliance offers a mobile application that can be used to monitor or manage it.

Web BrowserIndicates if the appliance can be monitored or managed via a web browser.

Alerting/Notification OptionsIndicates the various options that the appliance offers to do alerting and notification on error messages. These include: email, text messaging, syslog, Windows Event Log, SNMP Traps, SMTP and Proprietary Agent.





A-3

Appendix A—Definitions, Explanations and Terminology (continued)

Forecasted Capacity ReportingIndicates if the appliance offers reporting mechanism to fore-cast capacity based on historical utilization.

FIPS Certified EncryptionIndicates if the encryption algorithms supported on the appli-ance are FIPS certified.

Report TypesCapacityIndicates if the appliance supports capacity-based reporting.

PerformanceIndicates if the appliance supports performance-based reporting.

ReplicationIndicates if the appliance supports replication-based reporting.

Threshold AlertsIndicates if the appliance can generates alerts if specific performance thresholds are breached.

Maximum Throughput (Published)NativeIndicates the appliance’s maximum throughput when doing backup when no data acceleration software is used. This information, if available, is published and released by the vendor.

With Acceleration SoftwareIndicates the appliance’s maximum throughput when doing backup when data acceleration software is used. This information, if available, is published and released by the vendor.

HARDWARE Cache MAX

Indicates the maximum capacity of the appliance’s cache storage when fully scaled up or out.

Controllers MAX/SYSTEM

Lists the maximum number of controllers supported by the appliance when fully scaled up or out.

Controller ConfigurationsLists the controller configurations supported by the appliance. Possible options include Active/Active, Active/Passive, Dual Active, Scale-out, and Single controller.

Erasure Coding Indicates if the appliance supports erasure coding for data protection.

Ethernet/FC MixIndicates if the appliance supports a concurrent mix of Ethernet and FC ports.

Ethernet Ports 1/10/25/40 GbE MAX

Lists the maximum number of Ethernet ports (1, 10, 25, or 40GbE) supported by the appliance when fully scaled up or out.

FC Ports 8/16/32 FC MAX

Lists the maximum number of Fibre Channel (FC) ports supported per node by the deduplicating backup appliance.

IPMIIndicates if the appliance supports the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI).

Processor Cores (PER NODE)

Indicates the maximum number of processor cores supported by the appliance when fully scaled up or out. The appliances featured in this Buyer’s Guide may contain multiple dual or quad core processors.

Raw Storage Capacity MAX

Lists the maximum raw storage capacity in terabytes supported by the appliance when fully scaled up or out.

Usable Storage Capacity MAX

Lists the maximum usable storage capacity in terabytes supported by the appliance when fully scaled up or out.

RAID OptionsLists the RAID configurations supported by the appliance. Possible options include RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60, JBOD, and Proprietary.

Storage Networking Ports MAX

Lists the maximum number of storage networking ports supported by the appliance when fully scaled up or out.

SSD Capacity MAX

This lists the maximum SSD capacity of the appliance if it supports SSDs.





A-4

Appendix A—Definitions, Explanations and Terminology

SUPPORTAutomated Support AlertsThis lists the various methods that the appliance offers to provide automated alerts as to its conditions. Possible options include email, phone, and SNMP.

Support AvailabilityThis indicates that level of phone support included with the standard warranty, such as 24x7x365, 8 am – 8 pm, or Business Day.

Support Contact MethodsThis lists the number of the methods in which IT organizations can access support from the provider. Options include email, phone, online knowledgebase and web chat.

Warranty This indicates the standard hardware warranty that is offered with the appliance by the manufacturer.





B-1

Appendix B—Vendor Contact Information

Cohesity, Inc.u Cohesity C4600u Cohesity C4500u Cohesity C3500

300 Park Ave, Ste 1700San Jose, CA 95110855.926.4374www.cohesity.com

Dell EMC Corporationu Dell EMC Data Domain 9300u Dell EMC Data Domain 9800

176 South StreetHopkinton, MA 01748866.438.3622www.dellemc.com/en-us/data-protection/index.htm#data-domain

ExaGrid Systems, Inc.u EX5000u EX7000u EX10000Eu EX13000Eu EX21000Eu EX32000Eu EX40000Eu EX63000E

350 Campus DriveMarlborough, MA 01752800.868.6985www.exagrid.com

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Corporationu HPE StoreOnce 3620u HPE StoreOnce 3640u HPE StoreOnce 5200u HPE StoreOnce 5250u HPE StoreOnce 5650

6280 America Center DrSan Jose CA 95002888.342.2156www.hpe.com

NEC Corporation of Americau HYDRAstor HS8-5000

2880 Scott BlvdSanta Clara, CA 95050Phone: 877.463.2267www.necam.com/HYDRAstor/

Vendor Contact Information




http://www.cohesity.com

http://www.dellemc.com/en-us/data-protection/index.htm#data-domain

http://www.dellemc.com/en-us/data-protection/index.htm#data-domain

http://www.exagrid.com

http://www.hpe.com

http://www.necam.com/HYDRAstor/


C-1

Appendix C—DCIG Contact Information

Authors

Jerome WendtDCIG President and [email protected]

DCIG, LLC7511 Madison StreetOmaha, NE 68127+1.844.324.4552www.dcig.com

DCIG Contact Information




mailto:[email protected]

http://www.dcig.com

2019-20 · 6 the eight-step process used to rank the products 7 dcig comments and thoughts 7...

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