[POLL] What is your PRODUCTION storage for virtualization?

[Gostev]

If you are using more than one kind of storage, you can select multiple options.
Do not forget to click Submit vote button once you have selected your options!

The list is based on this discussion, unfortunately options cannot be changed once the poll is created.

[Gostev]

[Feb 26, 2012] Edited to add results analysis

I did not promote this poll outside Veeam forums, because my goal was to obtain accurate representation from Veeam Backup & Replication community specifically. Nevertheless, the poll collected 459 votes. Thank you all for active participation!

As expected, most of you are using some type of shared storage. This makes total sense because without the shared storage, too many benefits that virtualization brings are simply missing. Using local storage for production workloads is clearly more of an exception - and I am seeing our customers typically using non-shared storage in ROBO sites only, where buying the shared storage is usually unreasonable investment.

• Shared storage: 89%
• Local/DAS storage: 11%

The following is the list of most popular (over 5% footprint) shared storage models. As you can see, EMC CLARiiON was voted as the most popular SAN model, beating Dell Equallogic by one vote (frankly, I expected EqualLogic to win this one by a mile). Likewise, NetApp result was somewhat unexpected for me - only 4.4% combined across 2 series. I certainly expected more NetApp users... wonder what could be the reason - no good offering for SMB virtualization storage?

• EMC CLARiiON: 11.2%
• Dell EqualLogic (PSxxxx): 11%
• Dell PowerVault (MDxxxx): 9.7%
• HP StorageWorks (MSAxxxx):8.8%
• HP EVA: 7.8%
• IBM DS: 7.8%
• EMC VNX(e): 7%
• HP LeftHand (Pxxxx): 5.6%

Looking at this list at a different angle, HP leads as the top SAN vendor, followed by Dell and EMC.

• HP: 22.2%
• DELL: 20.7%
• EMC: 18.2%

Interesting how HP wins this one - despite there are no HP products in the top 3, their storage is still most common overall. I think HP could definitely use more clear positioning, and more aggressive marketing. When I hear "SAN for SMB", I am thinking "Dell EqualLogic, EMC VNXe, HP... hmmm". I literally don't know what is their SMB offering - unlike with Dell and EMC, who totally nailed those trademarks in our heads (and in case with VNX, this was done in less than 1 year).

And actually, this brings me to the top newcomer: EMC VNX(e), hanging on par with SAN models which have been around for a long while. Because the time VNX(e) has been around is clearly not enough to get the technical mind share win - I suppose I should say "awesome job, EMC marketing" (not that the actual product was bad or anything). First announced just 1 year ago, and already sitting at 7% penetration - fantastic result!

[Doug.Butler]

Internal storage (RAID arrays inside the hosts).

BUT we are adding an EMC VNXe 3100 within 30 days.

[tabrez@ajmalksa.com]

We are using HP MSA 2324sa for our primary production storage and ReadyNAS NV+ as our secondary backup storage

[averylarry]

Not sure where it fits in, and I don't use it (though I'm considering it), but what about VMware storage appliance? I guess it would also fall under some other category but it might be interesting to know.

[Ratcha]

Not sure where it fits in, and I don't use it (though I'm considering it), but what about VMware storage appliance? I guess it would also fall under some other category but it might be interesting to know.

True. Does anyone use it (or know of anyone who uses it)?

In this poll I guess it would fit under local storage at this point as it doesn't specify shared or not, though it would have been nice to know if anyone was using this.

[Gostev]

VMware Storage Appliance goes under Paid-for Software SAN.

[cstringer]

Has anyone got opinions or first-hand info on reliability and speed for HP? I am looking into replacing our Equallogic array with an HP StorageWorks P4300 G2. I no longer desire to pay huge amounts of money for EMC or Equllogic especially since we now use a homegrown solution with Linux and Rsync to replicate to our DR site. I just need speed and reliability. Thanks in advance!

[jcwuerfl]

IBM Nseries, wasn't listed in the poll options.

[tsightler]

Isn't IBM N Series just rebranded Netapp?
http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/ ... x/TD105042

I would probably just answer Netapp.

[jcwuerfl]

Yes and no... IBM likes to change things =)

[pzednik]

DataCore SANSymphony-V and under that: WMC Clariion AX-4

[Gostev]

The number of poll options is limited to 30, so I had to drop IBM N Series for the reason Tom has mentioned. You can vote Netapp instead. Thanks!

[bc07]

In addition to what I voted we have a SAN storage EonStore from Infortrend (FC host to SAS/SATA).

[Gostev]

Poll locked after 4 weeks, see the 2nd post above for results analysis.

[Gostev]

Paging HP LeftHand and HP VSA users (as production storage), please PM me - I have some questions. Thanks!