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DCIG puts out new flash array guide – wonder where EMC is this time?

Documentation-driven doc ranks HCIA suppliers and kit

Analyst group DCIG has produced another report ranking hyper-converged infrastructure appliance vendors based on documented features and questionnaire answers.

A canned quote by Tim Anderson, research analyst and co-author of the DCIG 2015-16 All-Flash Array Buyer’s Guide, said: "We are confident this [guide] will give customers an easy to use and powerful tool to shortlist solutions they will want to bring in-house to test.”

His team looked at 58 offerings from 17 companies, including Cisco, IBM, Nutanix, Simplivity, SimpliVity, and Supermicro.

After a 100-question initial survey containing more than 100 questions was completed, product capabilities were assessed based on data provided by the vendor, prior DCIG research, and information available in the public domain. Systems were ranked, as usual with DCIG guides, Recommended, Excellent, Good, or Basic.

Nutanix's NX-8000 and NX-9000-Series and Simplivity's OmniCube CN-5000 were given Recommended rankings, because of features they shared:

  • Have duplication and/or compression
  • Provide replication and snapshot functionality
  • Scale up to 64 nodes (plus or minus) in size
  • Have OEM agreements with server hardware suppliers (Dell for Nutanix - and Lenovo now, Cisco for Simplivity)
  • Support multiple hypervisors with Nutanix supporting three and Simplivity two
  • Data protection capabilities including creating application-consistent snapshots with the use of VSS

No product testing was involved to produce this guide.

A previous DCIG guide on all-flash arrays (AFA) has been criticised as being unrealistic, as it placed market leader EMC's XTremIO product in the bottom category. Senior EMC sources told us they did not engage with so-called pay-for-play analyst reports and refused to pay DCIG any money for the AFA guide's production.

The DCIG 2015-16 Hyper-converged Infrastructure Buyer's Guide is available now to subscribing users of the DCIG Analysis Portal. Click here to log in. ®

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