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Market LandscapeReport

Understanding the NAS Market

By Terri McClure

August, 2011

2011, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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Market Landscape Report: Understanding the NAS Market 2


Contents

Overview: What is NAS? ............................................................................................................................... 3NAS Defined .............................................................................................................................................................. 3

The NAS Market Today ............................................................................................................................................. 3

NAS Market Segment Trends ........................................................................................................................ 6

Size and Functionality Differentiators Among Segments ......................................................................................... 6Architectural Differentiators Among the Segments ................................................................................................. 6

Why is the Scale-out NAS Footprint Increasing in Enterprise IT? ............................................................................. 8

Segmenting the NAS Market ........................................................................................................................ 9Segmenting by Workload ......................................................................................................................................... 9

Making an Educated Investment ................................................................................................................ 11Who ReallyNeeds Scale-out Systems ..................................................................................................................... 11

Market Inflection Points ......................................................................................................................................... 14

The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 17

ESG NAS Coverage ...................................................................................................................................... 18

All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources TheEnterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which aresubject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution ofthis publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without theexpress consent of the Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, i fapplicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at (508) 482-0188.


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Overview: What is NAS?

Every IT organization is different, with varying application needs that fuel demand for specific products based on a

combination of price, performance characteristics, and functionality. This paper will take an in-depth look at the

network attached storage (NAS) market and the factors that are feeding vendors obligations to address different

price, performance, and feature profiles to meet user needs.

NAS Defined

It is critical to begin with a definition of NAS: a NAS architecture provides a central place to securely store and share

file data. It can be thought of as a hard drive like the C: drive on a home PC or multiple hard drives, but it supports

an entire network rather than just one computer.

With NAS, multiple users (called clients), including those connected via the Internet, can access the same shared

files. NAS units connected to a network only provide file-based data storage services to clients. These are

dedicated, high-performance data storage systems running embedded proprietary operating systems and shared

file systems that handle file permissions and locking to maintain data integrity. A NAS device is purpose-built to

store files and perform file serving tasks, removing the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the

network; they are not designed to be general-purpose servers, and a fully-featured operating system is not needed

on a NAS device.

NAS uses file-based protocols such as NFS (popular on UNIX systems), SMB/CIFS (Server Message Block/Common

Internet File System, used with MS Windows systems), or AFP (used with Apple Macintosh computers). While early

systems were often dedicated to supporting one protocol, todays systems rarely limit clients to a single choice. The

most common supported combinations are NFS and CIFS. Some systems have proprietary access protocols and

require specialized clients be installed on every system that needs to access the NAS device.

The NAS Market Today

Data continues to grow, and management and efficiency problems continue to plague storage administrators. Even

with efficiency technologies such as deduplication (technology that ensures the same information in the form of

byte, file, or block is only stored once) and thin provisioning (technology which avoids allocating actual storagecapacity until it is actually written to, optimizing storage utilization) available, users have not been able to stem

data growth entirely. According to ESG research, one-fifth of users are reporting NAS capacity growth of more than

50%per year(up from only 13% who reported greater than 50% annual NAS growth in a 2008 ESG storage survey),

and 54% of organizations with NAS installations are indicating that their storage capacity is growing by at least20%

per year (see Figure 1).1

1

Source: ESG Research Report,Scale-out Storage Market Trends, December 2010.
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/12/scale-out-storage-market-trends/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/12/scale-out-storage-market-trends/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/12/scale-out-storage-market-trends/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/12/scale-out-storage-market-trends/


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Figure 1. Storage Capacity, by Storage Type

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2011.

Unstructured data and file shares are growing exponentially. Expansion in this area is exceeding that of other data

types with an estimated 226 exabytes of archived file data being accumulated by 2015, dwarfing database- and e-

mail-based archive data (see Figure 2).2

Figure 2. Projected Archive Data Growth, by Type


2Source:ESG Research Report,Digital Archiving: End-User Survey & Market Forecast 2010-2015,July 2010.

17%

29%

33%

20%

2%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

1% to 10% annually 11% to 20%

annually

21% to 50%

annually

More than 50%

annually

Dont Know

At approximately what rate do you believe your NAS data storage capacity is growing

annually? (Percent of respondents, N=259)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Unstructured 11,430 16,737 25,127 39,237 59,600 92,536 147,885 226,716

Database 1,952 2,782 4,065 6,179 9,140 13,824 21,532 32,188

E-mail 1,652 2,552 4,025 6,575 10,411 16,796 27,817 44,091

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

350,000

Total Archived Capacity, by Content Type, Worldwide, 2008-2015 (Petabytes)
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/07/digital-archive-market-forecast-2010-2015/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/07/digital-archive-market-forecast-2010-2015/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/07/digital-archive-market-forecast-2010-2015/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/07/digital-archive-market-forecast-2010-2015/


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This growth is likely to continue in part because the economy is reviving and in part because organizations need to

accommodate the relentless increase in file data. In short, NAS purchases are increasing.

ESG research revealed that 86% of midmarket organizations and 84% of enterprise organizations are using NAS for

some tier of storage.3 As shown in Figure 3, the capacity of NAS storage (45% of ESG research respondents total

disk storage capacity) outweighs storage area network (SAN) storage (36%) and direct attached storage (DAS)

(31%).4

Figure 3. Storage Capacity, by Storage Type

SAN systems transfer data over the network in the form of disk blocks whereas NAS systems transfer file

data. SAN and NAS systems are networked whereas DAS is dedicated to the file server to which its attached.


Many organizations use NAS systems because they are easy to install/deploy, affordable, and reliableensuring

support time is kept to a minimum. Other factors driving adoption include ease of capacity expansion and ease of

administration, especially when it comes to serving up files to heterogeneous clients.

The challenge is to manage high data growth without increasing storage costs. Two-thirds of the users surveyed by

ESG are making net-new NAS purchases annually or semi-annually. As a result, they are experiencing storage

sprawl, making increased capital outlays, and enduring rising operational costs. IT users tell ESG that they need a

more scalable storage infrastructure to support rapid virtual machine growth as the physical scalability limits oftraditional NAS storage systems are becoming a real problem.

NAS vendors have responded by offering solutions targeted at specific use cases, depending on the performance,

availability, and scalability required. This has resulted in increasing fragmentation of the market with systems that

specialize in certain performance characteristics. Over time, however, specialized segmentation will disappear as

next-generation scale-out systems are engineered to increase applicable use cases. Indeed, that process is already

underway. But before exploring the future of NAS, it is important to understand the present.

3Source: ESG Research Report,Scale-out Storage Market Trends, December 2010.

4Ibid

Direct-attached

storage (DAS), 19%

Network-attached

storage (NAS), 45%

Storage area

network (SAN), 36%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Approximately what percentage of your organizations total disk-based storage

capacity would you say is associated with each storage type? (Mean, N=306)


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NAS Market Segment Trends

The overall NAS market can be segmented based on multiple criteria with each segment having its own

requirements in terms of performance parameters and feature sets. It is possible to categorize this market in

various ways: for example, by application workload type, workload size, or the vertical industry of the NAS end-

user. Features and functionality vary among the NAS systems suited for each segment.

Size and Functionality Differentiators Among Segments

At one end of the market are the traditional NAS systems that are widely deployed in enterprise IT. Examples

include the well-known NetApp FAS and EMC Celerra (now VNX) systems. These systems were designed to handle

storage of important file data that must be quickly accessibleenvironments that are random access, transaction-

intensive, and critical to an organizations operations. These environments typically have a large amount of small

files shared between users, so users need systems that can support a high level of file-based IO performance and a

lot of short, small file requests.

Such NAS systems tend to be the most expensive to buy in terms of dollars per gigabyte. They handle important

unstructured data and multiple users may need access to those files frequently. For example, if a catastrophic event

occurs, an insurance company may need to make thousands of files holding claim-related data immediately

accessible. These files are likely to be stored on a high-end NAS system architected with redundant backup, hard-wired reliability, and speed.

At the other end of the spectrum are organizations that just need a file server but also require some level of

advanced functionality and reliabilitythese low-end to midrange NAS appliances have capacity that is measurable

in gigabytes or terabytes, not petabytes, but still offer some high-end features and protocols such as thin

provisioning, cloning, RAID protection, and data deduplication. Vendors like Overland Storage offer robust and well

proven solutions (Overland has shipped over 300,000 SnapServers) targeted at supporting the requirements of

small offices or remote locations up to small or medium enterprises. These systems typically sell for under $25,000,

a price point that reflects their relatively less abundant capabilities but is still low enough to be attractive to smaller

businesses and prosumers.

In recent years, a new dimension has emerged: systems that need an exceptional level of throughput. These

systems, which can deliver a lot of data measured in megabytes per second rather than transactions per second,

used to be highly specialized and sold in niche markets with edge use cases, mostly high performance computing

(HPC) applications in universities and other research and development environments. Early systems were complex

and required a significant amount of time and expertise to deploy and run. Todays systems are much more

advanced and easier to use, driven by a combination of user pull from new use cases requiring the exceptional

throughput these systems can deliver and vendor advancements in the ease of use of the highly advanced file

systems that underpin them, essentially masking the complexity of the underlying file system.

The net of the emergence of the second scalability dimension is that we now have two core architectural

approaches to NAS systems. The next section will explore those differentiators and further segment the market.

Architectural Differentiators Among the Segments

In recent years, two architectural paradigms for NAS, called scale-out NAS and scale-up NAS, have emerged in

response to the need to stay ahead of the unremitting deluge of data. These systems are built and then later

expanded in differing fashions.

Scale-up NAS: Scale-up NAS is designed to be monolithic and to scale performance, capacity, or throughput

by adding resources (disk spindles) vertically behind one or two NAS heads within a tightly-coupled system

that shares a common pool of resources that work together in tandem. Once the limit on storage is hit, a

net new system, with a new file system to manage, is installed. These systems scale performance by adding

spindles and typically perform well in random access environments requiring a large number of file

operations per second. These are the traditional enterprise NAS solutions previously characterized.


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Scale-out NAS: Scale-out systems are virtualized systems that can scale horizontally across nodes and in

front-end processing power as well as back-end capacity (via newly added processor or capacity nodes)

while still working as a single system. Scale-out solutions increase performance, capacity, or throughput by

adding resources (e.g., processors, memory, host interfaces) as loosely coupled systems composed of nodes

that work side-by-side, in parallel.They often dont need the levels of individual physical disk management,

data layout, and performance tuning required by traditional monolithic and modular systems. These scale-

out systems are typically designed for rapid data growth in file environments that require handling of very

large file sizes without the performance or management limitations associated with scale-up NAS.

Scale-out platforms provide a path to increased performance and operational cost reductionbenefits that

are increasingly putting these systems on the radars of enterprise IT buyers. Solutions can typically expand

into the multi-petabyte range under a single system image regardless of how many physical nodes actually

exist, providing an ideal platform for storage consolidation. They help IT reduce management costs and

data center equipment footprint, which in turn reduces floor space needs and power and cooling costs.

Increased storage consolidation onto a shared resource also means utilization rates are higher, so users get

more bang for their storage buck.

Figure 4. Scale-up versus Scale-out Storage Architectures Illustrated


The key value behind scale-out systems is their ability to leverage the many processors, memory modules, and data

paths associated with a clustered multi-node system and make these nodes work in concert to deliver a single file.

Systems that claim parallel data services can break up a single file and deliver the pieces in parallel, leveraging all of

the nodes and data paths at once to significantly reduce the amount of time from the point the file was requested

to the point the file is completely delivered (referred to as latency). The analogy is that of a grocery store: if a

busload of 30 customers comes in and it takes three minutes for each clerk to serve each customer, two clerks

would take 45 minutes to serve all the customers waiting to check out. But if there are ten clerks working in

parallel, the entire checkout process is done in nine minutes. Imagine the effect of such a performance increase on


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a business in which speeding data analysis by reducing file wait times would have an immediate impact on the

bottom line, like drug discovery or financial risk analysis!

It should be noted that as scale-out architectures have matured and become more mainstream in both block- (Fibre

Channel) and file-based (NAS) storage systems, the line between scale-up and scale-out has started to blur. There

are systems on the market that can scale in multiple dimensionsup, out, and linearlyto provide a flexible and

best of all worlds approach. ESG includes those platforms that scale in multiple dimensions (i.e., scale-up and/or

scale-out) in its overall scale-out definition since it is ESGs experience that users consider them to be part of thatcategory. Because of these various architectural approaches, it is therefore difficult for some technologies and

products to be easily classified into a specific category. In such cases, ESG weighs the features and functions to

determine if a system is more heavily weighted toward scale-up or scale-out and classifies the system accordingly.

ESG believes that scaling up andout will continue to play ever larger roles in IT as demands to support business

growth flexibly climb ever higher.

Why is the Scale-out NAS Footprint Increasing in Enterprise IT?

Scale-up and scale-out architectures both have a place in IT today. Scale-out NAS is particularly important because

it enables data access within one global namespace, providing all users with a single, logical view of files spread

across many nodes through a single mount point or drive letter. From a business operations standpoint,

organizations dealing with a huge influx of data are better able to keep a handle on that rapid growth via higher

levels of resource utilization because they essentially have one single, massively scalable shared storage pool to

manage.

For certain applications and lines of business, this ability is extremely useful. ESG research5

Achieve faster storage provisioning times.

finds that scale-out NAS

helps users to:

Improve scalability.

Manage the environment more easily.

Attain improved data availability.

Improve performance (both IO and throughput).

Reduce infrastructure costs.

Deploy and manage shared storage less disruptively in large virtual IT environments.

More effectively support specific applications, especially high-performance computing applications

(including emerging commercial HPC applications such as 3-D and 4-D modeling, seismic analysis, data

mining, or large-scale simulations).

Industries that are in the businesses of producing digital media, generating oil & gas seismic data, providing health

care services, or conducting biotechnology research are among the many vertical markets that have adopted or are

looking to implement scale-out NAS. Scale-out NAS is particularly important to these markets because its ability to

offer parallel data services is helpful when working with very large file sizesall of the other efficiencies wererealized as side benefits. Organizations in other industries and in general purpose IT are looking to scale-out NAS to

simplify the storage and management of general-purpose office data, which is accumulating just as rapidly

essentially, they want an efficient central storage services infrastructure that can scale and grow with the business.

5Source: ESG Research Report,Scale-out Storage Market Trends, December 2010.


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Segmenting the NAS Market

ESG segments the NAS market according to two dimensions. The first is the traditional high end (tier-1, high

performance/high availability) versus low end (entry level, consumer/prosumer) segmentation many vendors

target. But ESG considers performance requirements as well, adding a second dimension to the traditional

segmentation model. As previously stated, scale-out NAS systems initially targeted environments that required very

high throughput (MB per second), such as HPC. Most of these systems struggle or downright fail to meet the

intensive IO demands that traditional scale-up systems were designed for. The performance profile is very

differentand many, many factors go into optimizing systems for either high IO or high throughput environments.

Segmenting by Workload

Use cases create very different performance demands on storage systems. Traditional NAS workloads that may be

OLTP-based or just general purpose file sharing typically have a lot of small files and are, therefore, required to

support higher levels of IO. Newer classes of workloads are large-file-intensive and require higher throughput.

Figure 5 illustrates the typical workloads seen in terms of file operations per second (IO performance) and

megabytes or gigabytes per second (throughput). Scale-up systems are typically very strong in IO performance

while scale-out systems are very strong in throughput performance.

Figure 5. NAS Workload Categories


Figure 6 is a look from the more classic forms of market segmentationfrom consumer to the enterprisebut

adding the new dimensions of segmentation based on throughput performance requirements. From the initial

inception of NAS, it has been designed for workloads that creep up the left axis from departmental and distributed

to enterprise IT. Those systems designed for throughput to support file-based workloads and HPC have been highly

specialized niche players. But as well see later, IT workloads are shifting along the horizontal axis and requiring

greater throughput.


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Figure 6. Segmenting the Market Based on Workload/Use Case Requirements


NAS systems have been developed to optimize for one dimension or another and have specific use cases in which

they excel. Applying systems where they dont fit can have a negative impact on the bottom line, so it is essential to

understand the use cases systems were designed for. For vendors, it is just as essential to sell to the appropriate

use case in order to build a happy customer base.

Figure 7 shows the use cases where the most well known NAS storage systems excel as well as the typical street

price points, though within a segment prices can vary broadly and this is a very general guideline. Up the left axis,

focusing on classic IT segmentation, are the more established enterprise IT brands like EMC and NetApp. But,

moving across the throughput axis, newer players begin to emerge: BlueArc (also sold by HDS) and Isilon (recently

acquired by EMC). Further down the line, Terascala, Panasas, and DataDirect emerge with systems that meet the

most demanding throughput and IO requirements.

It is also important to note that this is a broad guidelinethe lines are already starting to blur as some of the scale-

out vendors evolve their systems to better serve random access file IO. For example, EMC Isilon recently published

record-setting SPECsfs benchmark tests that indicate it has made the leap and can compete with the scale-up NAS

vendors. Gridstore is seeing some success with its building-block scale-out NAS for small to medium size enterprises

targeting a general purpose NAS use case. Scale Computing is often used in virtual server environments that have

unpredictable IO and bandwidth requirements and need to add data paths with capacity to virtualize the storage

environment to better align it with the virtual server environments. Scale, along with RELDATA, are two of the

vendors to truly target the SME market with a unified scale-out solutionmost of the other scale-out vendors are

continuing to go after large file, bandwidth-intensive applications. Nexenta just joined this select group when it

released its Namespace Cluster functionality in June of 2011. So even now, as we highlight the divergent

architectures, expect use cases to quickly expand and vendors to target adjacent markets and general purpose IT as

they add features and tweak performance.


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Figure 7. Where Top Vendors Fit into the Segmentation


*These products are file systems that are used as underpinnings in NAS systems from multiple vendors.

Making an Educated Investment

Sometimes, a clear indicator guides the investmentin this case, it is a performance indicator. Those who need the

bandwidth of a scale-out solution really need the bandwidth. A number of vertical industries require high-bandwidth NAS systems. Across the board, their file formats are getting more sophisticated, their file sizes are

growing larger, and their data stores are mushrooming. This massive data growth is creating demand for innovative

scale-out file storage solutions suited for high-speed IT.

NAS users in these vertical markets need an infrastructure that can economically scale bandwidth, manageability,

and performance to previously unheard-of heights. Using traditional scale-up architectures in these environments is

becoming unrealistic. A better choice is a scale-out NAS architecture designed from the ground up to grow and

support extremely high-bandwidth applications.

Who ReallyNeeds Scale-out Systems

Several major industries that once operated in traditional paper or microfilm-based modes are finding that today,their digital data stores are threatening to overwhelm them. These are attractive vertical markets for scale-out NAS

vendors capable of providing high-performance application support.

Looking at the throughput versus IO model in Figure 8, these industries have many applications that require the

very high throughput that parallel data services can deliver, exceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional

scale-up NAS systems.


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Figure 8. Vertical Industry Affinity for Scale-out NAS


Interestingly enough, this chart would have looked significantly differentas recently as five years ago. Many of the

workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into the left hand side of the chart. But advances in

processor technologysuch as multi-core processing and much faster chip setsand in video, graphics, and design

softwaresuch as 3-D CAD, 4-D medical imaging, and high definition TV, just to name a fewhave created newtypes of workloads that demand a very different performance profile than ever seen before. They create huge files

and multithreaded requests that a single or dual processor scale-up system would not be able to service in a timely

manner: production can slow or the system can time out waiting for the request.

Taking a deeper dive into a few industries:

Media & entertainment. The operating model of media & entertainment organizations has evolved

dramatically. In years past, they perhaps once produced only print magazines. Those publications are

virtually all online-only now. Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available to readers

and content generators, but all the advertising files do, too. Large video files are also exacerbating the data-

growth problems at digitally-intensive media & entertainment companies.

In fact, todays media & entertainment organizations are generating and protecting terabytes or petabytesof file data. At some enterprises, much of the data is being created at the edgeat remote news bureaus

or CGI design studios separated from main data centers. That operational structure brings problems related

to data replication for backup and can even impede the disaster recovery capabilities of the infrastructure.

Media & entertainment organizations are looking to high-performance scale-out NAS solutions to solve a

variety of problemsfor instance, to improve the performance of a virtual server infrastructure or simply

to ensure that information is instantly and always available to content creators and consumers. Some

companies, like Facilis, focus solely on this market.

Life sciences. Not surprisingly, organizations engaged in health-related scientific discovery are actively

interested in parallel file system solutions offering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability. At


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these organizations, collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident. For example, the IT team may

need to find ways to enable sharing of very large gene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands

of researchers.

To be successful, these companies must accelerate their discovery processes; the faster they develop a new

drug, the faster it can be tested and approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications. One

IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug-discovery process is to use a high-performance

parallel file system infrastructure that never requires disruptive forklift upgrades.

Oil & gas. Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing game. Today, it is a precise, scientific

endeavor that relies on digitized data. Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has

become an ever-present tool for the oil & gas industry in the past decade as fields decline and extraction

operations become more complex. IT managers working in the oil & gas vertical market are challenged to

find NAS infrastructures that can support the sharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil

reserve modeling/simulation work.

Without an architecture that can maintain performance as storage capacity grows, sustaining a competitive

edge becomes more difficult, mainly because the time-to-result (the extraction of the resource)

lengthens. Scale-out NAS is a good solution for oil & gas organizations dealing with enormous

computational simulations that, in a very direct fashion, hold the key to their competitive success.

Traditional HPC/academics & research. Astrophysicists, molecular biologists, chemists, nuclear physicists,

and even social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generators and consumers of data. For

example, at the Large Hadron Collider run by CERN, the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage

by mid-2010.6

Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constrained university settings or commercial

labs) rely on high-performance grid computing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling

and simulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer big questions. Their work requires

low-latency network clusters that can handle extremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands.

Financial services. These users, who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional

information, are also now heavy users of high-performance parallel file systems for efforts such as market-

performance forecasting and business intelligence. These efforts involve files that are not just bigthey are

also long-running and compute-intensive and require a high level of data protection and immediate data

availability. Financial services users in particular look for scale-out architectures that remove data-

integration bottlenecks. Data integration is a core task in financial services IT. For these users, an ideal NAS

solution is one that performs faster as the number of nodes increases.

Manufacturing & design. Like the other industries identified, high-tech manufacturers, aerospace

companies, nanoelectronics start-ups, CAD/CAM design firms, and many others also need tremendous

amounts of storage and they are all looking for ways to optimize data management. Users in these

industries need faultless capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve information sharing

among engineering teams.

Outages are severely economically damaging in these environments, so users in the manufacturing &design segment seek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easy capacity

upgrades on the fly. They look for automation to assist with file-system administration, data movement,

replication, and migration/tiering.

6http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations.arsand

http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/9/16/how-can-the-large-hadron-collider-withstand-one-petabyte-of.html
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations.arshttp://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations.arshttp://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations.arshttp://highscalability.com/blog/2010/9/16/how-can-the-large-hadron-collider-withstand-one-petabyte-of.htmlhttp://highscalability.com/blog/2010/9/16/how-can-the-large-hadron-collider-withstand-one-petabyte-of.htmlhttp://highscalability.com/blog/2010/9/16/how-can-the-large-hadron-collider-withstand-one-petabyte-of.htmlhttp://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/lhc-computing-grid-pushes-petabytes-of-data-beats-expectations.ars


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Market Inflection Points

The challenge facing most enterprises today is that file data growth is out of control. It is one reason that scale-out

NAS, with its granular, plug-and-play growth capability, is breaking out of specific verticaluse cases and becoming

a major segment of the overallfile-based storage solution market.

The Addressable Market

Scale-out storage has made its way beyond markets that require the bandwidth and performance of scale-out

solutions into conventional IT environments as well.

According to ESG research, scale-out external networked storage shipments in commercial and government sectors

will increase from 4,189 petabytes in 2010 to 62,834 petabytes in 2015.7

It is important to note that while most scale-out systems on the market are dedicated to supporting either block or

file protocols, ESG believes scale-out platforms will follow in the footsteps of todays scale-up systems and offer

multiprotocol support at some point. ESG did not, therefore, forecast file/NAS and block/SAN separately as these

distinctions become moot over time.

That is a 72% compound annual growth

rate that far exceeds the overall 54% growth rate of external networked storage (i.e., traditional NAS and SAN). This

aggressive growth represents a major transition from scale-up to scale-out architectures across the vendor

landscape.

ESG expects 2011 to be a tipping point for net new scale-out external networked storage shipments: these

shipments will exceed 50% of all net-new external networked storage systems in terms of terabytes shipped and

revenue. By 2015, the transition to scale-out architectures will be almost complete, with scale-out storage

architectures comprising 80% of all net new external networked storage shipments from a revenue standpoint and

75% of all networked storage capacity shipped.8

Figure 9. Scale-out Revenue versus Non-Scale-out and Total Networked Storage Addressable Market


7Source: ESG Research Report,Scale-out Storage Market Forecast 2010-2015,March 2011.

8Ibid

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Scale-Out Storage Systems $6,995 $10,925 $13,977 $15,710 $16,921 $18,319

Non-Scale-Out Storage Systems $9,758 $7,155 $5,339 $4,914 $4,842 $4,580

Total Addressable Networked Storage Market $16,754 $18,080 $19,316 $20,624 $21,764 $22,899

$-

$5,000

$10,000

$15,000

$20,000

$25,000

Worldwide Storage System Revenue, 2010-2015, (US$)
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/03/scale-out-storage-market-forecast-2010-2015/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/03/scale-out-storage-market-forecast-2010-2015/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/03/scale-out-storage-market-forecast-2010-2015/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/03/scale-out-storage-market-forecast-2010-2015/


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However, since there is never a true wholesale technology transition in IT (attested to by the continued use of tape

and mainframe systems), ESG expects scale-out capacity shipments to level out as a percentage of overall external

networked storage capacity in 2013 and maintain that roughly 75% market position as scale-up systems continue to

be used in some remote office and departmental applications and to support IO-intensive standalone applications.

Big Data and the Importance of Throughput

The term big data typically refers to significantly large sets of data as well as to the tools organizations must useto create, manipulate, and manage them. Data sets become big data when their size and breadth grow such that it

becomes hard to derive business insight from them. When a company is amassing data assets with rapid growth

rates, the sheer file size or volume of storage and access operations creates new performance challenges that

traditional architectures often cannot scale to meet.

Conventional NAS was a perfect way to store and protect many small files. If an abundance of additional small files

were being created, then a scale-up expansion was a fine way to support the growth. But today, big data is

proliferating. Even smaller enterprises are now moving large data sets around frequently. The biggest of the big

data users, such as the vertical industries identified in the previous section, are known to create and move

individual files that are each many terabytes in size.

Simply adding resources to storage, bandwidth, or computing power no longer addresses all of their needs. In the

era of big data, users need their NAS environments to scale not just in capacity, bandwidth, and compute strength,

but also in throughput. The sheer volume of storage and access operations underway is creating performance

bottlenecks that traditional architectures cant always meet. Big data files only add to the stresses. Todays high-

performance scale-out NAS systems, with their optimized controllers and clustering capabilities, may be the answer

for companies that are rapidly generating extremely large files.

Virtual IT

In a virtualized IT environment, storage must be able to handle changing workloads, maintaining performance as

usage demands fluctuate and grow. According to the results of a recent ESG survey, enterprise users plan to

increase density levels on a per-server basis by 250% over the next 24 months. 9

In virtual environments, scale-out NAS has a compelling value proposition relative to scale-up systems. The lower

infrastructure costs, power efficiency, and relative management ease of scale-out NAS should put these solutions

on the short list of anyone interested in deploying NAS capacity as a service via private or public clouds.

This means they will need power,

CPUs, memory, and high-performance scalable file storage.

The operational savings associated with just-in-time scalabilityreduced power, cooling, and floor space

requirements; reduced storage management headcount; and faster response to provisioning fire drillscan all help

create a more efficient and agile enterprise. Deploying a virtualized software layer can further free up resources

and create cross-platform resource pools that IT administrators can efficiently deploy across the enterprise as

needed to meet business requirements.

Scale-out NAS enables administrators to add nodes seamlessly as a virtual environment grows. Upgrades to a scale-

out NAS environment are relatively easy and performance doesnt suffer, which is one reason that scale-out NAS is

well-suited for use in virtual IT environments where storage is allocated without regard for physical location.

The Cloud

Today, you cant throw a stick without hitting something that mentions the coming cloud transformation. The cloud

needs to be considered in two ways. First, we have the underlying file server infrastructure. Cloud storage

infrastructures will require the type of elasticity and virtualized storage inherent to scale-out solutions. If users do

indeed build private cloud infrastructures, it is a pretty safe bet that it will accelerate scale-out deployments.

9Source: ESG Research Report,The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/11/the-evolution-of-server-virtualization/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/11/the-evolution-of-server-virtualization/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/11/the-evolution-of-server-virtualization/http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/11/the-evolution-of-server-virtualization/


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The second consideration is cloud storage services. It must be noted that over time, ESG expects some onsite NAS

business to be somewhat cannibalized by cloud storage service providers. There are solution vendors like Nasuni

that provide a gateway to cloud storage yet offer a fully functional, local-like NAS experience. Cloud storage

services vendorNirvanixalso offers a NAS gateway that ports to its service, and there are vendors likeDropBoxand

Box.netthat provide web-based file services. While these solutions are becoming an ever more viable onsite NAS

alternative, a deeper dive into cloud storage services would be required, thus the cloud storage services market will

be addressed in a subsequent report.

Alternative Approaches to Scale-out, Performance, and Cost Reduction

A surrounding ecosystem is developing in the NAS market to address NAS performance and scalability concerns.

Averes scale-out NAS appliance is a clustered NAS front-end system that sits between clients that need to access

file data and their bulk storage NAS systems. It virtualizes the back-end NAS storage systems, eliminating the need

to manage multiple systems and creates a NAS storage pool that centrally houses file data and provides a high

performing storage tier within the FXT system to service file requests that require higher performancecritical files

that are often accessed or recent working sets that tend to have a high frequency of access for the first 30 days

after creation. It can also act as an edge cache to reduce latency at remote sites.

F5s ARX product virtualizes the NAS ecosystems and provides a layer that automates migration and tiering across

NAS systems to optimize for cost and performance, even tiering out to a cloud storage service provider. AutoVirtoffers similar functionality for CIFS environments, albeit without a cloud tier as of this writing. And a number of

emerging solid state storage vendors are providing NAS cache divides that leverage solid state as a front-end

cached storage tier.
http://www.nirvanix.com/http://www.nirvanix.com/http://www.nirvanix.com/http://www.bdropbox.com/http://www.bdropbox.com/http://www.bdropbox.com/http://www.box.net/http://www.box.net/http://www.box.net/http://www.bdropbox.com/http://www.nirvanix.com/


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The Bigger Truth

The NAS market is quickly evolving. The broad shift underway is a result of some end-users looking to unshackle

themselves from the bonds of legacy storage systems, largely driven by the need for greater efficiency in general

and better density in their virtual server environments in particular.

The ability to independently scale bandwidth, IO and throughput processing, and capacity on the fly are core

requirements of next-generation NAS architectures. The majority of file data now under management was createdas rich digital content. These are large sequential files and, in some environments, they collectively amount to

multiple petabytes of capacity.

At this point, it is cost-prohibitive to simply scale-up with more racks and spindles to increase throughput and

reduce latency. IO capacity and file serving performance need to be boosted by adding nodes granularly while

remaining online.

The commercial adoption of high-performance computing applications and the growth of big data applications are

beginning to change the look of the NAS marketplace. Many users who once worried mainly about managing OLTP

environments and back office data now also require systems that can support high-performance parallel file

processing.

The file data growth experienced by these organizations makes their requirement for high-throughput, high-capacity storage appliances more urgent every day. However, like all marketplace shifts, this IT transformation

wont happen overnight. It will take time and will most likely be driven from the top of a given end-users

organization as storage administrators are notoriously resistant to change. Additionally, the current dominant

storage vendors have legacy revenue streams that they will protect by promoting conventional scale-up NAS

solutions to handle high-performance applications that actually would be better served with a next-generation

scale-out NAS architecture.

It is possible that Web applications may be a tipping point in accelerating this alteration of the NAS market toward

more and more advanced parallel storage platforms: Web applications, like big data workloads, already stress the

performance boundaries of legacy storage systems.

Regardless of whether its blogs, video, or supercomputer-intensive 4-D imaging, content is easier than ever to

createand management is becoming harder than ever. The dynamics of the performance-driven computing

market are evolving. Sooner or later, to meet efficiency and responsiveness goals, some users will have to consider

IT transformation initiatives in order to capitalize on the high throughput, high capacity file storage solutions now

available to them.


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ESG NAS Coverage

The following is a best effort representation of vendors that have briefed ESG analysts over the past six months. It is

not intended to represent an exhaustive listing of all solution providers in this particular segment.

Table 1.ESG NAS Coverage

Vendor Products Website

AutoVirt AutoVirt www.autovirt.com

Avere FXT Series www.averesystems.com

BlueArc Titan and Mercury www.bluearc.com

DataDirect NetworksNAS Scaler, GRIDScaler, EXA Scaler,

xStTREAM Scalerwww.datadirectnet.com

Dell FS7500 www.dell.com

EMC VNX Series www.emc.com

EMC/Isilon NL, S and X Series www.isilon.com

F5 ARX www.f5.com

Facilis Terrablock www.facilis.com

Gluster GlusterFS www.gluster.com

Gridstore GS-1000 www.gridstore.com

HDS HNAS www.hds.com

HPProliant Storage Server NAS, X-

serieswww.hp.com

IBM GPFS, SONAS www.ibm.com

Nasuni Nasuni Filer www.nasuni.com

NetApp FAS and V-series www.netapp.com

Nexenta NexentaStor www.nexenta.com

Overland Storage SnapServer www.overlandstorage.com

Panasas ActiveStor family www.panasas.com

RELDATA 9240 www.reldata.com

Quantum StorNext www.quantum.com

Scale Computing M, N and S-Series www.scalecomputing.com

Symantec FileStore www.symantec.com

Terascala DTS4500, TSS2500, Gateway www.terascala.com

Xyratex ClusterStor www.xyratex.com


The purpose of this paper is to provide insight and understanding into market dynamics and the types of available

offerings so organizations will be able to make educated decisions on buying and implementing one of these NASsolutions.
http://www.autovirt.com/http://www.autovirt.com/http://www.averesystems.com/http://www.averesystems.com/http://www.bluearc.com/http://www.bluearc.com/http://www.datadirectnet.com/http://www.datadirectnet.com/http://www.dell.com/http://www.dell.com/http://www.emc.com/http://www.emc.com/http://www.isilon.com/http://www.isilon.com/http://www.f5.com/http://www.f5.com/http://www.facilis.com/http://www.facilis.com/http://www.gluster.com/http://www.gluster.com/http://www.gridstore.com/http://www.gridstore.com/http://www.hds.com/http://www.hds.com/http://www.hp.com/http://www.hp.com/http://www.ibm.com/http://www.ibm.com/http://www.nasuni.com/http://www.nasuni.com/http://www.netapp.com/http://www.netapp.com/http://www.nexenta.com/http://www.nexenta.com/http://www.overlandstorage.com/http://www.overlandstorage.com/http://www.panasas.com/http://www.panasas.com/http://www.reldata.com/http://www.reldata.com/http://www.quantum.com/http://www.quantum.com/http://www.scalecomputing.com/http://www.scalecomputing.com/http://www.symantec.com/http://www.symantec.com/http://www.terascala.com/http://www.terascala.com/http://www.xyratex.com/http://www.xyratex.com/http://www.xyratex.com/http://www.terascala.com/http://www.symantec.com/http://www.scalecomputing.com/http://www.quantum.com/http://www.reldata.com/http://www.panasas.com/http://www.overlandstorage.com/http://www.nexenta.com/http://www.netapp.com/http://www.nasuni.com/http://www.ibm.com/http://www.hp.com/http://www.hds.com/http://www.gridstore.com/http://www.gluster.com/http://www.facilis.com/http://www.f5.com/http://www.isilon.com/http://www.emc.com/http://www.dell.com/http://www.datadirectnet.com/http://www.bluearc.com/http://www.averesystems.com/http://www.autovirt.com/


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