Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

Wow! NetApp posts EMC SPC benchmark

In a gutsy move, NetApp just posted a Storage Performance Council (SPC) Benchmark....on the EMC CLARiiON! 

Now EMC has made clear statements that they "don't participate in performance benchmarking" - EMCer Chuck Hollis blogs about this in detail.  But this is not entirely true - as EMC is an active member in SPEC NAS performance benchmarks.  So the real issue is that EMC does not participate in SPC disk array performance benchmarks.  They have been pressured to do so, but it is ultimately their choice (until now it seems).  

In a pretty bold move - NetApp looks to have acquired an EMC CLARiiON disk array and posted some benchmarks for them.  NetApp even issued a press release on it.  Now to stay above the fray (I expect a pretty heated battle over this), I won't offer any opinions or judgments.  What I will do is post commentary from EMC and non-EMC bloggers below; as well as the public SPC results...

(For the record, I do consider the SPC Council to be a good and fair 3rd-party benchmark organization that tries to replicate real customer workload behavior accurately.  They are supported by Sun, IBM, HP, NetApp, Hitachi, Fujitsu, LSI Logic and Dell...)

Relevant Blogs:  

• NetApp's Dave Hitz shares why NetApp did it...
  
• EMC's Chuck Hollis says NetApp has taken benchmarks to a new level   
• ESG's Steve Duplessie's take
• IBM's Tony Pearson chimes in
• IBM's Barry Whyte can't wait for the excuses (be sure to read the EMC commentary)   

  
The SPC results (Submitted by Network Appliance and posted to SPC 1/29)

 EMC CLARiiON CX3 Model 40 pictured at right (no SnapView):
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#a00059
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00059

   SPC-1 Submission Identifier:  A00059
   SPC-1 IOPS(tm):               24,997.49
   SPC-1 Price-Performance(tm):  $20.72/SPC-1 IOPS(tm)
   Total ASU Capacity:           8,465.016 GB
   Data Protection Level:        Mirroring
   Total Price:                  $517,851


 EMC CLARiiON CX3 Model 40 (SnapView enabled):
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#a00060
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00060

   SPC-1 Submission Identifier:  A00060
   SPC-1 IOPS(tm):               8,997.17
   SPC-1 Price-Performance(tm):  $59.49/SPC-1 IOPS(tm)
   Total ASU Capacity:           7,054.148 GB
   Data Protection Level:        Mirroring
   Total Price:                  $535,251

One stat that industry insiders are pointing out is that the EMC CLARiiON took a 2.7x hit in performance with snapshots enabled (~25,000 IOPS down to ~9,000 IOPS).  This looks to be a pretty high performance penalty and may be something EMC needs to address. 

What of Sun StorageTek SPC results?   

As stated above, we're big SPC Benchmark supporters.  It is just another good tool that gives customers more intel into choosing the best storage system for their business.  You can find a ton of Sun benchmarks on SPC, two notable ones in this midrange disk array space are:

• Sun StorageTek 6140 (Submission # A00048): We posted 17,396 IOPS in a Mirrored RAID configuration with an industry leading Price/Performance metric of $4.91/IOPS. 
  
• Sun StorageTek 6540 (Submission #A00051): We posted 46,492 IOPS in a Mirrored RAID configuration with an industry leading Price/Performance metric of $6.62/IOPS.      
  

Posted at 05:09PM Jan 30, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]