Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage Published 11 October 2021 - ID G00741235 - 31 min read By Jeff Vogel, Roger W. Cox, and 2 more Next-generation primary storage strategies are shaped by hybrid cloud IT operation models, artificial intelligence for IT operations, software-defined storage and consumption models. I&O leaders need to assist in the selection of primary storage vendors to maximize the benefits of these trends. Strategic Planning Assumptions By 2025, more than 40% of all on-premises IT storage administration and support activities will be replaced by managed storage as a service, which is an increase from fewer than 5% in 2021. By 2025, more than 70% of corporate, enterprise-grade storage capacity will be deployed as consumption-based offerings, which is an increase from less than 40% in 2021. By 2025, 30% of external enterprise storage arrays deployed to support primary storage workloads will adopt nonvolatile memory express over fabrics, compared with fewer than 5% in 2021. Market Definition/Description Primary storage covers vendors that offer dedicated products or product lines for solid-state arrays (SSAs) or hybrid storage arrays (or both), and software-defined storage (SDS) software. Hybrid storage arrays include solid-state drive (SSD) and hard-disk drive (HDD) configurations. SSA products are 100% solid-state, technology-based systems that cannot be combined or expanded with HDDs. SSAs and hybrid storage arrays must have a dedicated product name and an associated model number. SDS products are designed to operate on industry-standard, commodity hardware on-premises or in the public cloud. A primary storage product’s foremost purpose is to support response time and input/output per second (IOPS)-sensitive structured data workloads. Typical use cases include mission-critical workloads, such as IBM Db2, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, Oracle Databases and applications, SAP HANA, and inhouse-developed transactional applications. Other use cases include application consolidation, support for virtual environments, providing persistent storage for container environments and cloud IT operations. The core capabilities of the products in primary storage market include support for: 1 • Native data services that conserve capacity utilization, protect against data loss, and enhance recovery via local and remote replication. • SSDs or HDDs or a combination of the two. The architecture can be scale-up or scale-out. • Host interface protocols that are block-based, such as Fibre Channel (FC) and Internet Small Computer System Interface Serial Attached (SCSI), or filebased, such as Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB), or a combination of block-and-file protocols. Additional primary storage capabilities include: • An SDS product for on-premises storage or cloud platforms that is integrated with industry-standard server hardware or specialized proprietary hardware as a scale-out, disaggregated compute and storage architecture. • Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) features for operational needs, such as cost optimization and capacity management, proactive support, workload simulation and placement, forecast growth rates, and/or asset management strategies. • Managed storage as a service (STaaS), subscription to a product catalog and APIonly provisioning to deliver a flexible storage platform managed via a globally accessible, centralized data services and operations panel that supports public/private cloud IT operations. • SSAs with nonvolatile memory express over fabrics (NVMe-oF) as a host interface. Magic Quadrant Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage Source: Gartner (October 2021) 2 Vendor Strengths and Cautions DDN DDN is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant. DDN has continued to leverage and integrate its at-scale high-performance computing (HPC) technologies with previously acquired companies and products into a cogent enterprise product portfolio strategy. DDN refreshed VMstore with an all-nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) drive platform and its IntelliFlash Operating Environment data services. Tintri NexentaStor by DDN is the Tintri SDS solution. DDN is privately held, with geographically diversified operations in the mid-to-largeenterprise and HPC segments. DDN has reorganized its VMstore, IntelliFlash appliances and Nexenta SDS solution under its Tintri enterprise brand, enabling technology cross-pollination and leveraging eng