NetApp launched its Storage Efficiency Guarantee as a means of demonstrating the disk-saving potential of virtualisation technology.
Phase one of the guarantee, announced in September 2008, guaranteed NetApp customers data storage savings of at least 50 per cent using NetApp de-duplication on NetApp hardware.
If an organisation didn't gain at least 50 per cent savings, NetApp offered the difference in free storage hardware.
Phase two, announced in February, extends the guarantee to specified third party hardware from EMC, IBM, HP, or Hitachi Data Systems.
Organisations running NetApp data de-duplication software on specified third party hardware are promised 35 per cent storage savings, or again, NetApp will make up the balance with its own hardware.
But a closer look at the conditions of the guarantee spoil the story somewhat, according to EMC Australia's VMware business manager, Darren McCullum.
McCullum points out that among the conditions is a requirement that the customer is migrating from one of the most conservative RAID (redundant array of independent disks) configurations - RAID 10.
Sometimes referred to as RAID 1+0, this configuration sees an organisation deploy twice as much disk as it uses, in order to ensure data is not lost should a single disk fail.
NetApp's guarantee only applies to those organisations moving from RAID 10 to its own proprietary RAID configuration, RAID DP, which requires far less disk.
It is not hard to see how an organisation that needed two 40GB disks (80GB) for only 40GB of useable space would halve their data storage requirements overnight by moving to a configuration that did not require so much redundant disk.
"Anyone moving from RAID10 to RAID-DP is going to get instant savings," admits Michael Delandere, systems engineering manager for NetApp Australia.
"So yes, a considerable chunk of the savings will come from the switch in RAID configuration itself. But we are saying, here is a way to make considerable savings and we will stand by it."
The NetApp guarantee also insists that no more than ten per cent of the total data set being de-duplicated can be graphics, XML, database data, Microsoft Exchange data or encrypted data.
This effectively excludes from the guarantee some of the most data-intensive areas of any organisation and leaves little else but file servers applicable.
"There are certain applications where moving the dial towards saving footprint isn't in the best interests of the customer," says Delandere.
"The guarantee shouldn't apply to applications with a higher I/O load."
The conditions defeat the purpose of what a customer should hope to achieve with virtualisation beyond consolidation, says McCallum.
"Virtualisation offers a new way of doing things, in terms of flexibility, how you deliver services," he said.
"The conditions you have to meet for the guarantee are so onerous they fly in the face of the reasons you would virtualise in the first place. It is very short-sighted."
But Delandere insists the guarantee offers assurance for customers considering the latest storage and virtualisation technologies.
"These [conditions] are not things we are trying to hide under the covers," he said, pointing to NetApp's detailed documentation published online.
NetApp's response
EMC's counter to NetApp's Storage Efficiency Guarantee has been to cite a January report by Forrester Research, which claims that almost half (48 per cent) of organisations choose EMC storage for their virtualised environments.
NetApp considers the report questionable.
Delandere says the 124 survey respondents on which the survey is based is "a fairly small sample to be quoting."
"If you're going to ask a question like that, you'd want to get a sizeable pool of data to get your answer," he said.
The survey does fail to break down how much of IBM and Dell's shares of the market are actually re-branded EMC or NetApp boxes, which could swing results wildly in favour of one vendor or the other. Forrester tracks IBM, which re-sells NetApp's storage at 25 per cent market share, while EMC reseller Dell has 6 per cent.
"We know the numbers are wrong, as we know how many VMWare customers are on board with us," said Delandere. "The results are so far out of reality, anyone who knows anything about storage would have to raise their eyebrows."
A spokesperson for Forrester Group said the survey was independent and not commissioned by any vendor.
McCallum says the figures only reflect similar reports by Goldman Sachs (42 per cent in August 2008) and IDC (43 per cent in December 2007) that confirm EMC is tracking at around the 40-50 per cent mark.
He also claims to have seen internal VMWare metrics showing that 48 per cent of the storage adaptors offered by VMWare to hook into its Site Recovery Manager product were for EMC lines of storage.
EMC is anxious to prove it has a larger share of VMWare business, McCallum said, because the storage vendor is "treated by VMware the same as any other company," despite EMC's part-ownership of the software company.
"If you rewind back to 2007, EMC and VMware went out of their way not to talk about each other for fear of alienation other VMware partners."
But as of January 2008, he said, EMC committed over 100 people to be solely dedicated to winning business around the integration of VMware and EMC.
"We committed to competing on the best of our merits," he said.
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