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Features and Functionality Study Comparing File Services Solutions from NetApp and EMC




February 2008
www.veritest.com info@veritest.com




Features and Functionality Study
Comparing File Services Solutions from
NetApp and EMC
Test report prepared under contract from Network Appliance, Inc
(NetApp)
Executive summary

NetApp commissioned VeriTest, the
testing service of Lionbridge
Technologies, Inc., to conduct a
study comparing the features and
functionality of the NetApp®
FAS3040 running Data ONTAP®
v7.2.3 and the EMC Corporation
(EMC) Celerra NS40g running DART
v5.5.30-5 when used as network-
attached storage (NAS) solutions in a
File Services environment utilizing
the Common Internet File System
(CIFS) and Network File System
(NFS) protocols. Please refer to the
following URL to review the VeriTest
Fair Testing Practices Statement:
http://www.lionbridge.com/lionbridge/
en-US/services/outsourced-
testing/veritest-fair-testing-practices-
statement.htm

Both the NetApp solution and the
EMC solution provide file services for
Windows® and UNIX® environments.
In addition, these NAS-based
solutions provide on-disk data
retention capabilities or back-up that
increase customer efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relative capabilities provided by the NetApp and EMC NAS storage
solutions under test. To accomplish this we created a fictitious, midsize enterprise company called ACME
Corp. ACME is considering the deployment of a unified NAS solution to meet the growing file serving needs of
their user directories, test/development and web workloads. ACME would like to compare the features and
functionality of both the NetApp and EMC NAS solutions while focusing on common tasks the ACME storage
administrators face when managing a network-attached storage solution on a daily basis.

For this NAS solution comparison study, ACME Corp. had the following requirements:

The data to be stored represents important, but not mission-critical data.

A minimum of 500 GB of usable storage is required to meet the storage space requirements.
Key findings


The EMC solution takes 4 times longer to complete initial
setup and configuration than the NetApp solution.

The NetApp solution uses as much as 80% less provisioned
storage compared to the EMC solution when storing the
same files and their corresponding point-in-time backup
copies.

The NetApp solution can dynamically reduce the size of
provisioned storage without impacting availability of the file
system. The EMC solution does not have this capability.

Data retention schedules with the NetApp solution can be
modified 9 times faster than with the EMC solution.

The NetApp solution using RAID-DP® continued to serve
data in the event of double-disk failure in the same RAID
group where as the EMC recommended RAID 5 setup failed
when subjected to a double disk failure in the same RAID
group.

The EMC solution required twice the amount of provisioned
storage than the NetApp solution in order to provide multi
protocol file systems with Operating System integrated
security permissions in place.


Executive Summary: NAS Comparison Using NetApp Data ONTAP and EMC Celerra DART 2

The storage solution must provide full support for file storage and serving using the Common Internet
File System (CIFS) and Network File System (NFS) v3 protocols.

The storage solution must integrate within a multi-protocol, multi-OS environment including
Windows® Server 2003 Active Directory, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4 NFS services.

The storage solution must provide a mechanism to preserve point-in-time on-disk copies of data
throughout the day-to-day processing that utilizes the storage solution. In addition, because of the
dynamic nature of the ACME environment, the storage solutions mechanism for preserving point-in-
time on disk copies must be able to be dynamically modified to meet changing Service Level
Agreements (SLAs). The NetApp solution provides this capability, referenced as Snapshot
copies. The EMC solution provides this capability, and is referenced as checkpoints.

The storage solution must be able to provide online storage re-provisioning, or in other words, be
able to grow and shrink the storage allocation without requiring their production environment to be
brought offline for the resize operation to occur.

In addition, the following requirements were determined by ACME Corp. to be highly desired, but not
mandatory requirements, for the solution as they would potentially increase storage efficiency and return on
investment:

The ability of the storage solution to provide continued resiliency beyond a single disk failure.

The ability of the storage solution to provide thin provisioning of storage. Thin provisioning provides
storage on demand while traditional provisioning pre-allocates storage. With thin provisioning, storage
is treated as a shared resource pool and is consumed only as each individual volume requires it.

The ability of the storage solution to provide secure access to storage in a multi-protocol (i.e. both
CIFS and NFS) environment with minimal storage administration overhead.

For this study we configured a NetApp FAS3040 with Data ONTAP 7.2.3 to test the NetApp File Services
solution and compared that with the EMC File Services solution utilizing an EMC Celerra NS40G with Celerra
Software version 5.5.30-5. An EMC CLARiiON CX3-40c storage array using Fibre Channel fabric switch
connectivity was used for back-end storage of the Celerra solution. Both storage platforms contained a single
disk tray. The NetApp solution provides 14 x 144 GB Fibre Channel disks at 15,000 RPM. The EMC solution
provides 15 x 146 GB Fibre Channel disks at 15,000 RPM. In addition we configured a Microsoft Windows
Server 2003 Active Directory (AD) domain controller to access the provisioned storage on each storage
platform using the CIFS protocol. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4 server was configured to access each
storage platform using the NFS protocol. We connected each device to the network with a 3COM gigabit
Ethernet switch.

As we constructed the ACME File Services environment, we conducted a series of tests to compare the
features and functionality for both the NetApp and EMC NAS solutions. These tests were developed to
ensure several key aspects of storage administration were addressed in order to validate that the above
requirements were met by each solution. The list below provides a high-level overview of these test cases:

Compare the process of initial device configuration and deployment within a Windows and
UNIX/Linux environment for both solutions

Compare how well both solutions utilize their storage capacity.

Compare the functionality of both solutions to execute common storage administration tasks,
including, but not limited to, modifying existing data retention schedules as service level agreements
change and resizing storage provisioning as storage space needs change.

Compare resiliency to disk failures resiliency on both solutions, while meeting the capacity
requirements identified by ACME Corp.

Compare features and functionality for both solutions when implementing thin provisioned storage

Compare the ability for both solutions to provide secure access to storage in a multi-protocol
environment.

In summary, we found that the NetApp solution meets all the requirements as set forth by ACME Corp., and in
many cases exceeds these requirements by offering better provisioning management solutions, more robust
and feature rich data retention capabilities, and greater failure resiliency.


Executive Summary: NAS Comparison Using NetApp Data ONTAP and EMC Celerra DART 3
Although the EMC solution was able to meet most of the core requirements identified by ACME Corp., in
comparison with the NetApp solution, we found the EMC solution was less intuitive and took longer to
complete the same set of basic tasks. Additionally, we found the EMC GUI management interface was less
stable than the NetApp solution. The EMC solution did not meet the ACME requirement of providing online
storage re-provisioning with regards to reducing the size of a file system storage allocation. Based upon the
results of our findings, the NetApp solution meets the unified, multiprotocol NAS storage needs (and in many
cases, exceeds them) of ACME Corp, whereas the EMC solution does not meet all requirements.

Additionally, we found that the EMC solution was unable to complete the thin provisioned data staging
workload performed in this study, whereas the NetApp solution co