Comparing Cost of Dell EMC Centera and HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS

TCO Case Study
The Elephant in the Room:
Archival Storage Costs
Featuring
HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS Solution
Dell EMC Centera Compliance Edition

Introduction
2
Total Cost of Ownership Case Studies
TCO case studies are designed to provide busy IT Pros with vendor-independent data about the
total cost of specific products. This case study examines a pair of comparably-equipped
Compliance Archive Solutions. It turns out one of the vendors stands-out with lower TCO based on
industry standard hardware and attractively priced software licenses with support included.
Getting the Cost Data
The product pricing (cost) data used in this case study comes from solution providers who
responded to a request for quote (RFQ) from IT Brand Pulse.
Apples-to-Apples Comparison
The hardware, software and service products used in this case study were selected based on their
similarity to each other. Differences in the products and services are described in the product
overviews.

Catalyst For A New Class of
Compliance Archive
3
Explosive Growth of Unstructured Data
Data that is neatly organized in a database management system is commonly
referred to as structured data, while data that is not managed with a database
is often referred to as unstructured data. Data storage priorities are being
changed by billions of new internet connected device such as sensors,
watches, smartphones, and cameras, which are spewing trillions of
unstructured data files.
Although the unstructured data is hardly ever accessed, if at all, an offline
backup copy is not good enough. The data must be stored online because it is
grist for the mill of big data analytics engines inside today’s business
intelligence applications and tomorrow’s machine learning applications.
The result is IT organizations are being tasked with keeping mountains of
cold data in online archives. The priority for application environments
using unstructured data is to minimize storage costs while meeting the
growth in requirements for capacity.

The Growth of Unstructured Data
& Requirement for Online Archive
4
-
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Exabytes
Performance for hot data
Lower cost online archive
for fast-growing, but
infrequently accessed data
Storage Requirement
Unstructured Data—The priority for storage is
lowering costs for infrequently accessed data
Structured Data—The priority for storage is highest
performance for frequently accessed data

Object Storage Compliance
Archives
5
Based on Industry Standard Servers & Software
Compliant data archiving is a type of storage that must adhere to
compliance regulations such as GxP Data (Pharma), SEC17a4
(Banking), HIPAA, patient record (Healthcare), and product liability
(Automotive).
A new class of compliant archive solutions (CAS) are emerging which
are based on industry standard servers and object software defined
storage.
The new generation of solutions are far more open and scalable than
previous generations of CAS that were closed and high centralized.
This case study will reveal if they are more cost-effective.

Modern Compliance Archive
Architecture
6
HPE ProLiant DL360 Servers HPE Apollo 4200 Servers
Object Storage NodesMonitor
Nodes
Archive Storage App
iSCSI

Two Leading Compliant Archive
Solutions
7
Dell EMC Centera and HPE iTernity CAS
This TCO case study compares the costs of two pioneering products. Centera is one of the
first enterprise-class archive solutions, which has recently incorporated long overdue
support for industry standard servers and software defined storage. The delay in the
Centera refresh has put customers at a crossroads and this analysis provides pricing data
which may be useful in helping them choose a direction.
The second solution with products from HPE, SUSE and iTernity, is one of the first “open”
archiving solutions that also supports industry standard servers and scale-out storage.

Product Overview
8
Dell EMC Centera Compliance Edition HPE/SUSE/ iTernity iCAS
EMC Centera is a Content-addressable storage (CAS) platform for data archiving.
Centera provides content authenticity, governance and compliance, long-term
retention, and high availability with maximum efficiency and low total cost of
ownership (TCO).
EMC Centera Compliance Edition meets the most stringent of regulated business
environments with EMC Centera Compliance Edition Plus, enabling you to:
Capture and preserve original content, ensuring complete, reliable integrity for
the life of your archived information
Enforce organizational and application policies for information retention and
disposition intrinsic in storage, thus completing the information chain of custody
Ensure corporate accountability and reduce the cost of legal discovery and
litigation support—with easy manageability
iTernity Compliant Archive Software (iCAS) is an open, flexible, and expandable
long-term archiving solution for securing and protecting your business data. The
patented CSC technology of iCAS offers enormous flexibility and an easy
integration into existing IT infrastructure.
Data is archived into Content Storage Containers (CSC), which are secured against
manipulations and deletion. The CSCs can be stored on standard storage systems
(NAS or SAN) from any vendor. Additional options to encrypt and compress data
offer more security and space optimization.
HPE, SUSE and iCAS combine the advantages of iTernity CSC technology, with the
agility of SUSE software defined storage, and the high quality of HPE servers.

Dell EMC Centera Compliance
Edition: 5 Year TCO
9
Summary Analysis - All New Infrastructure, Same High Price
Like a vintage muscle car, Centera Content Addressable Storage (CAS) from Dell EMC has been retro-
fitted with a modern interior consisting of industry standard servers, scale-out object storage and cloud
interfaces. What venerable Centera did not get was new pricing for hardware, software and service that
will help IT organizations achieve economies of scale.
Product Highlights
Centera provides content authenticity, governance and compliance, long-term retention, and high
availability. Introduced in 2003, it is integrated with over 300 archiving applications to manage email, file,
medical imaging, content management, videos, and voice archiving on a single archiving platform.
Why it Wasn’t the Lowest Cost Solution
I would have expected mature Centera software to command the biggest premium, but the biggest
difference in absolute dollars between Centera and HPE/SUSE/ iTernity was in the cost of hardware,
service and support. Given that both products are more similar than different, it is difficult to rationalize why
overall, customers are expected to pay over twice the price of the HPE iTernity solution.

Dell EMC Centera Compliance
Edition
10
Dell EMC Centera Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Server & Storage Hardware $ 223,109 $ 15,940 $ 20,520 $ 24,184 $ 28,396
Compliance & Storage Software $ 144,750 $ - $ - $ - $ -
Maintenance & Support $ 57,146 $ 38,380 $ 41,682 $ 44,100 $ 46,940
Total $ 425,005 $ 54,320 $ 62,202 $ 68,284 $ 75,336
Cumulative Total $ 425,005 $ 479,325 $ 541,527 $ 609,811 $ 685,146
Five-Year Cost of Ownership for 600TB Growing 25% Per Year: $685,146

HPE/SUSE/iTernity CAS:
5 Year TCO
11
The Right Product at the Right Price
The promise of software-defined storage is to get costs under control by leveraging industry standard
hardware and open source software. HPE and SUSE fulfill that promise in this solution while providing a
trusted platform for the enterprise-class but affordable iTernity iCAS application.
Highlights
The combination of HPE servers, SUSE Enterprise Storage, and iTernity iCAS provides an open, flexible,
and expandable long-term archiving solution for fast-growing unstructured data. The solution also
addresses a wide variety of regulatory compliance requirements spanning automotive, financial and
healthcare industries.
Why it is the Lowest Cost Solution
The Dell EMC CAS solution is 2x more than the comparably configured HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS solution
because the hardware is 47% more expensive, the service & support costs 354% more, and the software
is 97% higher than Centera. Clearly, much of the lower cost of industry standard servers and open source
software is passed on to customers with the HPE/SUSE/iTernity solution.

HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS
12
Five-Year Cost of Ownership for 600TB Growing 25% Per Year: $336,271
HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
Server & Storage Hardware $141,323 $12,968 $12,968 $19,452 $25,936
Compliance & Storage Software $73,300 $- $- $- $-
Maintenance & Support $50,324 $- $- $- $-
Total $264,947 $12,968 $12,968 $19,452 $25,936
Cumulative Total $264,947 $277,915 $290,883 $310,335 $336,271

Side-by-Side Comparison
13
Cumulative Five-Year Cost of 600TB Growing at 25% Per Year
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS $264,947 $277,915 $290,883 $310,335 $336,271
Dell EMC Centera CAS $425,005 $479,325 $541,527 $609,811 $685,146
$0
$100,000
$200,000
$300,000
$400,000
$500,000
$600,000
$700,000
In year 1, the cost of the
Dell EMC Centera CAS
solution was almost
$200,000 and twice the
price of the
solution. At the end of the
5 year period, the TCO of
the Centera solution was
$350,000 more and over
double the cost of the HPE
solution.

14
Cost of Hardware, Software, Service & Support
Total Hardware
Service &
Support
Software
Dell EMC Centera CAS $685,146 $312,149 $228,248 $144,750
HPE iTernity CAS $336,271 $212,647 $50,324 $73,300
$-
$100,000
$200,000
$300,000
$400,000
$500,000
$600,000
$700,000
$800,000
47% More 354% More
104% More
97% More
The costs in this
analysis were grouped
into hardware,
software and service &
support. The
solution was at least
40% less than Centera
in every category, and
74% less in the software
category.

15
Cost of Hardware, Software, Service & Support as % of Total
46%
21%
33%
Dell EMC Centera CAS
Hardware Software Service & Support
63%
22%
15%
Hardware Software Service & Support
Modern server, storage and networking infrastructure
is instrumented for remote monitoring and
management to lower the cost of operation, service
and support. In spite of this trend, Centera stands out
with and extraordinarily high 33% of its TCO going to
service and support.

The Bottom Line
16
HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS Solution Addresses the Elephant in the Room
The IT industry is experiencing unprecedented velocity in
the generation of unstructured data, and the growth is
accelerating. The best enterprise storage for fast-growing
unstructured data is disk-based online archive which
should scale much more cost-effectively than flash-based
solutions built for high performance.
The bottom line for this TCO case study is Centera from
Dell EMC retains the high cost of its proprietary past, while
the HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS solution offers new
economies of scale which address the elephant in the
room, the high cost of compliant archive storage.

Related Links
17
HPE iTernity Solutions
iTernity iCAS Software
SUSE Enterprise Storage
Dell EMC Centera
IT Brand Pulse

About the Author
18
Frank Berry is founder and senior analyst for IT Brand Pulse, a trusted
source of data and analysis about IT infrastructure, including servers,
storage and networking. As former vice president of product marketing
and corporate marketing for QLogic, and vice president of worldwide
marketing for the automated tape library (ATL) division of Quantum, Mr.
Berry has over 30 years experience in the development and marketing
of IT infrastructure. If you have any questions or comments about this
report, contact frank.berry@itbrandpulse.com.

Comparing Cost of Dell EMC Centera and HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS

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Comparing Cost of Dell EMC Centera and HPE/SUSE/iTernity iCAS