Topline Strategy Group

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

December 2015

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment:

VCE vs. HP

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Contents
Introduction . ........................................................................................................................................1
Converged Infrastructure 1.0.............................................................................................................1
The Changing Face of IT Infrastructure............................................................................................3
New Storage Technologies............................................................................................................3
Expanding Infrastructure Stacks..................................................................................................4
SDN and Fabric Architectures.......................................................................................................4
Converged Infrastructure 2.0: CI for the New Data Center Paradigm........................................4
Evaluating CI Vendors..........................................................................................................................5
About VCE..............................................................................................................................................7
VCEs CI 1.0 Systems........................................................................................................................7
VCEs CI 2.0 Systems........................................................................................................................7
Expanding Infrastructure Stacks..................................................................................................8
Intelligence Networking Fabrics and Management.................................................................8
About HP................................................................................................................................................8
HPs CI 1.0 Systems..........................................................................................................................9
HPs CI 2.0 Systems....................................................................................................................... 10
VCE vs. HP CI Summary.................................................................................................................... 10
Comparing HP and VCE on CI 1.0................................................................................................... 11
Engineering: Engineered as a System...................................................................................... 12
Deployment: Physically and Logically Factory-Built as a System....................................... 13
Maintenance and Upgrades:
Ongoing System-wide Coordination of Patches and Upgrades......................................... 13
Support: Single Cross-Trained Support as a System............................................................. 14
Roadmap: Future-Proof System Roadmap.............................................................................. 15
Comparing VCE and HP on CI 2.0................................................................................................... 15
Portfolio of CI Systems................................................................................................................ 16
Extended Stack............................................................................................................................. 17
Intelligent Networking Fabric and Management.................................................................. 18
Maintenance and Support across the Entire CI Deployment.............................................. 18
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................... 19

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Introduction
The importance of IT has never been greater. Companies are transforming their business models with digital
technologies, leveraging emerging mobile and social platforms, and increasingly operating online. And all of
these developments are powered by IT innovation.
Figure 1:
Yet, IT departments face critical challenges in
Allocation of IT Admin and Operations Staff Time
meeting the ever-increasing demands of the
business. With new generations of ever more
sophisticated hardware, complexity in the data
center has soared, which in turn, has caused IT
administrative costs (Provision, patch and config;
New service request and approval; Vendor and
internal meeting; Monitor, troubleshoot and
remediate) to skyrocket. In fact, according to IDC,
IT staff spent 79% of their time on operational and
administrative tasks and only 21% on innovation and
new projects.1
For IT managers facing skyrocketing administrative
costs on one side and demands from business leaders
to accelerate innovation on the other, traditional
approaches to designing, deploying, managing, and
maintaining infrastructure are not sustainable.

Converged Infrastructure 1.0

In 2009, vendors introduced their first major attempt to address these administrative costs with reference
architecturesoff-the-shelf designs that serve as a starting point for a system. However, because reference
architectures only address the first step in the lifecycle of a systemthe design stagethey provided only
incremental advantages over business as usual.
It was not until 2010, when the first converged infrastructure (CI) systems were released, that IT
organizations had a solution that dramatically reduced their administrative overhead and freed substantial
resources for innovation. A CI 1.0 system is a fully integrated, vendor-delivered system that combines
compute, SAN or NAS storage, and network and virtualization elements into a single pool of resources that is
engineered, manufactured, and supported by the vendor as a unified system.
Table 1 summarizes the CI 1.0 evaluation criteria. It also details the differences between conventional, fieldassembled, customized installations (do-it-yourself [DIY]) and factory-integrated CI 1.0 systems. As the table
illustrates, by providing a standardized, vendor-delivered system, CI providers take on many of the tasks
involved in designing, deploying, and supporting systems across their lifecycle that have historically been
performed by the IT department.

1 IDC Converged Systems Survey, August 2014

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Table 1. CI 1.0 Evaluation Criteria: Field Assembled Customized Implementation (DIY) vs. CI 1.0 System
Area

Field-Assembled Customized
Installation (DIY)

Factory-Integrated CI 1.0 System

Engineering

Custom implementations consisting of

separate pools for compute, network,
and storage are designed from scratch
by IT staff and vendor services.

The system is engineered by the vendor

as a single integrated pool for optimal
performance and availability.

Deployment

Systems are delivered as components to

the data center, which is physically and
logically configured on site by vendor
services and/or IT staff.

Systems are manufactured and

logically configured at the factory using
standardized processes.

Maintenance and Upgrades

Patches for each component must

be thoroughly tested by IT staff
against custom installations to ensure
compatibility.

Patches are preselected, pretested,

and prepackaged by the vendor for
interoperability and compatibility with
installed configurations, and are ready for
immediate nondisruptive deployment.

Expanding capacity requires

careful testing of newer versions of
components by the IT department.

The same holds true for the latest versions

of components that are used to expand
the system.

Support

Vendors silo-based support

organizations specialize in individual
components. This places the burden
on IT of overall problem resolution and
of mediating finger-pointing among
vendors or among a vendors product
divisions.

A single point of ownership is expert in

all aspects of the system. All deployed
system configurations are fully supported
to accelerate problem resolution.

Roadmap

The process starts over from scratch

at the design phase, relying on IT or
service providers. Migration requires
customized services.

A jointly integrated roadmap for the

whole technology stack provides
customers clear visibility into the
migration path to next-generation
technology.
Technology roadmaps for all components
are in lockstep with component vendors,
enabling precisely coordinated release
management.

When compared to traditional, custom installations, the agility, cost, and availability advantages of CI 1.0 are
remarkable. An IDC white paper2 found that CI systems:
Reduce IT infrastructure and IT infrastructure staff costs by 36%.
Increase IT time spent on business enablement by 338%.
Shorten time to market for new services/products by 77%.
Cut downtime by 96%.
Given these results, it is no surprise that CI sales reached $8.1 billion in 2014 and were growing at a rate of
23% per year.3
2

3

IDC White Paper. The Business Value of VCE Vblock Systems: Leveraging Convergence to Drive Business Agility, May 2015
(http://www.vce.com/asset/documents/idc-business-value-whitepaper.pdf )
Gartner. Market Share Analysis: Data Center Hardware Integrated Systems, Worldwide, July 2015
(https://www.gartner.com/doc/2813520/market-share-analysis-data-center). The $8.1B includes all segments of the CI market.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

The Changing Face of IT Infrastructure

While conventional blade servers and SAN/NAS-based infrastructure4 connected via traditional network
routing/switching architectures has long formed the backbone of IT infrastructure, this is now changing. The
change is being driven by two major trends.
The first trend is the emergence of new workloads, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Big Data,
that require new capabilities and place differing and unique demands on the infrastructure. For example,
VDI requires systems that can deliver extremely high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) while Big
Data necessitates massive scale-out storage deployments.
The second trend is the advent of cloud-native hyperscale systems like the ones run by Amazon, Facebook,
and Google. Rather than using traditional, monolithic application designs, these companies build
applications using networks of microservices. With these application architectures, resiliency and scalability
are built right into the software, enabling them to run on commodity hardware while still achieving high
levels of uptime. This combination of the application architectures and the commodity hardware can also
provide agility. Using cloud orchestration, software-defined infrastructure, and continuous delivery tools,
companies can achieve a high degree of automation, which enables them to quickly scale, make changes,
and deploy new releases.
Because of these trends, companies are increasingly complementing their traditional infrastructure with
new technologies. New types of storage, software-defined networking (SDN), fabric-based, spine-and-leaf
networking architectures, cloud management and orchestration, and other new technologies are becoming
mainstream in the corporate data center.

New Storage Technologies

Beyond HDD-based SAN/NAS storage, three new storage technologies are getting more attention.
All-Flash Arrays: With I/O speeds an order of magnitude faster than HDDs, flash has been used for
several years in HDD systems in a limited fashion to improve performance. However, costs have now
fallen to the point where all-flash arrays are an increasingly popular choice for extremely high IOPS
workloads, such as OLTP and VDI.
Scale-Out NAS Storage: With the emergence of Big Data applications such as Hadoop, data stores
have reached scales not previously imagined. Scale-out NAS storage architectures enable companies
to granularly and cost-effectively grow capacity in a nondisruptive manner, while also boosting
performance and throughput.
Software-Defined Storage (SDS)/Hyperconverged Systems: SDS provides an alternative to standalone storage systems by using software to create a virtual block, file, or object storage pool from the
disks directly attached to commodity servers. Commercially available SDS solutions come in several
different form factors:
yy SDS software-only solutions that companies load onto their own hardware
yy Hyperconverged appliances (appliances that bundle compute and SDS software)
yy Hyperconverged rack systems (rack-scale systems of compute, network, and SDS software)
Software-only solutions and hyperconverged appliances that do not provide the same level
of scalability or type of reliability as systems using SAN/NAS storage have started to become
4 Infrastructure comprised of compute; SAN or NAS storage based on spinning, Hard Disk Drives (HDDs);
North/South and East/West networking; and virtualization.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

successful for smaller, Tier 2 and nonproduction workloads. Meanwhile, the recently introduced rackscale systems are beginning to bring SDS to larger, more critical workloads.

Expanding Infrastructure Stacks

Where infrastructure has been traditionally defined as compute, network, storage, and virtualization, the
definition has been expanding to include additional components both up and down the stack. Up the
stack, cloud orchestration to enable private and hybrid clouds has become an integral component of many
infrastructures. Down the stack, due to the growth of Active-Active data center configurations, Business
Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) capabilities are tied more deeply into the core infrastructure than
ever before.

SDN and Fabric Architectures

While virtualization and cloud orchestration have been instrumental in enabling companies to agilely
deploy their compute and storage resources, spine-and-leaf networking fabrics and SDN bring the same
level of flexibility and agility to the network by enabling software-driven, policy-based configuration.

Converged Infrastructure 2.0: CI for the New Data Center Paradigm

The overall impact of these new technologies is a fundamental change in how data centers are designed
and operated. In the emerging paradigm, rather than setting up individual, stand-alone systems, companies
deploy an integrated fabric where orchestration services enable workloads to be seamlessly migrated to the
system that most cost-effectively meets their performance, scalability, and reliability needs.
While there is no question that CI systems have been very successful in increasing agility and reducing
the costs of keeping the lights on, CI must expand beyond providing individual, stand-alone CI systems.
It must also support the new data center paradigm by providing the CI experience across the entire data
centerCI 2.0, or CI at data center scale. CI 2.0 has four criteria:
1. Portfolio of CI Systems: The vendor provides a portfolio with a wide range of individual CI systems
each delivered with the vendors best CI experiencethat leverage a wide array of technologies to
meet the price, performance, and availability needs of the full range of an organizations different
workloads. This includes CI with different storage technologies, such as all-flash arrays, HDDs, and SDS,
as well as systems of different capacities.
2. Extended Stack: The vendor includes additional layers of the stack in their full CI experience. This
includes foundational services, such as BC/DR, as well as the cloud and orchestration services required
to coordinate the infrastructure.
3. Intelligent Networking Fabric and Management: The vendor provides a networking fabric that
intelligently connects each individual system into the whole federation. The vendor also provides
management software that serves as a single point for maintaining the infrastructure across all of the
CI systems.
4. Maintenance and Support across the Entire CI Deployment: At data center scale, the vendor supports
and maintains the infrastructure as one infrastructure, not as a collection of individual systems. The
vendor provides a fully coordinated patch release, where patches for all components of the infrastructure
are tested together. This ensures that when patches are installed, every component continues to
interoperate with every other component. In addition, the vendor provides a single point of ownership
for resolving support issues across the entire infrastructure.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Figure 2 illustrates the key differences between CI 1.0 and CI 2.0.

Figure 2. Key Differences between CI 1.0 and CI 2.0

Evaluating CI Vendors
Perhaps the greatest challenge for companies selecting a CI vendor is to determine what the true experience
is like of designing, managing, maintaining, supporting, and expanding their infrastructure vs. what vendors
claim. If one were to just read marketing materials, it would seem that practically all vendors CI systems
deliver similar cost, agility, and availability advantages over field-assembled customized installations.
Furthermore, it would seem that many vendors have made significant strides toward delivering CI 2.0.
However, this is not the case.
Between 2012 and 2015, Topline Strategy Group conducted three major studies of the CI market. In these
studies, Topline Strategy Group surveyed over 800 and interviewed over 125 IT professionals responsible for
managing their companies data center infrastructure on their use of and experiences with CI systems. The
majority of the participants worked for organizations with >$1B in revenue and/or 1,000 employees. As part
of these studies, Topline Strategy Group also reviewed industry analyst reports, vendor marketing materials
and white papers, and other publicly available content.
These studies found that:
There is tremendous range in the true lifecycle experience for CI 1.0 systems. While some
solutions come very close to the ideal described previously in Table 1, others provide only modest
improvements over field-assembled customized installations.
Many of the offerings that are marketed as CI do not provide the true CI experience. In some
cases, in an effort to make their CI offerings seem as broad as possible, vendors have branded
new bundles as part of their CI portfolio that are not CI at all. Often, these bundles are reference
architecturesdesigns for systems that customers can build themselves or system integrators build
on customers behalfnot factory-integrated systems. In other cases, these bundles are simply
additional software (for cloud orchestration, VDI, etc.) that is sold alongside the CI system, but are
not delivered or supported as an integral part of the CI experience.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

So how do companies effectively evaluate CI vendors? The following two questions provide the high level
basis for doing so:
1. How well does the CI experience of the vendors core CI offering deliver on the promise of transforming
IT infrastructure? Does it provide a factory-integrated system that lowers the administrative
burden, thereby freeing up resources for innovation? (Refer to the vertical axis of Figure 3
Comprehensiveness of CI Experience.)
2. To what extent is the vendor delivering its CI experience across the entire data center? Can it deliver
a portfolio of CI systems that are guaranteed to interoperate, that are integrated via an intelligent
fabric, and are managed, maintained, and supported as an infrastructure, not a few point products or
a collection of reference architectures? (Refer to the horizontal axis of Figure 3Breadth of CI for the
Integrated Data Center.)
Using the answers to these two questions, CI vendors can be segmented into one of four quadrants (Figure 3):
Thin CI (lower left): companies that despite marketing CI, have made only modest progress in delivering it
Thin CI Layer Applied Data Center Wide (lower right): companies that have made only modest progress
in developing a true CI solution but offer it across a broad portfolio
CI 1.0: Deep CI, but Limited Options (upper left): companies that are delivering a strong CI experience
but only provide it on a limited set of systems
CI 2.0: Deep CI at Data Center Scale (upper right): companies that are truly delivering on both CI 1.0 and C2.0
Figure 3. CI Vendors Fall into One of Four Quadrants

The remainder of this white paper compares the CI offerings from two vendors, VCE and HP. The next two
sections provide an overview of each vendors CI offerings. This is followed by a detailed comparison using
the evaluation methodology outlined in the previous section.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

About VCE
VCE is the leading provider of CI systems. It is an independent operating company within the EMC
federation, with a minority investment from Cisco. The company has 1,200 customers worldwide who have
deployed more than 3,000 systems. According to Gartners most recently published report, VCE currently
controls 48% of the CI market.5

VCEs CI 1.0 Systems

Since launching its first system in 2010, VCE has been delivering CI 1.0 systems (compute, networking, HDDbased SAN/NAS storage, and virtualization) using best-of-breed components and the latest technologies
from industry leaders EMC, Cisco, and VMware. The company currently offers four series of HDD-based
Vblock Systems ranging from the Vblock 100 series, designed for small data centers, to the Vblock 700 series,
capable of supporting the largest enterprises.
Also since launching its first system, VCE has been delivering systems that are engineered, manufactured,
and supported by the vendor as a unified system throughout the lifecycle of the system. The key elements of
the VCE experience include:
System Design Engineering: In addition to the thousands of Cisco, EMC, and VMware engineers
working on advancing the core subsystems, VCE maintains a dedicated team of engineers responsible
solely for turning the components into highly optimized, fully integrated, vendor-delivered systems.
Factory-Integrated to a Precise Configuration: All Vblock Systems are built at one of the companys
two global manufacturing sites where standardized processes and extensive quality checks ensure that
every Vblock System conforms precisely to VCEs designs.
Configuration Integrity across the Lifecycle: Once the system is delivered, VCE Vision Intelligent
Operations software (VCE Vision) ensures each systems configuration integrity throughout its life. It
automatically monitors the configuration of each Vblock System against VCE standards and provides
tools to close any gaps between the actual state and desired state.
Maintenance and Upgrades: With every deployed Vblock System complying with approved VCE
configurations, VCE is able to manage its systems as unified products across their entire lifecycle.
When customers buy products, they expect patches and upgrades to be fully certified, to require little
or no testing by IT, and to be deployed with minimal risk. This is precisely the experience VCE provides
its customers.
Support: VCE Support also delivers a unified product experience. With a single point of ownership for
support across the entire system, VCEs cross-trained support teams can quickly diagnose problems
and resolve issues without finger-pointing.

VCEs CI 2.0 Systems

Over the last year, VCE has made substantial progress on delivering a true CI 2.0 offering. The key
achievements are summarized below.
New Storage Technologies
VCE has expanded its CI portfolio to include the following storage options:

5 Gartner. Market Share Analysis: Data Center Hardware Integrated Systems, Worldwide, July 2015
Note: Gartner refers to General Purpose Converged Infrastructure as Converged Systems.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

SDS: For Tier 2 workloads and for new application architectures where resiliency is designed into the
application, VCE offers its hyperconverged rack system VxRack. VxRack is a highly scalable system that
delivers the simplicity, agility, and cost advantages that come from SDS.
All-Flash Arrays: For IOP-intensive workloads, such as VDI and high performance databases, VCE offers
the Vblock 500 series outfitted with EMCs XtremeIO all-flash array. The Vblock 540 can support millions
of IOPS with sub-millisecond response time that is maintained as the system is scaled.
Scale-Out Storage: To scale out the storage of a VCE CI deployment, VCE offers EMCs Isilon NAS scaleout storage, which can scale all the way to 50 PB.

Expanding Infrastructure Stacks

BC/DR: For BC/DR, VCE has extended its CI experience to incorporate EMCs data protection solutions
including Avamar, Data Domain RecoverPoint, and VPlex, providing customers a range of price/protection
options from simply backing up data to real-time replication and failover across multiple sites. All of
these solutions have been fully tested to interoperate with all of VCEs CI systems. They are all included
in VCEs Release Control Matrix (RCM), its matrix of which patch levels of components have been tested
and certified to interoperate with each other. They are also supported via VCEs infrastructure-wide
single point of support.
Cloud Management and Orchestration: To enable companies to easily move resources across
the infrastructure, VCE supports VMwares vRealize and Ciscos UCS Director. In addition, specific
configurations of EMC Federation Elastic Hybrid Cloud (FEHC) are available as integration options on
Vblock Systems.

Intelligence Networking Fabrics and Management

To support the new data center paradigm of a fully integrated infrastructure rather than just a collection of
systems, VCE has added the following elements to its CI portfolio:
SDN and Intelligent Fabric: VCE connects all of the components of its CI portfolio together with SDN
and its Vscale spine-leaf fabric, enabling policy-driven resource pools to be optimally configured and
rapidly reconfigured across the infrastructure. VCE supports both of the leading SDN technologies as
part of its CI portfolioCiscos ACI and VMwares NSX.
Single Point of Management: VCEs Vision 3.0 management software was written from the ground
up for CI. It provides a single point for monitoring the status and health of all VCE components on the
network. Unlike conventional management software that treats each resource as a separate entity, VCE
Vision manages compute, network, storage, and virtualization resources as single, logical objects. This
provides a system view of performance that aligns with how resources are actually used rather than
simply providing a technology view.

About HP
Since HP originally entered the market for CI systems in 2009, its offerings have reflected the fundamental
tension between selling individual components and converged systems. For that reason, HPs CI strategy has
emphasized choice customers have choice of purchasing systems with all new HP components or mixing
and matching new HP components with components from other vendors and/or components the company
already owns.
In HPs ConvergedSystem portfolio, HP offers the following components:

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

x86 Proliant servers

Storage products acquired from 3PAR
Networking products acquired and OEMed from 3Com, Emulex and others
The decision to make choice the center of its CI strategy has been driven by the fact that other than in
servers, HP is not among the market leaders. For example, in external storage, Garter places HP at having
a 9.5% share worldwide and a 6.3% share in North America, far below EMCs 33.4% and 43.2% shares
respectively.6 In networking, HPs share lags behind that of market leader Cisco by a similarly wide margin.
Because customers often require non-HP products for one or more components, to preserve the sale of at
least some of its components, HP has been willing to substitute out its own components for those from
other vendors.
While choice is often seen as a benefit, when it comes to CI, it has a major downside. Engineering
components into a CI system that is delivered and supported as a product takes a lot of investment. The
broader the set of component options that a vendor supports, the less the vendor can invest in productizing
any specific solution.
It is for that reason that HP has focused on delivering just certain elements of the CI experience, such
as providing factory assembly and single point of support, that it can provide across a wide variety of
configurations. In other areas of the CI experience, especially the ones such as coordinating patch releases and
upgrades that require extensive configuration-specific engineering investment, it has made little progress.

HPs CI 1.0 Systems

Currently, HP offers one CI 1.0 model, its ConvergedSystem 700, consisting of Proliant blades, HP FlexFabric
(OEMd from Emulex), and 3PAR StoreServe. It is designed for implementations of 300 to 1,000 VMs. This
system has some, but not all, of the features of the CI ideal outlined previously in Table 1. For example:
The system is engineered by HP as a single integrated pool.
With HPs Factory Express option, the system can be delivered fully assembled, although it still must be
logically configured on site.
The company offers a single point of support and works to avoid finger-pointing among support
organizations, but still operates support in component-based siloes.
HP does not offer coordinated patches that have been fully tested across all components.
To serve customers for whom the off-the-shelf ConvergedSystem 700 does not work, HP:
Enables customers to customize their ConvergedSystem 700, either by reusing existing components or
substituting third party components.
Offers the ConvergedSystem 700x reference architecture for installations with more than 1,000 VMs.
Provides a range of other reference architectures, such as its joint reference architecture with Arista Networks.
When customers choose these options, they lose some of the CI benefits of HPs off-the-shelf CI solutions.
In fact, according to Topline Strategys November 2015 CI Market Study, 50% of HP CI customers choose
to customize their HP ConvergedSystem rather than purchase an off-the-shelf configuration.7 The most
common customizations include:

6 Gartner. Market Share Analysis External Storage Systems, All Regions 2Q15 Update
7 Topline Strategy Group. Converged Infrastructure Market Study Q4 2014

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

10

Substituting in Cisco or Brocade Top-of-Rack switches

Substituting in Cisco or Brocade storage networking
Substituting in EMC or other storage
Reusing existing components
Furthermore, our research found that in many of the cases where customers did opt for a standard HP
ConvergedSystem configuration, it was for a certified system dedicated to a specific use case such as SAP
HANA, where due to certification, altering the configuration was not practical. As a result, the number of
HP ConvergedSystems being used for general purpose computing that were deployed as engineered is
relatively small.

HPs CI 2.0 Systems

New Storage Technologies
For CI 2.0, HPs main development has been to introduce systems with new storage technologies.
All-Flash Array: The ConvergedSystem 700 described above has an off-the-shelf option where the
3PAR 7000 series storage can be outfitted with all solid state drives.
SDS: HP offers two off-the-shelf options for systems outfitted with SDSthe ConvergedSystem 200
and 300. Both models consist of Proliant blades and use HPs StoreVirtual VSA software to create a
virtual SAN from the direct attached storage. While the ConvergedSystem 300 comes equipped with
an HP 2920 switch, the ConvergedSystem 200 is a hyperconverged appliance, an appliance with just
compute and virtual storage that companies connect to their existing network. Both of these devices
are designed for implementations of 30 to 300 VMs.
Expanding Infrastructure Stacks
When it comes to extending the stack, HP does not incorporate additional technologies into its core systems
as a packaged CI solution.
In the area of cloud management and orchestration, HP offers its ConvergedSystem 700x for Cloud, a
reference architecture for deploying its HP Helion CloudSystem Foundation/Enterprise software on a
ConvergedSystem 700x system, which is itself a reference architecture.
For data protection, HP provides a reference architecture for deploying HP DataProtector and HP StoreOnce
with its ConvergedSystem 700x.
Intelligent Networking and Fabric Management
In this area, HP has made some significant strides. The company provides spine-and-leaf networking via
its 7900 and 5900 series switches and offers its OneView web-based management software. OneView is
a platform first introduced in 2013 that has made progress toward delivering a single pane of glass for
managing, provisioning, and maintaining compute, network, and storage resources.

VCE vs. HP CI Summary

A previous section of this white paper proposed two questions that could be used to place CI vendors in one
of four quadrants (Figure 3): Thin CI, Thin CI Layer Applied Data Center Wide, CI 1.0, and CI 2.0.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

11

1. How well does the CI experience of the vendors core CI offering deliver on the promise of transforming
IT infrastructure? Does it provide a factory-integrated system that lowers the administrative burden,
thereby freeing up resources for innovation. (Refer to the vertical axis of Figure 3Comprehensiveness
of CI Experience.)
2. To what extent is the vendor delivering its CI experience across the entire data center? Can it deliver
a portfolio of CI systems that are guaranteed to interoperate, that are integrated via an intelligent
fabric, and are managed, maintained, and supported as an infrastructure, not a collection of individual
systems? (Refer to the horizontal axis of Figure 3Breadth of CI for the Integrated Data Center.)
As illustrated in Figure 4, answering these questions for VCE and HP leads to the conclusion that while VCE
is in the upper right quadrant, delivering CI 2.0, HP is in the lower left quadrant, offering Thin CI. HP has only
partially delivered on CI 1.0 and only for a limited set of systems. Many of its offerings that are branded CI are
actually reference architectures or bundles that do not carry even their limited CI lifecycle experience.
Figure 4. VCE vs. HP CI Evaluation

The next two sections present a detailed analysis of why VCE and HP have been placed in their respective
quadrants by evaluating them on the criteria for CI 1.0 and 2.0 presented in Table 3 and Table 4.

Comparing HP and VCE on CI 1.0

This analysis describes in detail how far each vendor has progressed toward delivering on the CI 1.0
vendor-delivered system paradigm described previously in Table 1. For each criterion, each vendor was
rated on the degree to which each performs as a vendor-delivered standardized system vs. as a customized,
field-integrated installation on a 1 to 5 scale. Table 2 summarizes the results of that evaluation.

12

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Table 2. Evaluation Criteria of VCE CI 1.0 Systems and HP CI 1.0 Systems
Lifecycle Stage

VCE Systems

HP ConvergedSystems

Engineering: Engineered as a system

Deployment: Physically and logically factory-built as a system

Maintenance and Upgrades: Ongoing system-wide coordination

of patches and upgrades

Support: Single cross-trained support as a system

Roadmap: Future-proof system roadmap

4.8

2.2

Average

Engineering: Engineered as a System

Evaluation Criterion: The system is engineered by the vendor as a single integrated pool for optimal
performance and availability.
Since its inception, VCE has been dedicated to engineering vendor-delivered systems for optimal
performance and availability. The companys vision of creating optimized vendor-delivered systems is
evidenced in 1) its selection of best-of-breed, market-leading components from EMC, Cisco, and VMware;
and 2) the effort that goes into designing every detail of every one of its systems to achieve optimal results.
For example, the physical assembly documentation includes precise instructions for cable routing and
rack design based on VCEs heat dissipation and airflow analysis. The result is a system that is optimized for
floor space and HVAC requirements. Similarly, the logical configuration instructions ensure that the array
front-end ports and the X-Blade ports are distributed properly across the Fibre Channel (FC) and Ethernet
switching components.
In comparison, instead of aiming to deliver highly optimized systems, HP appears to have minimized the R&D
investment in engineering full systems because many of its customers end up customizing their systems.
Technology Components
Compute: While HPs CI offerings are based on its aging BladeSystem platform, VCE uses Ciscos innovative
UCS platform. While HP is still the leading provider of x86 blade servers worldwide, Cisco has overtaken it in
the US. Cisco entered the x86 blade server market in 2009 and as of Q4 2014, they held a 29% share of the
global market and 43% of the US market. Over the same period, HPs share of the global market has fallen
from 50% to 40%.9 In the US, its market share has fallen to 36%. This rapid shift in market share is largely due
to Ciscos technology advantages over HP.
Storage: Whereas HP offers its own 3PAR storage, VCEs systems are built using storage from EMC. EMC has
long been the storage market leader and has steadily been increasing its lead. In Q1 2015, EMCs share of the
external storage market was 27.3%, while HPs was 9.9%.10 The fortunes of EMCs and HPs storage products
stem directly from the breadth of each vendors product line and strength of its technology.

Networking: HP ConvergedSystems offers the option of the HP 5900 or Cisco Nexus switch for top-of-rack
networking and its VirtualConnect FlexFabric for storage area networking. On the other hand, VCE uses
Ciscos unified fabric based on its industry-leading Nexus and MDS product lines.

9 Gartner. Market Share Analysis Servers, All Regions 2Q15 Update

10 Gartner. Market Share Analysis External Storage Systems, All Regions 2Q15 Update

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

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Questions for Evaluating Engineering

1. Does the vendor build its CI system using industry-leading, best-of-breed components?
2. Has the vendor truly engineered systems that are optimized for performance and availability?

Deployment: Physically and Logically Factory-Built as a System

Evaluation Criterion: Systems are manufactured and logically configured at the factory using standardized processes.
Speed of deployment is a key outcome of VCEs focus on design-level standardization and integration. In
most cases, VCE Vblock Systems are capable of shouldering operational loads within 45 days from the time
of customer order and within 48 hours of delivery. Both physical and logical builds are completed at the
factory, so when a Vblock System reaches its destination:
All components are assembled and fully tested.
The system is logically configured using a repeatable process with extensive automation.
VMware and naming conventions are installed, and IP addresses and VLANs are defined.
The net result is that VCE Vblock Systems arrive quickly and can be put into service quickly with low
administrative effort for IT staff and minimal vendor services.
HPs deployment is consistent with the companys approach of delivering some but not all of the benefits
of CI. Even in the best case, only a portion of the system build takes place at the factory. When customers
opt for HPs Factory Express, its service for pre-assembling systems, the system is physically assembled
at the factory. However, these systems still require logical configuration in the field by IT staff or vendor
professional services teams.
When systems are customized with third party components or when they incorporate existing
componentswhich Topline Strategy Groups research found happened 50% of the time11some or all of
the physical assembly and integration also occurred on site.
Questions for Evaluating Deployment
1. Does the system require physical or logical configuration on site? How much internal labor or
professional services will be required to deploy it?
2. Does the vendor provide a guaranteed deployment window for the system?
3. How much has deployment risk been reduced by the vendor?
4. How closely will the deployed system adhere to the vendors standard design specs? Will it be a
factory-built system that achieves the high levels of performance and availability per the CI systems
engineering designs?

Maintenance and Upgrades: Ongoing System-wide Coordination of Patches and Upgrades

Evaluation Criterion: Patches are preselected, pretested, and prepackaged by the vendor for interoperability and
compatibility with installed configurations, and are ready for immediate nondisruptive deployment. The same
holds true for the latest versions of components that are used to expand the system.
With a constant stream of updates for each component, patching can be an administrative nightmare. Not
every patch is relevant to every deployed configuration, and each patch introduces interoperability and
compatibility risks in its own way.

11 Topline Strategy Group. Converged Infrastructure Market Study November 2015

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

14

VCE simplifies the process and mitigates the risk as follows:

1. Because VCE ships Vblock Systems only in standard configurations, the company supports the entire
configuration for every system it ships. As a result, VCE is able to evaluate each patch to determine
which ones actually need to be installed on which systems.
2. VCE then tests each patch that does need to be installed against the entire Vblock System, certifying
compatibility at the system level.
3. Finally, VCE bundles the patches into a single release. Through this process, VCE delivers risk-free
patch bundles with predictable outcomes on a regular basis, eliminating the need for customers to
select and test each patchwhich may be released at unpredictable timesagainst their specific
configuration.
In comparison, as described above, HP has made very little progress in testing and certifying patches.
Rather than offering a synchronized patch update across all its components, HPs patching is completed
component by component.
The same differences between VCE and HP that exist in maintenance are also true for upgrades. Because
component vendors release new versions of their products every few months, it is virtually guaranteed that
when customers seek to expand the capacity of their systems, they will be installing newer component
versions. VCE handles the integration of new hardware component versions in a way similar to how it
handles patcheseach new component release is tested against each shipped system configuration to
ensure system-level compatibility. In addition, the company also tests the design integrity of the complete
system, ensuring that it has the headroom for and can support the power and cooling needs of the new
component. As with patches, by the time new components reach the customer, they are ready to install with
minimal disruption.
Similar to patching, HP does not provide system-wide testing of components against actual deployed
configurations. This leaves the burden of testing each upgrade to the customer, as well as the risk carried by
each release.
Questions for Evaluating Maintenance and Upgrades
1. Does the vendor issue system releases of patches that are preselected, fully tested, and validated
against the entire system, or do they issue component-by-component patches that need to be
validated on your own custom installation?
2. Does the vendor preselect, fully test, and validate upgraded components against your deployed
configurations beforehand at its own facilities, or do these components need to be tried out in your
systems by your own IT resources, or by your vendor at your time and cost?
3. Given the vendors CI approach, how field-customized does the CI configuration become? As a result,
how much of the interoperability and upgrade testing performed by the vendor can be leveraged?
How much additional resource does it take to maintain the system due to the customizations?

Support: Single Cross-Trained Support as a System

Evaluation Criterion: A single point of ownership is expert in all aspects of the system. All deployed system
configurations are fully supported to accelerate problem resolution.
VCE Support features a single point of contact for service request management and responsibility, including
escalation support tied directly into Cisco, EMC, and VMware engineering support. VCEs cross-trained

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

15

support staff handle compute, network, storage, and virtualization, and in 2014 they were able to resolve
93% of calls without escalation to more specialized support.12
VCEs emphasis on standardization also means that problem solving is shared across its customer base
solutions are engineered in labs dedicated to problem re-creation and then distributed through the support
network as needed.
In this area, HP has taken steps to provide customers a more seamless support model. For customers
who have all HP equipment, they have a single point of contact that coordinates support among various
organizations. While this model has significantly reduced the finger-pointing among HPs own support
organizations, there still multiple touch points and limited shared problem-solving resolutions.
HPs model also offers limited value to the 50% of HP CI customers who have substituted one or more
third party components.13 For those customers, the burden of isolating the problem and proving which
component is causing the issue falls on IT staff, just like it does for custom installation.
Questions for Evaluating Support
1. Is there a true single point of ownership for support, or just a single point of contact that serves as a
front end to traditional siloed support?
2. What happens to support if you customize your system with third party components?

Roadmap: Future-Proof System Roadmap

Evaluation Criterion: A jointly integrated roadmap for the whole technology stack provides customers clear
visibility into the migration path to next-generation technology. Technology roadmaps for all components are in
lockstep with component vendors, enabling precisely coordinated release management.
VCE has a proven record of releasing new versions of its systems that include the latest advances from each
component vendor. The first Vblock System was released in 2010, and the company is currently shipping its
fifth-generation systems. The company maintains close roadmap coordination with Cisco, EMC, and VMware
to provide customers with visibility into new capabilities as they are being developed and with a clear
migration path for implementing new technologies.
Since 2011, HP has twice revamped its CI product line, each time discontinuing its old models and
introducing new ones without offering a migration path. As a result, it is difficult to judge whether HP has
any plans to support migration from its current generation of ConvergedSystems to the next.
Questions for Evaluating Roadmaps
1. Does the vendor have a proven record of introducing new generations of its solutions?
2. If it does, does it offer a migration path for its installed customers?

Comparing VCE and HP on CI 2.0

Both VCE and HP have followed the same strategies for CI 2.0 as they did for CI 1.0. While VCE has sought to
develop a CI that conforms very closely to the CI ideal, HP has focused on supporting certain elements of
convergence while doing very little in others.
The result is that VCE has developed a CI portfolio designed for the new data center paradigm. By
comparison, HP offers just a handful of different CI systems and has done very little to tie these systems
into a larger framework. Table 3 provides side-by-side ratings on a 1 to 5 scale of VCEs and HPs CI offerings
against the four criteria for CI 2.0.
12 Per VCEs internal reports.
13 Topline Strategy Group. Converged Infrastructure Market Study November 2015

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Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Table 3. Evaluation Criteria for VCE and HP CI 2.0 Portfolios
Lifecycle Stage

VCE Systems

HP ConvergedSystems

Portfolio of CI systems

Extended stack

Intelligent networking fabric and management

Maintenance and support across the entire CI deployment

4.1

2.0

Average

Portfolio of CI Systems
Evaluation Criterion: The vendor provides a portfolio with a wide range of individual CI systemseach delivered
with the vendors best CI experiencethat leverage a wide array of technologies to meet the price, performance,
and availability needs of the full range of an organizations different workloads.
Since 2010, when VCE introduced its first converged system, it has steadily expanded its portfolio with new
models, technologies, and options to support an ever-increasing set of customer needs. All VCE Systems
deliver the same, complete CI experience. These include:
Four series of CI 1.0 systems: These range from the 100 series for smaller data centers, remote office
locations, and departmental applications to the Vblock 700 series designed to meet the needs of
the largest enterprises. Whereas the 100 series uses EMCs more affordable VNXe storage and rackmounted servers and can be configured with three, six, or eight server nodes, the Vblock 700 uses
EMCs enterprise-class storage, Cisco UCS blade servers, and can scale up to 512 server nodes and 4 PB
of storage. Fitting between the 100 and 700, VCE also offers the 200 and 300 series.
The Vblock 540 with all-flash storage: The Vblock 540 comes equipped with Cisco UCS servers and
EMCs XtremeIO all-flash array.
The hyperconverged VxRack: VxRack is a rack-scale hyperconverged system built using EMCs ScaleIO
SDS software. VxRack deployments start with a single rack and can scale to 1,000 nodes with tens of PB
of storage.
To further extend the storage of any of these systems, VCE also offers scale-out storage using EMCs Isilon
storage, which provides scale-out NAS storage up to 50 PB.
By comparison, HP offers a limited portfolio of systems. It has a single CI 1.0 optionits ConvergedSystem
700which is designed for 300 to 1,000 VMs. HP provides no options for systems using SAN/NAS storage with
fewer than 300 VMs. Above 1,000 VMs, the only option is the ConvergedSystem 700x, a reference architecture.
HP does offer two options for SDSthe ConvergedSystem 200 and 300. Both of these systems use HP
StoreVirtual SDS software. The 300 includes networking, whereas the 200 is a hyperconverged appliance,
providing just compute and storage. HP does not offer scale-out storage as part of its CI portfolio.
Table 4 summarizes the VCE and HP CI portfolio of systems.

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Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Table 4. VCE and HP CI Portfolio of Systems
Lifecycle Stage

VCE Systems

HP ConvergedSystems

CI SYSTEMS WITH HDD STORAGE

Small

CI

Not Available

Midrange

CI

Partial CI

Large scale

CI

Reference Architecture

C I S Y S T E M S W I T H A LT E R N AT I V E S T O R A G E T E C H N O L O G I E S

All-flash Arrays

CI

Partial CI

Scale-out Storage

CI

Not Available

SDS

CI

Partial CI

Questions for Evaluating the Portfolio of CI Systems

1. How broad is the vendors portfolio of CI systems? Is it designed to meet a wide range of price,
performance, and availability needs?
2. How many of the systems that it is marketing as CI are actually reference architectures or fully
custom systems?
3. Can the storage and compute of these systems be scaled out while still maintaining the full CI experience?

Extended Stack
Evaluation Criterion: The vendor includes additional layers of the stack in their full CI experience.
IT infrastructure includes more than just compute, network, storage, and virtualization. Additional software
layers and peripheral hardware are required to deliver a complete solution.
Just as VCE has been expanding its range of systems and technologies, it has also expanded the footprint for
which it offers the CI product experience to include BC/DR and cloud management and orchestration.
For cloud management and orchestration, VCE offers VMware vRealize and Cisco UCS Director as options on
its Vblock 300 and Vblock 700 series systems. When either of these options are selected, they are preloaded
and configured on the Vblock System in the factory, included in the system-wide coordinated patch release,
and supported as part of the system. In addition to providing private cloud orchestration, adding either of
these two software packages to a Vblock System enables companies to take advantage of the EMC FEHC.
For BC/DR, VCE has integrated EMCs data protection portfolio, including Data Domain, Avamar,
RecoverPoint, and VPlex.
While HP will sell additional software, such as its Helion CloudSystem Foundation, as part of a CI package
and may go as far as preloading software, it does not support them throughout the lifecycle. Additional
software is logically configured in the field, is patched and maintained separately from the rest of the
system, and is supported by a siloed support organization.
Table 5 summarizes the VCE and HP options for extending the stack.

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Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

Table 5. VCE and HP Options for Extending the Stack
Lifecycle Stage

VCE Systems

HP ConvergedSystems

Cloud orchestration

Full CI

Stand-alone

BC/DR

Full CI

Stand-alone

Questions for Evaluating the Extended Stack

1. Are software packages that are marketed as part of a CI offering actually fully integrated components
of the CI system, or are they simply stand-alone offerings that are sold alongside the CI system?

Intelligent Networking Fabric and Management

Evaluation Criterion: The vendor provides a networking fabric that intelligently connects each individual system
into the whole federation. The vendor also provides management software that serves as a single point for
maintaining the infrastructure across all of the CI systems.
Like it has for the rest of its CI infrastructure, VCE has brought lifecycle management to its Vscale fabric.
When customers opt to deploy Vscale, they are choosing a fabric that has been engineered for optimal
performance, where upgrades to firmware and SDN software are tested at both the spine and leaf, including
the SDN software, for interoperability and are supported via a single point of support ownership. VCE then
supports the integrity of the entire deployment through its VCE Vision software, which helps coordinate
the optimal use of resources and the compliance of the entire infrastructure to CI standards.
Although an HP CI customer can deploy a spine-and-leaf architecture and/or SDN, it is deploying it as a DIY,
field-delivered custom installation and does not enjoy the benefits that come from a true CI system. While
HPs OneView is an elegant tool that provides a single point of management for the deployment, it still treats
the deployment as a collection of components, not an integrated infrastructure.
Questions for Evaluating Integrated Infrastructure
1. Is the fabric integrated into the CI offering or is it a DIY deployment?
2. Is the management system designed to support the unique needs of CI?

Maintenance and Support across the Entire CI Deployment

Evaluation Criterion: At data center scale, the vendor supports and maintains the infrastructure as one
infrastructure, not as a collection of individual systems.
Ultimately, in a CI 2.0 deployment, every system and component of the infrastructure has been tested
to interoperate with every other system and component throughout its lifecycle. Patch releases are
coordinated across the infrastructure to ensure nondisruptive upgrades, and there is a single point of
support that takes ownership for solving problems across the infrastructure. VCE provides its customers with
this true CI 2.0 experience.
Providing maintenance and support at the individual system level is a prerequisite for providing
maintenance and support at data center scale. As described throughout this white paper, even in the best
case, HP has only made modest progress toward maintenance and support at the individual system level
and has not begun to provide maintenance and support at data center scale.

Converged Infrastructure Systems Comparative Assessment: VCE vs. HP

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Questions for Maintenance and Support across the Entire CI Deployment

1. Does the vendor coordinate and pretest patches for its individual systems, and if it does, does it
coordinate across systems?
2. Does the vendor offer a single point of ownership for support for individual systems or just a front
end for siloed support? If it does, does that single point of ownership provide support across systems
and products?

Conclusion
The first generation of CI systemsCI 1.0have proven incredibly valuable in increasing agility, reducing
the time and money spent on deploying and administering infrastructure systems, and freeing resources
for innovation. Yet, to continue to add value as data centers evolve from a collection of stand-alone systems
based on SAN/NAS storage to dynamic, integrated infrastructures that combine a range of technologies, CI
must evolve as well.
On the surface, it may appear that HP is well on its way to accomplishing this and is delivering CI at data
center scale. However, the company is in fact delivering a thin layer of convergence. By contrast, VCE has
truly taken CI to the next level, and now has a significant leadership position in the CI 2.0 market. It has built
a portfolio of systems that simplify purchasing and setup, shorten the time it takes to bring new capabilities
online, and reduce cost and complexity throughout the lifecycle of the product. It has then woven these
systems together to deliver a true integrated deployment for the new data center paradigm. In short, VCE is
in the business of supporting whole infrastructures that are much more than just the sum of their parts.