White

Paper

Business and Operational Benefits

Achieved with HP P4000 SANs

A Research-based Report
By Mark Peters and Bill Lundell

July, 2010

This ESG White Paper was commissioned by HP

and is distributed under license from ESG.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 2

Contents
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 3
The HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Research Project .................................................................................... 3
HP P4000 SAN Overview ............................................................................................................................... 4
The Market Need ...................................................................................................................................................... 4
The Product .............................................................................................................................................................. 4
ESG Lab’s View .......................................................................................................................................................... 5
In-depth End-user Interviews ....................................................................................................................... 6
Interpretation and Measurement ................................................................................................................ 7
User Commentary by Functional Area ......................................................................................................... 8
HP P4000 Range of Use ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Value of Adding Nodes Online via Storage Clustering.............................................................................................. 8
Value of Reduced Outages via Network RAID .......................................................................................................... 9
Value of Thin Provisioning ...................................................................................................................................... 10
Value of Application Integrated Snapshots ............................................................................................................ 10
Value of Remote Copy and Multi-site Synchronous Replication............................................................................ 11
Value of the Centralized Management Console (CMC) .......................................................................................... 11
Overall Evaluation ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Does the HP P4000 Deliver? ................................................................................................................................... 12
The Bigger Truth ......................................................................................................................................... 13

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© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 3

Executive Summary
This paper summarizes and evaluates the insights gathered from interviews conducted by ESG with ten users of the
HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN. 1 The chosen users had a wide range of run-time with the P4000 (spanning from nine
months to nine years), mixed product use (e.g., virtualization, databases, Exchange and other Microsoft tools,
Active Directory, Web servers), and varied organization size (45 to 9,000 employees); they also represented varying
storage capacities, sophistication, industries, and geographies. The general user view of the product was extremely
positive; its ability to deliver both operational and business value received high marks, as evidenced by the fact that
nine of the ten users gave an unequivocal “yes” when asked if they would continue to buy HP P4000 SAN products.
In terms of “outcomes that matter” (HP’s current term for its focus on quantifiable value), there is no doubt that
the P4000 can deliver substantial benefits to a wide range of users. Such benefits include:
• Considerable time-savings due to the P4000’s ability to add nodes and perform upgrades online. Users
reported manpower savings ranging up to an entire FTE (full time equivalent); additionally, use of the
Central Management Console was generating annual savings from 200 hours to more than an FTE.
• Significant improvements in RTO and RPO capabilities (peace of mind!) via the P4000’s Application
Integrated Snapshots and remote copy (where one user reported an annual value of $30,000).
• Deferred CAPEX—ranging from 25% to 50% of storage capacity—as a result of implementing the P4000’s
Thin Provisioning feature.
• Reduced IT downtime and data recovery times derived from a variety of P4000 features, including
Application Integrated Snapshots which alone generated $10,000 of annual OPEX savings for one user.
• Increased availability, together with the potential to protect and/or increase revenue, thanks to multi-site
synchronous replication and Network RAID (a specific user example calculated the value of avoided revenue
loss at $100,000; another had achieved annual cost savings of $40,000).
The users ESG interviewed included organizations that reported savings and value attributed to their HP P4000
SANs that run into many tens of thousands of dollars per year. While the precise value of such savings will vary for
readers of this report, it is clear that implementing an HP P4000 SAN—as shown in this research—has the potential
to reasonably deliver tens to even hundreds of thousands of dollars in value to mid-sized and larger organizations.

The HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Research Project

This report conveys the insights gathered from a recent ESG end-user research study, the objective of which was to
conduct in-depth interviews with a selection of HP P4000 SAN users in order to determine not only their
satisfaction and common usage patterns but also, where possible, to evaluate and measure the benefits they are
achieving. The interviews were conducted from May to July 2010 by the authors of this report. While qualitative
sentiment is important and recorded in the results, HP is focused on producing “outcomes that matter.” This study
was therefore designed to see if the P4000 SAN from HP can indeed make a significant contribution to that
objective.
Before outlining the key results from the end-user interviews, the report includes a brief summary of the P4000
SAN, which HP derived from its 2008 acquisition of LeftHand Networks. The companies that were interviewed are
then introduced and the detailed quantitative and qualitative results that follow are organized by feature and
function, rather than by user; this is because the research is looking for consistent patterns and themes rather than
simply a collection of case studies.
Extrapolations of the potential key values (both qualitative and quantitative) are made within each functional
area—as well as in an overall summary evaluation—so that the insights can be as useful and generally applicable as
possible. Readers are encouraged to apply their own cost structures and degree of aggressive management to the
value parameters outlined in this report, which will deliver a good idea of the potential quantifiable benefits
available to them with the HP P4000 SAN solution.

1
While acknowledging the full formal name of the product, HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN, this paper at times uses various abbreviated terms,
such as HP P4000, for the sake of brevity and readability.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 4

HP P4000 SAN Overview

The Market Need
Faced with exploding data growth (due to accelerated adoption of server virtualization and a desire to better
protect and manage shared information assets) IT managers in organizations of all sizes are deploying shared
storage solutions to meet their growing storage requirements. In the enterprise space, IT managers have
traditionally turned to Fibre Channel (FC) attached storage arrays; however, iSCSI technology enables organizations
to deploy high-performance storage networks that leverage IP networking infrastructure and skill sets, making it
more economically attractive than FC. This is important because when ESG asked IT professionals to name the
factors most important when justifying IT investments over the next 12-18 months, the top two responses were
operational expenditure (OPEX) reduction (54%) and business process improvements (42%). Clearly, IT managers
are looking for ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and the HP P4000—a cost-effective, highly available
shared storage solution—is suited to meet the needs of small to medium-sized businesses and increasingly larger
enterprises, especially those that have embraced server virtualization. 2

The Product
With a clustered storage architecture based on industry standards and Ethernet, the HP P4000 SAN is a shared
storage solution that delivers cost-effective storage scalability, performance, and high availability.
As shown in Figure 1, HP P4000 SANs can scale from an entry level software solution powered by the P4000 Virtual
SAN Appliance Software (VSAs) to an enterprise-class physical SAN based on a cluster of P4000 SAN appliances.
With a pay-as-you-grow, all-inclusive licensing model and intuitive storage management, P4000 SANs also support
online upgrades, firmware changes, modifications to the SAN layout, and advanced high availability to address the
ever-changing needs of many organizations.
Figure 1. HP P4000 SAN “Pay-as-You-Grow” Scalability

2
This overview is an edited extract from recent ESG Lab publications, notably, HP P4000 SAN: Affordable, Scalable, Reliable Storage, March
2010.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 5

From the software-only VSA option (which is available as a free download for a 60 day trial 3) to the P4000 SAN
appliances, the underlying power and enterprise-class functionality of the P4000 SAN is provided by the SAN/iQ
software and delivers wide functionality that includes:
• Storage clustering: this enables users to consolidate multiple storage nodes into pools of storage with the
aggregated capacity and performance available to every volume in the cluster.
• Network RAID 5, 6, 10, 10+1, 10+2: this is volume-level HA that covers users against most failure events
with up to four sets of striped, protected data across a cluster of storage nodes.
• Thin provisioning: this is a well-known feature—space is only actually allocated when data is written,
thereby improving storage utilization and efficiency.
• SmartClones and Application Integrated Snapshots: integration with popular applications helps users make
use of the thinly-provisioned, instant, point-in-time, volume-based copies.
• Remote copy with bandwidth throttling and synchronous multi-site replication: replicating snapshots
helps to reduce capacity requirements and to limit the required bandwidth.
• Virtual and physical SAN appliances managed from one pane of glass: making life easier for users, with
largely wizard-driven management.
• An enterprise-class feature set with all-inclusive software pricing: this is an aspect that is attractive to
many users not just for the bundled price, but also as it precludes the need to return and open new POs.
• Three years of support: this is included for HP P4000 SANs.
• Non-disruptive online upgrades: both physical capacity and performance can be upgraded online, as can
firmware and software updates.
• Physical reliability: with hardware RAID (5, 6, and 10), redundant fans and power supplies, and hot-
pluggable hard drives.
With the use of server virtualization technology increasing among organizations, regardless of size or industry
affiliation, the need for a storage system with matching flexibility is also increasing. A recent ESG survey of IT
professionals found that 70% of organizations have deployed server virtualization technology (51% in production,
19% in test/development), while another 17% plan to do so. 4

ESG Lab’s View

ESG Lab found the HP P4000 to be easy to configure, implement, and manage; storage can be provisioned and a
new virtual server can be installed, configured, and ready to run applications in less than ten minutes via the easy-
to-use tools and procedures. The HP Centralized Management Console (CMC) required only a handful of intuitive,
well-supported actions for complete storage administration. Customers can also stretch their clusters to create
multi-site SANs. ESG has seen storage systems that scale in this fashion with NAS and CAS products, but in the
opinion of ESG Lab, HP is one of the leaders in SAN attached true N-way clustered storage. ESG Lab has been very
impressed with the product’s performance as it scaled with impressive linearity when handling a challenging small-
block random IO workload, and latency actually decreased as the cluster and IO load grew; furthermore, the HP
P4000 provided easy provisioning and powerful integration of Snapshot and SmartClone technology to optimize
capacity utilization, while its high availability functionality was found to be impressive, sustaining multiple failures
while providing continuous data access.
The economics of a clustered network storage system are compelling, with the potential to significantly reduce
capital and operational costs. With HP’s P4000 SAN, the customer only has to add another storage node to increase
performance and capacity—which costs far less than acquiring a whole new system—and cover its associated

3
Note: Interested readers should visit www.hp.com/go/TryVSA for more information.
4
Source: ESG Research Report, 2010 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January, 2010.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 6

software, licensing, and maintenance charges. Most midrange storage systems support, at best, a dual-controller
configuration, which limits scalability and flexibility.

In-depth End-user Interviews

This research project was designed to uncover the operational and business benefits users derive from operating
the HP P4000 SAN; the aim of the interviews was to quantify both IT and business value. This could, of course, cover
improvements in quality and better levels of service, but also sought wherever possible to look for more tangible
measures such as hours saved, faster throughput, or completion of tasks and to turn those into $$ values.
Table 1 summarizes some of the key facts about the ten organizations interviewed for this study; seven are from
regions within the United States and three are internationally-based. There is a range of employee numbers (45 to
9,000), IT personnel (3 to 86), and storage capacities (2 TB to 200 TB). The high and low numbers in each category
are not from the same organization in many cases, a fact that corresponds to the wide range of industries,
geographies, and IT environments represented in the survey group.
The respondents portrayed a wide range of IT approaches—with everything represented from cautious to massive
virtualization, as well as generally progressive and generally conservative styles. There was also a good selection of
organizational maturity, scale, and business type, which included:
• Relatively new organizations growing small revenues rapidly.
• A massive international conglomerate (where the internal IT is outsourced, but this research covers its
project development team).
• Divisions of larger enterprises.
• Business services.
• Government organizations (both those raising revenues and those on fixed or tightened budgets).
Table 1. Interviewee Organization Demographics
Number of
Number of Number of Total Storage
Industry Total IT Staff Virtual
Employees Physical Servers Capacity
Machines
Communications
UK 45 3 50 273 15 TB
& Media
Southwest State/Local
950 17.5 30 90 89 TB
USA Government
Southwest
Utilities 250 15 30 50 70 TB
USA
Midwest Transportation &
900 3 19 16 14 TB
USA Logistics
Southeast
Business Services 650 14 40 55 57 TB
USA
Southeast State/Local
150 12 40 47 22 TB
USA Government
Construction/
Scandinavia 9,000 6 40 130 60 TB
Engineering
State/Local
Canada 250 4 45 5 6 TB
Government
Midwest
Manufacturing 500 3 8 22 2 TB
USA
Midwest State/Local
6,700 86 168 116 200 TB
USA Government
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 7

The HP P4000 SAN infrastructure at the various organizations also varied considerably; many of the organizations
ESG spoke with were getting their first serious SAN experiences with the HP P4000, often in close association with
their initial server virtualization endeavors. Some had started with earlier versions of the SAN as far back as nine
years, while others had just a few years—or even nine months in one case—of experience. In all cases, multiple
personnel had access to, and management capabilities over, the HP P4000 SAN; however, in only one case was it
felt that the FTE (full time equivalent) count for management exceeded one person; while half the organizations
stated an FTE of one, there were also four that estimated their FTE as only a fraction, amounting to just hours per
week. Some bought the HP storage because of an existing relationship, others were recommended by a peer, and
many had done considerable research, comparative evaluations, and even proof-of-concept testing.
Summary details of the P4000 SAN infrastructures, such as the numbers of nodes, clusters, and nodes in the largest
clusters, are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. HP P4000 SAN Infrastructure Information
Length of Total Number of Total Number of Nodes in Largest Storage
Storage FTEs
Deployment Nodes SAN Clusters SAN Cluster Capacity
UK 1.5 years 4 1 2 8 TB 1/3
Southwest
8 years 23 5 8 48 TB 1/2
USA
Southwest
4 years 8 3 4 55 TB 1
USA
Midwest
9 years 6 2 4 9 TB 1/20
USA
Southeast
2 years 18 10 4 42 TB 1/8
USA
Southeast
1 year 6 1 6 22 TB 1
USA
Scandinavia 9 months 150 8 80 60 TB 1

Canada 3 years 21 9 3 6 TB 1
Midwest
1.5 years 2 1 2 2 TB 1
USA
Midwest
8 months 27 3 10 130 TB 2
USA
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010.
Interpretation and Measurement
There is an interpretive challenge in studies of this kind, which derives from the metrics that each interviewee uses.
Some of the challenges are as follows:
• There is no standard “control test” for each user: In other words, their individual benefits depend on
where they have come from. For instance, we must take care when applying assumptions based on
straightforward raw numbers at this stage: clearly, a savings of, say, 10 TB is far less significant (at least as a
percentage) in a shop of 50 TB than in one of 20 TB.
• The costs of FTEs will vary widely by organization: This will depend on industry, region, and the precise
duties of personnel. Indeed, more generally, few measures are standard across businesses because of style,
attitude, business environment, and a host of other variables.
Accurate guidelines and insights as to the potential benefits P4000 users can expect were the aim of this project,
but these obviously cannot be achieved merely by averaging all of the users’ inputs—especially because a reader of
this study might have his/her own costs and values to apply. Fortunately, much of the user measurement of the
quantifiable value of the HP P4000 SAN was provided in terms of the ease and speed of doing things—in other

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 8

words, less people resources, less time, and less FTE. ESG’s chosen approach, therefore, in this report is to
consolidate and represent everything as hours and days saved because that is a common measure across users—
the actual dollar value of that will vary by organization, with their varying cost structures and opportunity costs.
Using some good industry-average assumptions, we do make some broader statements after all the user input, but
the main idea is to present the facts and allow readers to easily apply their own “filters” and assumptions.
Furthermore, this is not a collection of case-studies; instead, the input from the users in each functional aspect is
reported as a generic and overall range which gives a template of the sorts of reductions or advantages that are
possible with the HP P4000 and against which users can apply their own considerations for their specific
environment. This allows “level playing field” comparisons, without user bias in the reported numbers or
assumptions.

User Commentary by Functional Area

HP P4000 Range of Use
The P4000 SAN is very broadly used for everything from extensive virtualization (mainly VMware, but also Hyper-V),
through databases (including SQL, Informix, Oracle, and DB2), to all the standard Microsoft tools (especially
Exchange), and general support applications (such as Active Directory, Web servers, portals, etc.). “Test and dev”
and data protection/recovery—especially using the advantages of application-integrated snapshots—were all very
popular areas. Overall, users had started with the P4000 SAN for a range of motivations. Many deployed it as their
first SAN and/or in conjunction with server virtualization, while others wanted an iSCSI solution (before it was
popular and even on an Apple system in one case) or liked particular feature sets. Many were drawn to the all-in-
one software pricing and all were extremely happy with the product itself, whether in terms of performance,
flexibility, or robustness. The range of cluster/node ratios and sizes, as well as the ratio of FTEs to TB, varied widely
as might be expected in a survey of so many different industries and types of IT operations. The speed with which
they were able to move from initial installation to full production was also specifically praised.
One constant was that the users were anxious to regale ESG with the improvements they had experienced—for
example, “upgrades and migrations are a lot faster now: it’s just 15 to 20 minutes to spin up a new VM compared to
10 hours before.” When asked if they would buy again, nine of the ten users gave an unequivocal “yes” (in fairness,
the one respondent that said “no” had no issue with the product). Indeed, eight of the ten also said they were “very
likely” (the top choice) to recommend the P4000 to a peer—and several were anxious to point out that they had
actually done so! Perhaps the most telling sign of all is that every respondent had grown their P4000 installation,
adding nodes, clusters, and/or capacity.

Value of Adding Nodes Online via Storage Clustering

Eighty percent of the users interviewed were actively using this ability with extremely good—and impressive—
results that garnered much positive commentary:
• “Prior to the P4000, this took 3-4 days of effort, now it’s just 2 minutes (this happens 4-5 times per year).”
• “We had 2 FTEs before—so this alone saves us one of those and contributes probably $100,000 in cost
savings in terms of the uptime; not to mention the 60 or so hours of administration time saved. Our prior
approach took at least a month to upgrade, plus overtime, plus downtime … and we were managing a far
smaller capacity than now.”
• A slightly more conservative user employs the feature, but “only after-hours, to be ultra safe;” it used to
take 4 hours before the P4000 and now takes “minutes.”
• Although only done twice in four years, the approach without the P4000 capability took three weekends of
1 FTE to migrate 5 TB (11 volumes) “and of course, that was just moving the data; the device would be
down.” Now it “can be migrated in minutes with a simple point and click—it’s never offline and there’s no
overtime.”

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 9

• “Before it took at least a day and now it’s minutes.”

• One user spoke of the social convenience (staff “not having to pull all-nighters”) and “extreme confidence”
with the online upgrades; saving the overtime was nice, but the improved reliability for customers was
excellent. The user also pointed out that the online upgrade saved not just the time of the upgrade itself,
but also the three or four days of planning it used to need beforehand.
Of the remainder, two users had not yet used this feature; however, they both plan to and have expectations for
great success (one was looking to go from 4-8 hours for an upgrade to just minutes; the other expected to save four
hours on each occasion).
As a side note, firmware changes for the HP P4000 can also be done online. As yet, most users ESG spoke with did
not have much experience with it. Those that did said the real value was not so much in the actual time saved doing
the actual upgrade (maybe a few hours), but was rather in avoiding the time planning the upgrade to minimize the
impact and to maximize the chance of success (which could be days); in other words, it’s safe, secure, and easy …
and the time saved is more of a bonus.
SUMMARY VALUE: From the interviews, it would seem that the norm for most users was to save anything from the
best part of a day to a number of days; one user felt that it has saved the equivalent of an FTE as a result. All agreed
that the P4000 only takes minutes. Beyond the straight dollar value of the time saved (hundreds to a few thousands
per year on average) users also highlighted both the additional pre- and post- administrative time saved and the
reassurance of the online approach.

Value of Reduced Outages via Network RAID

Overall, the users were enthusiastic, with three of the ten having experienced no issues in the last 12 months and
only one user having had anything that actually caused an outage. The value of this is hard to measure, but the
logistics company gave a good example: its revenue equates to roughly $200,000 per day; if DB2 or certain other
crucial applications are down—which had happened with prior storage and could last at least a day—then revenue
levels could easily be cut in half. Worse still, the nature of its industry means that that business will likely end up in
the hands of a competitor. To have suffered disk failures (as it had) but without an associated system outage is
literally money in the bank for the organization; in this case, perhaps $100,000.
Most users were anxious to recount tales of prior woe that had been averted (at least would have been) by moving
to the HP P4000 SAN. One user knew it was pure luck that a prior vendor had the correct spare board on site;
another did get some sluggishness once due to over-heating, but afterwards found that the non-Network-RAIDed
drives on their other storage systems had to be rebuilt. Another user spoke of having had a prior storage system
“nursed full-time for 3 months”—the cost of that is not only high, but is easy to compute.
The value of high data availability—in other words, application uptime—is of course very dependent on the
industry; estimates have it ranging from $25k per hour to millions of dollars per hour, depending on the situation.
Certainly, most users ESG spoke with had (prior to their P4000) lost a few hours of availability a couple of times per
year. Of course, the costs can be more than just downtime and immediate business impact—one interviewee
recounted that “we had to spend between $50,000 and $75,000 to get Exchange fixed after our old storage caused
a catastrophic issue!” Others spoke more prosaically and simply. For example, one said “file restores—running at
around three per week—used to cost us $200 to $300 each and now are essentially zero dollars.” That doesn’t
sound like much, but is between $30,000 and $45,000 per annum of achieved—quantifiable value for that user.
Generally, data availability was clearly better for the interviewees’ organizations and many reported significant
improvements (20% to 50% was typical) in their RTO/RPO measures. It is noteworthy that the P4000 can be
configured for very short RTO and RPO objectives, which would then typically equate to even higher improvements.
SUMMARY VALUE: Although the precise values here are extremely sensitive to the industry vertical in question, it is
clear that the business value of fewer outages is almost always measured in tens of thousands of dollars. Control
tests are not possible, of course, but users quoted (for example) that the reduction in outages could be worth
$100,000 in lost revenue while even the hard costs of much easier file restores could represent a cost savings of

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 10

around $40,000 per year for a mid-sized company. This is a high value area, where even a few hours soon represent
big savings for any organization.

Value of Thin Provisioning

The use of thin provisioning fell into two distinct camps:
1) Those few users that either barely or did not use thin provisioning at all.
a. One user said it was “not comfortable” and “feels that it’s even less management effort to not try
to use it.”
2) The majority, however, do use thin provisioning extensively; on average for around 80% of their volumes.
Some examples of individual experiences are:
a. Saving 25% capacity (lower than might be expected because they used to manually over-provision
in any case).
b. Saves or reclaims about 40% of capacity; while readers will need to figure their own dollar value,
for this user it equated to $50-60,000 per annum.
c. Two users estimated saving a week’s worth of FTE time per year.
d. Saving 50% capacity through reclamation and deferring purchases, said one user, while another
estimated 30-40% savings.
e. “Really easy and really quick” was the succinct summary from one customer.
SUMMARY VALUE: The summary here is simple—the P4000 users of thin provisioning that had measured their
results reported manpower savings of around a week’s worth of FTE per year; the bigger impact was anything from
25% to 50% overall capacity savings via capacity reclamation or deferred storage purchases. This makes for easy
math for potential HP P4000 users; multiply your average annual storage expenditure by 25% or more to find a
reasonable savings expectation from instituting P4000 with thin provisioning. The actual monetary figure will, of
course, vary by the volume size, existing storage efficiency, and type of storage technology currently employed, but
the bottom line is that it will be a sizeable amount to just about any organization.

Value of Application Integrated Snapshots

The range of snapshot implementations was, as expected, wide, with all but one user making use of the function;
snapshots were taken anywhere from every 30 minutes to daily to weekly. What did not vary so much was that
those users employing snapshots assiduously were getting great quantifiable value. Examples of this:
• One user stated it would need to add a whole FTE (in this case, at a cost of over $100,000) without the HP
P4000 snaps; additionally, its recoveries (caused by such common things as accidental file deletions and
application issues and not by the storage system) were taking at least an hour each before and are now just
10 to 15 minutes—at its recurrence-rate of 3-4 recoveries per week, this saves up to 156 hours.
• Some users had not had to “test recovery in anger,” but one respondent that had experienced such
occurrences reported that these events used to consume a full eight hour day. The P4000 has enabled them
to reduce this to only 15 minutes; it typically suffers two application failures per month and the P4000
snaps equate to regaining 192 hours (of cost and value) per year.
• With delightful brevity, one user simply said, “it’s great, and it’s saved me on a few occasions!”
SUMMARY VALUE: Fortunately, users recorded far more generation of snapshots than usage of them. While this
saves resources (especially with thinly provisioned snapshots), the main area that P4000 users could actually
measure was that of recoveries; in this way, the average from the mid-sized organizations ESG spoke with was a
saving of around 3-4 hours per week. While this might not sound like a lot—and does not take into account the
potential business and morale issues—it can easily translate (at typical FTE costs) to $10,000 per year of OPEX.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 11

Value of Remote Copy and Multi-site Synchronous Replication

Use of remote copy was split for interviewees, with some using it and others not (although one of the non-users is
actually using multi-site synchronous replication). Those that had implemented remote copy were pleased with the
ease and “love the peace of mind.” To quote one user, “the remote stuff is brilliant!” Luckily, not everyone had a
need to test the restore, but a couple of examples give good insight into both the IT value and also the potential
business savings. One user compared recovery before and after the P4000, saying “we used to do local recoveries
from tape perhaps four or five times a year; each one would take one to two days, which at our costs works out to
be $30-35,000 per year … a cost that we no longer have to bear. Each of our recoveries now takes just about 30
minutes and, of course, this doesn’t take into account the operational value to us of the improved application
uptime and data availability.” Another user confirmed that their old approach took at least a half day for restores to
occur and now it was just a similar half hour.
Multi-site SANs, by their very nature, demonstrate their value most in the event of an entire site failure, after which
data and applications can remain online for all surviving servers and users. That value is analogous to what was
outlined in the earlier section dealing with the “Value of Reduced Outages via Network RAID.”
SUMMARY VALUE: Remote Copy was neither as well utilized nor measured by the P4000 users ESG spoke with. The
one clear example showed a value of $30,000+ per year. Many users could not make a good comparison, having not
used remote copy before having their HP P4000 SANs; ESG’s feeling is that there is an opportunity for education by
HP and for its users to generate additional value for themselves. The value of multi-site synchronous replication
would only be evident after a large-scale failure and should be expected to be similar to that outlined in the “Value
of Reduced Outages via Network RAID.”

Value of the Centralized Management Console (CMC)

The CMC was typically used by the storage-focused staff more than the server-focused staff. While essentially all
the users were taking advantage of the tool, their attitudes fell into two distinct camps:
1) A minority was less interested in—or had not computed—the time savings and strict quantifiable value they
were getting, but were very happy about the additional features and functions they could now easily
leverage. In other words, CMC improved their efficiency and increased their quality.
2) The majority was enthused by the time savings that CMC produced and a sampling of comments are:
a. Annual time saved “equates to half of an FTE.”
b. “Each of our two storage administrators saves about two hours per week; because, for example, it
used to take us 6-8 hours to expand a volume and now it’s basically instant.”
c. “There are 4 people that use it and it saves four man-hours per week.”
d. “It saves our three storage admins—and that’s one FTE—around two hours per week.”
e. “Verifying snapshots and creating volumes are both much easier with CMC.”
f. “CMC saves roughly two hours of administrative management time per week” Note: this is a good
example of the tyranny of numbers; the two hours might not sound much, but it’s in an
environment that currently only expends about five hours per week on storage in total, so the two
hour saved is a significant percentage.
g. “CMC helps us be able to respond at all to internal requests and contributed heavily to us being
able to go from one FTE to about a third of an FTE on storage”
SUMMARY VALUE: The value of the CMC was uniformly significant; all the users reported quality improvements in
terms of being able to do things that would not have been possible without CMC and of providing a better IT service
as a result—the dollar value of such improvements is hard to judge for most organizations, but is nonetheless
valuable in terms of the perception of IT and of its contributions to the overall business. In the meantime, more
pragmatically, of those that had measured the value of the reduction in manpower effort that CMC generates, two
organizations spoke of saving a half or even more of an FTE (that could mean, at industry averages, a saving of
$50,000 to $80,000 per year) while a further two were of the opinion that CMC was delivering them around 200
hours (say $12,000) of value per year.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 12

Overall Evaluation
Does the HP P4000 Deliver?
All of the specifications and potential of any product are, of course, for naught if users cannot get value from it; and
that value had better be in measurable business advantage as well as simply doing the IT job well. The combination
of both—delivering on IT needs as well as business prerogatives—is what HP means by “outcomes that matter.”
The point is to deliver valuable and measurable impact across an organization: such impact cannot be achieved by
“speeds and feeds” alone; nor can it address business requirements at any cost. While enabling storage
virtualization, remote data protection, advanced snapshot technology, thin provisioning, and so on are all
wonderful, ESG’s latest spending intentions research, shown in Figure 2, highlights clearly that budgetary
advantage—the reduction of operational expenditure (OPEX)—is still the number one user consideration in
justifying IT investments.
Figure 2. Most Important Considerations for Justifying 2010 IT Investments

Which of the following considerations do you believe will be most important in

justifying IT investments to your organization’s business management team over the
next 12-18 months? (Percent of respondents, N=515, three responses accepted)

Reduction in operational costs 54%

Business process improvement 42%

Improved security / risk management 36%

Return on investment / speed of payback 33%

Reduction in capital costs 30%

Improved regulatory compliance 23%

Reduced time-to-market for our products or services 10%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2010.

The data in Figure 2 also shows the importance of delivering on the IT front simultaneously, with business process
improvement being a strong number two factor.
HP’s prognosis, and what this research project set out to evaluate, is that the HP P4000 produces quantifiable
“outcomes that matter” for the users interviewed. As this report has shown, each of the various functional areas
that have been investigated does have the ability to produce business benefits for HP P4000 users that are at once
significant and quantifiable. As the demographics of the interviewees show, this research has covered a range of
organizational sizes including small and mid-sized shops as well as some larger enterprises; most have a handful or
less of IT staff and an average P4000 installed capacity of just over 38 TB. In these organizations, users are reporting
savings and value that runs into many tens of thousands of dollars per year. By any measure, this represents a
significant ROI for the organizations ESG spoke with and also represents a scale of benefit that other similar
organizations could reasonably expect to emulate. Sure, the mileage may vary, but it looks to be highly attractive
mileage in any case.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 White Paper: Business and Operational Benefits Achieved with HP P4000 SANs 13

The focus on “outcomes that matter” does not—and should not—preclude the importance and value of the
qualitative benefits that the HP P4000 can generate. All the users had positive stories to relate of operational value
and positive business impact. Being “easy” and “reliable” are not lightweight compliments. And permitting the
reduction of storage FTEs and/or making a product that’s so easy to manage that specialist storage expertise
becomes unnecessary is no insubstantial achievement (indeed, it can enable such manpower and expertise to be
redirected to other, more important tasks). Ironically, both these latter aspects also have a tendency to reduce
users’ ability to give a complete financial analysis of the benefits they’re getting—putting it colloquially, “it’s so
good, we don’t bother with detailed measurement!” Of course, it’s preferable for potential purchasers when dollar
figures can be applied as well, but quality and perceived value matter, too. Many of the users ESG spoke with had
started their use of the earlier generations of the P4000 with some degree of skepticism; yet all, from the
interviews, had been won over by the product’s attributes. Whether it was overall ease, or value, or becoming
comfortable with a feature such as thin provisioning for which they had early trepidation, the users ESG
interviewed were unanimously in approval of the product. To reiterate, one of the best single measures of any
product is the propensity of users to re-purchase and/or recommend it; nine out of ten of the respondents not only
said they would repurchase, but, in the manner of true raving fans, were eager to say that they either had budget
ready or were actively working toward their next purchase!

The Bigger Truth

“Storage needs are changing in light of server virtualization, data growth, business continuity demands and cost
pressures. Looking for storage that meets these goals and can be added easily into your infrastructure? ” 5
This is how HP introduces its HP P4000 SAN on its website. This research study was designed to see if the P4000
SAN from HP can indeed make a significant contribution to those objectives … and do so in a way that provides
measurable value. The bottom-line from the user interviews that ESG conducted is that yes, there is definite,
significant, and quantifiable value that can be enjoyed by users that implement an HP P4000 SAN. The value is
chiefly in time and resource savings (achieved via online upgrades, thin provisioning, and the CMC tool), faster
recovery capabilities, and reduced outages (jointly achieved via such things as Network RAID, snapshots, remote
copy, and synchronous replication). While few users would employ all of the tools to their maximum, most of the
functions mentioned have the ability to produce benefits measured in the tens of thousands of dollars for mid-sized
organizations; furthermore, such OPEX savings are, for the most part, annual and recurring. Over the life-span of a
P4000 SAN, the opportunity for a dramatic and beneficial ROI for new users above and beyond simply doing a great
job is significant.

5
Source: HP website, 07/15/10.

© 2010, Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 20 Asylum Street | Milford, MA 01757 | Tel:508.482.0188 Fax: 508.482.0128 | www.enterprisestrategygroup.com

4AA2-7788ENW, Created July 2010