Table 1: NAS TCO Comparison
| EMC NS600 | NetApp F825c | NetApp FAS940c | |
| Base system cost (3 Tbytes, high-availability configuration) | $202,680 | $193,000 | $248,000 |
| Software | $34,000 | $49,000 | $90,000 |
| Installation | $7,830 | $5,200 | $6,400 |
| Total 3-year ownership | $281,350 | $297,600 | $424,400 |
| SPEC Mark Results (HA configuration) | 25,656 ops/sec | 13,822 ops/sec | 33,340 ops/sec |
| 3-year price/performance | $10.97/ops/sec | $21.53/ops/sec | $12.73/ops/sec |
| 3-year price/Gbyte | $91.76/Gbyte | $97.06/Gbyte | $138.42/Gbyte |
| Source: Meta Group | |||
If HA weren't part of the mix, NetApp's systems would handily beat the EMC NS600. But Meta's Shafer says high-availability features are "non-optional" in the context of hosting databases: "Whereas in its traditional file-serving area of competence, high availability was rarely an absolute NAS requirement, it is clearly a fundamental and critical prerequisite for most users database-centric applications."
Shafer notes that neither vendor sponsored the report, although EMC has subsequently acquired reprint rights and is offering downloads of Meta's report on its Website. It's also worth noting that EMC just announced a partnership with Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) to provide database-on-NAS services (see EMC, Oracle Prep NAS Nest).
Indeed, EMC sees the Meta report as validating its approach for environments that need redundant failover capability for high availability. "One of the attributes of Celerra NS600 is its integrated high availability... so you don't have to buy two NS600s in order to be able to failover during an outage," says EMC's A.J. Ragosta. "NetApp requires customers to buy two of their systems and cluster them together in order to get HA."
However, NetApp spokeswoman Kris Newton says the system configurations Meta used to estimate price have no relationship to the systems used to achieve the performance numbers.
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