How to know if midrange storage is right for your company

Storage Networking World - Midrange storage has evolved into the most important segment within the storage market as the industry has shifted its focus from monolithic high-end arrays to midrange devices in response to shrinking budgets. Vendors have contributed to this trend by migrating high-end features such as data services and simplified management into their midrange devices, making the devices easier to use and deploy.
This raises several questions. How is this market segment defined objectively? What differences, if any, exist between vendor offerings? How can midrange storage be used to solve specific business issues? What impact will the management standards from the Storage Networking Industry Association have? And the most important question to IT decision-makers within organizations: How do I make the right midrange storage purchase?

So what is midrange storage?
Each vendor has a different definition of the midrange space. Some define the space by market size or speeds and feeds. Others define it by how the storage fits into a cabinet and whether or not servers are included.
Jay Krone, EMC's director of CLARiiON platforms marketing, defines midrange as "not a Symmetrix" - in other words, not a system featuring a monolithic architecture. Modular (midrange) systems are build-as-you-go storage systems that enable the addition of disks, controllers and software, as required. Midrange systems usually have fewer than eight Fibre Channel ports for host connectivity and scale by adding both disk enclosures and RAID controllers.
Monolithic systems like the EMC Symmetrix, IBM ESS or HDS Thunder arrays provide a dizzying amount of host connectivity and data availability features, all contained in a shiny refrigerator-size cabinet. While most monolithic systems can expand capacity by increasing the number of disks, controllers or storage processors, these are not on-the-fly additions. The flexibility offered in midrange storage systems gives administrators the ability to start small today and build up as business requirements expand.
Purchase cost is another defining aspect of the midrange storage segment. Midrange systems start in the tens of thousands of dollars and can be purchased with as few as seven drives. Even the smallest systems often include a Java manager for easy configuration and some level of data services. Both processing and capacity of most midrange offerings can be scaled up as needed with data-in-place upgrades. Gone are the days of the forklift upgrades typically associated with monolithic systems priced on the low end in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Features for ease of use and deployment
IT departments using midrange products rarely have a dedicated storage administrator who is well-versed in