Storage industry welcomes benchmarks

A number of storage heavyweights have completed year-long benchmark tests that will standardise the measurement of data storage systems.

The Storage Performance Council (SPC), which includes founding members Clariion, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Mylex, Qlogic, Sun Microsystems, Symbios, Unisys, Veritas Software, Western Digital and Xiotech, announced the SPC-1 benchmark which will be available early next year.

SPC-1 will focus on disk subsystems, with benchmarks for tape and other types of storage to follow. It is designed to have broad market appeal and to provide a level playing field between open providers of storage networks.

Noticeably missing in the SPC line-up is storage giant EMC, which backed out of the Council in March 2000.

EMC's letter of withdrawal stated: "The decision is based on a belief that the benchmark currently under construction does not reflect the environment in which EMC competes, nor does it contain criteria that can show any of the unique features of the products EMC produces."

Unveiled at the annual meeting of the Computer Measurement Group, SPC-1 will be based on a workload from applications such as databases, email servers and online transaction processing.

SPC chairman Eric Stouffer said that the group plans to make SPC-1 easy to run, easy to audit and easy to submit results with.

Australia-based global IT research company Ideas International and market researcher The Evaluator Group, which specialises in storage, have both been selected as the preferred analysts for the SPC.

Ideas International analyst Chris Ober said: "As a leading provider of comparative hardware data we are very excited about the clearly applicable vendor-neutral comparison process the SPC-1 benchmark offers storage buyers."

He added that the SPC has also created a working group to begin the development of a benchmark suited to network attached storage subsystems. Future work will also include backup/restore and video on demand.