Product features
The product features section was the first of three categories in which Compellent received a category score higher than 7.00. Its 7.24 easily topped EqualLogic's 6.97. NetApp had its second-best category score in this section with a third-place score of 6.35.

For Compellent respondents, data replication is apparently the best part of the product. Its highest ratings within this category were for remote replication capabilities (7.47), snapshot function (7.44) and mirroring (7.36). Its lowest category rating, and the only one below 7.00, was for "This product is interoperable with other vendor's products" (6.67). Ongoing operation is also a strong point. "From a day-to-day operations standpoint, it's really just set it and forget it," says Community Health Plan's Dahl.

Ease of use for daily operations is a key feature for most storage managers, and our midrange crop didn't disappoint. "The real highlight of the [HP] EVA is that you don't have to think too hard when you allocate storage," says Spencer Williams, chief IT architect at Rush Enterprises Inc. in New Braunfels, TX. With an HP StorageWorks EVA3000 and two HP StorageWorks EVA8000s in his shop, "[the] real benefit is that it allows us not to have a full-time storage guy," says Williams.

James Burd, senior storage administrator at Denver-based Infocrossing Inc., has had a similar experience with the IBM System Storage DS4700 and DS4800 he manages. "All of the basic features are there that we need," says Burd, "and the daily operation of these things is pretty simple and straightforward."

EqualLogic also received good marks for its data replication functionality. It received a 7.20 for its mirroring feature, a 7.17 for its remote replication and a 7.05 for its snapshot capability. As with Compellent, EqualLogic's lowest mark for the section was for vendor interoperability (6.53).

Compellent's biggest advantage is apparently scalability. When customers responded to the statement "This product scales to meet my needs," Compellent received a 7.28, the only score above 7.00; EqualLogic had a 6.86, followed by Hitachi's 6.77 and HP's 6.15.