The best enterprise data storage products of 2024
Backup, cloud, disk and storage system vendors vied for top honors in the TechTarget Storage Products of the Year competition. Find out which won gold, silver and bronze.
Driven in part by a rise in AI workloads, enterprise data storage must deal with heavy and ever-increasing volumes. Storage products must handle it all simply and efficiently, as well as securely, due to the prevalence of cyberthreats.
Winners in the 23rd edition of the TechTarget Storage Products of the Year show that buyers have options to address these difficult asks. The annual awards, which recognize the best in enterprise data storage systems, drew entries from numerous heavy hitters of the data storage and technology market.
AI can help enterprises if products employ it effectively. Several of these enterprise data storage products impressed judges with their use of AI technology as well as the ability to store AI-driven workloads.
Informa TechTarget invited vendors to submit their products for consideration last fall. To be eligible, vendors must have initially released or significantly upgraded their products on or after Sept. 1, 2023, and before Sept. 1, 2024.
A panel of industry experts -- consultants, analysts, users and Informa TechTarget editors -- selected the winners in four categories:
- Backup and disaster recovery hardware, software and services.
- Cloud storage.
- Disk and disk subsystems.
- Storage system and application software.
Judges rated products on several factors, including innovation, performance, ease of use and value. Usability was crucial this year, as products that promised flexibility and simplicity impressed judges.
This year's top enterprise data storage products come from a range of vendors. They include industry veterans such as Dell Technologies, HPE and Veeam, as well as newer companies such as Hammerspace, which repeated as a gold winner this year.
The top backup and disaster recovery services of 2024
Backup and disaster recovery professionals need strong, efficient data protection across a variety of environments, a quality seen in this year's winning products. Backup and disaster recovery services that offered flexible protection and simple management stood out. The use of advanced AI technology and strong cyber-protection features helped push our honorees to the top.
Gold winner: Veeam Data Platform 12.2
With one of the widest victory margins in judging scores this competition has seen, Veeam Data Platform 12.2 impressed judges across the board. Veeam further cemented its position as an industry-leading backup provider with this versatile and improved version of its Data Platform. The updated platform delivers instant recovery and high availability to protect VMs, physical servers and cloud-native workloads.
Judges noted the ability to back up Proxmox Virtual Environments, enabling users to protect the native hypervisor without backup agents. The Cloud Tier feature, which automatically archives data to public cloud storage, stood out as another defining component.
According to one judge, "Veeam [Data Platform 12.2]'s comprehensive set of backup and recovery options, strong ransomware protection and broad platform compatibility -- combined with its user-friendly manageability and broad support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments -- make this a top choice."
Silver winner: Veritas Alta Data Protection 10.4
SaaS data protection is a growing priority for enterprises, and Veritas Alta Data Protection 10.4 is a strong contender in that market. A cloud-native extension of Veritas NetBackup, Veritas Alta Data Protection 10.4 works across hybrid and multi-cloud environments at scale.
Cohesity recently acquired Veritas and said it will support the NetBackup data protection software and appliances, as well as Alta's SaaS data protection.
Judges highlighted the use of emerging innovations in the platform. "The service's adoption of advanced technologies, along with its many other features, make it stand out in the field of data protection," one judge said.
Judges called the use of machine learning (ML) and AI clever, noting generative AI in the Veritas Alta Copilot in particular. The Copilot feature acts as an AI operational assistant to help administrators handle IT operations and gather data. The product also offers Adaptive Self-Defense, an ML-based service that guards against threats and data destruction.
Bronze winner: HYCU R-Cloud
Last year's gold winner reached the top three again, with HYCU R-Cloud taking bronze in the backup and disaster recovery services category. SaaS data protection is an increasingly critical feature, which HYCU R-Cloud excels in. The judges gave high scores to the vendor for avoiding unnecessary complexity and keeping costs reasonable.
HYCU integrates with popular platforms, including Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Kubernetes, for granular application-level recovery and protection, which is particularly important in complex cloud-native architectures.
The service is "a smart and seamless backup option," one judge said.
"Its ability to optimize costs while providing enterprise-grade protection ensures excellent value for businesses moving toward cloud-native infrastructure," another judge said.
The best enterprise cloud storage of 2024
The ever-growing demand for data storage and server workloads impacts how companies update their storage products. The best enterprise cloud storage products of 2024 share features such as scalable models, specifically due to AI workloads, and environment flexibility and integration to best fit consumer needs.
Gold winner: HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition Release 3
Judges gave HPE's GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition Release 3 high scores across all categories. It excelled in functionality, ease of integration into environments, and ease of use and manageability.
One judge commented that the SaaS update adds "converged functionality, like how it fits into the simple GreenLake experience." This self-managing software provides a UI to simplify VM management in private and hybrid cloud environments. It is compatible with HPE's hybrid cloud environment, providing ease of integration and management.
HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition provides 99.999% to 100% data availability, enhanced by HPE InfoSight and AIOps to prevent errors. This ensures high availability without compromising performance or data reduction.
Silver winner: Pure Storage Evergreen//One
An update to Pure Storage's Evergreen//One STaaS keeps the product in the top three after receiving gold for best enterprise cloud storage in the 2023 Products of the Year.
Pure Storage's product update includes Evergreen//One for AI and Paid Power and Rack Commitment. "Pure delivers a compelling blend of innovation, performance and ease of integration," one judge said. Evergreen//One for AI enhances GPU workload performance, while the Paid Power and Rack Commitment enhances storage scalability and delivers an on-premises experience similar to public cloud.
"[Evergreen//One's] storage model, combined with exceptional performance and seamless upgrades, offers the flexibility and scalability enterprises need for the future, providing continuous value with minimal operational complexity," another judge said.
Bronze winner: MinIO Enterprise Object Store
MinIO's new and timely product, the Enterprise Object Store, manages exabyte-scale data to address the needs of intensive AI workloads and focuses on scalability for extensive server configurations.
DRAM memory establishes a distributed shared cache that enhances performance for high-demand AI workloads. "MinIO delivers significant functionality for exabyte-scale object storage for AI workloads," one judge said. "MinIO delivers a compelling solution for large-scale data infrastructure, especially for HPC, AI and analytics."
EOS is software-defined, which means customers must provide their hardware to download it, or they can deploy MinIO on public cloud infrastructure. MinIO's EOS deploys and updates quickly and is designed for Kubernetes integration.
"Its ease of integration with a wide range of environments and its versatility for modern cloud-native architectures -- Kubernetes, containers -- make it a top pick for 2024," another judge said.
The best enterprise storage arrays of 2024
In the disk and disk subsystems category, a newcomer took gold, pushing past perennial front-runners. The highest-rated enterprise storage arrays got top marks in several key areas: resilience, performance and sustainability.
Gold winner: Weka WEKApod
The WEKApod is an Nvidia-certified storage appliance based on Nvidia's DGX SuperPod AI infrastructure. Weka said this endorsement shows potential customers that the WEKApod is purpose-built for AI. The WEKApod also delivers energy efficiency in a small form factor without sacrificing speed, according to the vendor.
Judges cited WEKApod's innovative approach to enterprise storage arrays, multi-cloud capabilities and high performance for AI workloads.
"Its value proposition comes from enabling faster data access and scalable performance, making it a top choice for organizations pushing the boundaries in data-driven applications," one judge said.
Silver winner: Infinidat InfiniBox SSA G4 F4416T
Two-time consecutive gold winner Infinidat picked up silver this year with its new F4416T edition of the InfiniBox SSA G4 all-flash enterprise storage array platform.
The judges touted the product for its scalability, high performance and reliability based on its 100% data availability guarantee. Infinidat said the switch from Intel to AMD processors and an all-flash PCIe 5.0 architecture gives the InfiniBox SSA G4 line twice the performance of the previous generation.
Infinidat debuted InfiniVerse Mobius, a controller upgrade program, to prolong the lifespan of customer systems. The company added support for Microsoft Azure in Infinidat InfuzeOS, providing an additional cloud for backup and recovery besides AWS. Infinidat also expanded its data protection technology to VMware.
Bronze winner: Dell Technologies PowerStore with PowerStoreOS 4.0
Dell Technologies won bronze with this generation's PowerStore with PowerStoreOS 4.0. The vendor was previously a two-time consecutive silver winner in the disk category. Judges praised the product as a "significant upgrade" in several areas, including VMware support, automation capabilities and scalability.
Dell said this version of its PowerStoreOS boosts the array's performance by up to 30% and its data reduction capabilities by up to 20%.
Other benefits of the OS upgrade include new data protection features, such as synchronous replication for block and file workloads and built-in metro replication for Linux, VMware and Windows environments.
The top data storage and management tools of 2024
Storage is being recognized as a strategic enterprise resource at a time when nearly all business-critical applications have ravenous appetites for data. The three winners in the storage system and application software category share a common trait: They address the data deluge with unique approaches to data storage and management.
Gold winner: Hammerspace 5.05
Hammerspace makes a return visit to the podium, repeating last year's gold award in this category. With Release 5.05 of its flagship data management system, Hammerspace reins in unstructured data wherever it's stored across in-house resources and public or private cloud repositories. It presents a unified command-and-control center for data storage and management.
The product's highest marks were for innovation, performance and functionality. "Hammerspace is an excellent choice for organizations that need high-performance, globally distributed file systems," one judge noted.
Release 5.05 of the software significantly enhances the product. It can expand support to more than 1,000 storage nodes -- an apt arrangement for scaling AI activities. Another key update to the product is support for Amazon S3 data, so the software can accept object data from cloud or other edge sources.
One judge praised Hammerspace's "very strong data orchestration capabilities, bringing high-performance file access to large-scale distributed storage environments."
Silver winner: StorPool Storage v21
StorPool is an example of how emphasis in the storage ecosystem has subtly shifted to software over the past decade. StorPool's software has been integral in this transformation by providing flexible, cost-effective and high-performance block storage based on nonproprietary hardware.
With StorPool Storage, off-the-shelf servers and drives are building blocks that can create sophisticated storage networks or hyperconverged infrastructure implementations. "Performance and value are key strengths, especially for businesses that require scalability without compromising on cost," one judge said.
StorPool Storage is a mature product, but at 10 years old, it continues to innovate. Storage v21 adds key enhancements such as erasure coding, which improves data recovery with little or no impact on continuing operations, an update one judge called "a very big deal."
StorPool expanded its iSCSI footprint to handle up to 1,000 targets per node. It enhanced its OpenNebula support so multiple StorPool clusters can look like one large storage resource under a single global namespace. The vendor also added support for open source CloudStack, enabling volume encryption and live data migrations among nodes.
Bronze winner: Ctera Enterprise File Services Platform 8.1
The Ctera Enterprise File Services Platform presents all storage file services -- data center, remote office/branch office environments, endpoint and cloud -- under a single global namespace with sophisticated data protection. "Ctera stands out for performance and functionality, delivering secure, multi-cloud file services with a nice blend of additional features, like ransomware protection," one judge said.
Version 8.1 of the Ctera Enterprise File Services Platform significantly enhanced its comprehensive security measures, adding a honeypot capability that deploys decoy files to help deter intruders and block their attempts to steal or damage data.
Ctera Vault adds WORM capabilities to lock data in an immutable form for archiving and compliance. "Significant cyber resilience upgrades makes this a winning entry," one judge said.
A new fusion feature allows cloud apps to directly access enterprise file resources, and Cloud Streaming lets apps work with large cloud-based files as if they were stored locally.
Paul Crocetti, Kelly Richardson, Erin Sullivan and Tom Walat are editors at Informa TechTarget. Rich Castagna worked at TechTarget for 15 years and has been a high-tech journalist for more than 30 years.