HP Entry-Level All-Flash Array Starting at $35,000

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. announced storage offerings for the software-defined data center (SDDC) that simplify deployment of scale-out storage for cloud computing and virtual server environments.

The company also introduced a new entry-level all-flash array to enable affordable application performance acceleration.

IT departments and service providers are under pressure to deliver rapid business value with fewer resources. This is fueling the growth of cloud computing and a move to the SDDC, which requires next-generation storage platforms that improve efficiency and control.

To address this need, HP released StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) as an integrated storage option for Helion OpenStack and Helion OpenStack Community Edition. HP has also enhanced StoreVirtual Storage hypervisor integration and released a new StoreOnce VSA license that cuts backup costs by 86% for small and remote sites. (based on list price of $1,400 for StoreOnce VSA software with a 4TB license versus the EMC Data Domain DD160 with 4TB of capacity and a list price of $10,000)

Additionally, HP is enabling high service levels while removing cost barriers to flash storage adoption with the 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit. Starting at $35,000 (estimated U.S. average street price using 480GB cMLCs)

Starter kit includes eight 480GB cMLC SSDDs, OS software, Virtual Copy software, Reporting Suite and three-year HP Proactive Care 24 support) SDDC customers can benefit from all-flash performance at half the cost of competing entry-level all-flash arrays (based on comparison of U.S. average street prices for the 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit and EMC XtremeIO with 5TB of raw capacity and Pure Storage FA-405 entry-level configuration with 2.75TB raw.) HP also announced that it is continuing to collaborate with VMware to integrate 3PAR StoreServ Storage on VMware’s planned Virtual Volumes (VVols) storage architecture.

“As customers move to the software-defined data center, they face gaps with legacy hardware-oriented storage,” said David Scott, SVP and GM, HP Storage. “For increased agility, HP delivers software-defined storage via VSAs that optimize cost and all-flash, service-refined storage to optimize service levels-both orchestrated with common tools.“

Software-defined simplicity,
even in multi-hypervisor and cloud environments
To enable software-defined storage deployment with ultimate hypervisor and hardware flexibility, StoreVirtual VSA supports any physical server and hypervisor-attached external storage. It also now supports Linux Kernel-based VM as well as vSphere and Windows Server with Hyper-V (KVM support is currently available as part of Helion OpenStack.) To automate cloud services management, StoreVirtual Storage – including both VSA and physical appliances – features an updated Cinder interface to support OpenStack orchestration, plus a set of RESTful APIs. These enhancements provide available, scale-out storage for cloud computing environments and enable HP to offer functional, software-defined storage via integration of StoreVirtual VSA software within the HP Helion cloud portfolio.

In addition to Helion-based management and orchestration, customers may also choose other platforms to simplify storage management for virtual servers and cloud environments. The OneView for VMware vCenter plug-in and StoreFront Manager for Microsoft plug-in enable wizard-driven installation, configuration and monitoring of VSA-based storage. VSA deployment can be set up in minutes, allowing users to provision 32 servers in the same time it takes to provision a single server.(based on HP internal testing. Compared to provisioning VSAs without HP OneView for VMware vCenter plug-in and HP StoreFront Manager for Microsoft plug-in enable wizard-driven installation)

StoreVirtual Storage customers-including both VSA and physical appliances-can get immediate, granular visibility into performance, capacity and system health with the StoreFront Analytics Pack for VMware vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS). To maintain high-capacity utilization, StoreVirtual Storage will support space reclamation in VMware and Microsoft environments. This automatically frees up unused space after VMs and other files are deleted. To optimize performance of flash-based media and multisite storage deployments, an enhanced StoreVirtual multipathing extension module for VMware environments increases throughput by up to 58% and reduces network latency (based on HP internal testing using a 100% random-read workload with an 8k block size on a 3-node HP StoreVirtual 4335 Storage cluster with and without multipathing enabled.)

Reducing risk and lowering data protection costs from branch to cloud
To lower data protection costs, HP introduced a 4TB StoreOnce VSA, for backing up small sites. For service providers looking to expand cloud services, the new StoreOnce VSA is included in a reference architecture from HP for Cloud Backup Infrastructure as a Service. StoreOnce VSA provides flexibility via expanded hypervisor support for Windows Server with Hyper-V and vSphere. It also supports the StoreOnce Security Pack-including encryption and Secure Erase of data-for governance and compliance.

Expanding VMware integration
and lowering all-flash array costs by 50%
(based on HP internal comparison of publically available competitive information, August 2014)
The 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit accelerates application performance at an entry street starting price of $35,000, which complements the $2 per usable gigabyte price of the larger 3PAR StoreServ 7450 All-Flash Array. For less than half the cost of competing entry-level all-flash arrays, the 7200 Starter Kit scales from 7TB to 690TB of usable flash capacity via hardware-assisted 3PAR Thin Deduplication and Thin Clones software.(usable capacity calculations based on 25% overhead and 4:1 compaction ratio)

Customers can achieve the operational agility promised in the SDDC by leveraging 3PAR StoreServ Storage integration with OpenStack Cinder as well as converged infrastructure management via integration with OneView. HP now enables even greater agility through collaboration with VMware on its planned VVols storage architecture, currently available via vSphere beta program and ready for use on all 3PAR StoreServ Storage models. VVols enables simple, granular VM-level storage control, DR and QoS. HP and VMware have partnered for more than three years on the definition, development and testing of the VVols specification, with VMware using 3PAR StoreServ as the FC reference platform for its testing of this planned capability.

“The software-defined data center extends virtualization concepts such as resource pooling and automation to all infrastructure services including storage, to make the underlying infrastructure as cost-effective and dynamic as virtualized servers,” said John Gilmartin, VP and GM, SDDC suite business unit, VMware, Inc. “HP has been a critical VMware partner in enabling this transformation through their engineering design and development support of Virtual Volumes with HP 3PAR StoreServ.”

Pricing and availability

• The 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit will be available worldwide on Sept. 29, for a starting price of $35,000.
• 3PAR OS support for VMware’s planned VVols feature, which is currently part of the vSphere beta, will be included as part of the next 3PAR OS release at no additional charge to customers with active support contracts.
• Space reclamation and VMware multipathing features for StoreVirtual Storage (including StoreVirtual VSA) will be available in a future release of the LeftHand OS.
• OneView for VMware vCenter plug-in is available at no additional charge.
• StoreFront Analytics Pack for VMware vCOPS is available for $200 per StoreVirtual management group.
• StoreFront Manager for Microsoft plug-in will be available in a future release.
• 4TB StoreOnce VSA is available for $1,400 U.S. list price.