HP Hyperconverged Appliance Delivers Enterprise Resiliency and Cloud Onramp

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.P announced the ConvergedSystem 250-HC StoreVirtual (CS 250), a hyper-converged appliance that offers a highly available virtual server and storage infrastructure that is configurable in minutes for nearly half the price of competitive systems. ⁽¹⁾

ConvergedSystem 250-HC

This enterprise-grade solution is designed for virtual desktops and remote office productivity but also offers an easy path to hybrid cloud.

Businesses of all sizes are looking for flexible infrastructure solutions that will allow them to quickly deploy and run new applications. According to IDC, this trend has resulted in a 116% year-over-year increase in hyper-converged systems sales and 60% CAGR anticipated through 2019.⁽²⁾

Building on company’s x86 server and virtualization solutions combined with its proven StoreVirtual software-defined storage (SDS) technology, the CS 250 is BC-enabled from day one. It features enhanced VMware integration, supports hybrid-cloud solution architectures and is accompanied by new delivery services and channel programs.

“There is no one-size-fits-all solution for infrastructure,” said Manish Goel, SVP and GM, HP storage. “This is why HP continues to offer flexible and interoperable solutions based on HP StoreVirtual technology to help our customers lower costs independent of the hypervisors and hardware platforms they choose. Hyper-convergence is simply the next step in HP’s evolution of the software-defined data center.“

Affordable hyper-convergence with built-in disaster protection and native management Built on the latest HP, Intel, and VMware technologies, the CS 250 is powered by StoreVirtual technology and offers simplicity in an integrated and tested hyper-converged solution. It ships ready to quickly respond to new on-demand infrastructure and virtual desktop requirements with greater configuration flexibility designed to fit a wider range of virtualized workloads and customer budgets, including a three-node configuration that is up to 49% more cost effective than comparable configurations from Nutanix and other competitors.⁽³⁾

The inclusion of three 4TB StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) licenses delivers multi-site BC by leveraging the system’s ability to flexibly replicate data to any other StoreVirtual-based solution. This means that customers can leverage their existing infrastructure as a replication target at no additional cost. The CS 250 also allows customers to tailor the system with a choice of up to 96 processing cores, a mix of SSD and SAS disk drives, and up to 2TB of memory per 4-node appliance – double that of previous generations.⁽⁴⁾

The CS 250 arrives pre-configured for vSphere 5.5 or 6.0 and HP OneView InstantOn to enable customers to be production-ready with 5mn of keyboard time and a total of 15mn deployment time, with daily management from VMware vCenter via the OneView for VMware vCenter plug-in. ⁽⁵⁾ This plug-in assures IT generalists have a unified management experience for the appliance using tools they already know.

“The storage market is rapidly evolving from traditional external storage with standalone networking and compute to converged solutions that collapse the stack,” said Stu Miniman, principal research contributor, Wikibon. “HP StoreVirtual is the original software-defined storage, it has evolved to be well positioned across multiple use cases with flexibility spanning hyper-converged, VSA, Helion OpenStack and physical storage appliances.“

Hyper-convergence meets hybrid-cloud with solutions and services for midsize and enterprise customers seeking an efficient and cost-effective cloud entry point, the Helion CloudSystem 9.0 built on the CS 250 is an open, enterprise-grade solution that provides an easy path to the hybrid cloud. This hyper-converged cloud solution leverages the clustered compute and storage resources of the CS 250 for on-premises workloads but adds self-service portal provisioning and public cloud bursting features for those moving beyond server virtualization.

The company is introducing Software-Defined Storage Design and Integration services to help customers deploy highly scalable, elastic cloud storage services. The design service enables customers to make informed decisions on how to modernize their storage infrastructure using software-defined storage technologies for automation and capacity pooling. The integration service provides customers with detailed configuration and implementation guidance tailored to their specific needs to accelerate time to value.

Driving velocity with new channel sales programs and demand generation
To help meet the growing interest in software-defined technologies, HP announced that it is enhancing its Nitro partner program and opening it up to distributors worldwide, starting with Arrow Electronics, Inc. in the US. Originally launched with Intel to provide a 1TB StoreVirtual VSA license at no cost to customers, the latest enhancements to the program focus on equipping resellers with training tools and customer materials to promote StoreVirtual technologies as a cornerstone of the software-defined data center. The enhanced program also provides face-to-face reseller training, web content support, and customized demand generation materials enabling distributors to empower the broader HP reseller community to educate their customers on software-defined infrastructure and provide assistance in the transition to a software-defined data center.

Availability and Prices ⁽⁶⁾
The 4-node CS 250-HC StoreVirtual is available on August 17 while 3-node configurations are available on September 28. A sample solution price inclusive of the 3-node CS250 with Foundation Carepack and vSphere Enterprise starts at a list price of $121,483.

HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 will be available in September.

Software-Defined Storage Design and Integration services are available.

⁽¹⁾ According to a list price comparison of the CS 250 and the IDC price book list price of Nutanix 3360 G4, each with 24×7 support.
⁽²⁾ IDC Market Analysis, Worldwide Hyperconverged Systems 2015-2019 Forecast, April 2015.
⁽³⁾ According to a list price comparison of the CS 250 and the IDC price book list price of Nutanix 3360 G4, each with 24×7 support.
⁽⁴⁾ As compared to the ConvergedSystem 242-HC StoreVirtual model.
⁽⁵⁾ Based on internal testing July 2015 of an ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual with OneView InstantOn version 1.0.1
⁽⁶⁾ Estimated U.S. list prices. Actual prices may vary.