3cV From 3PAR, a Blueprint for Virtual Datacenter

3PAR, a provider of utility storage introduced 3cV, an innovative blueprint for the virtual datacenter. First coined by Deutsche Bank, a leading global bank, “3cV” stands for the combination of the 3PAR InServ Storage Server, HP BladeSystem c-Class, and VMware Infrastructure. These elements combine to form a complete utility computing offering that can enable customers to halve server, storage, and operational costs and to gain instant agility.
 
“With 3cV, we have achieved remarkable gains in business agility and cost reduction for a broad range of applications including our property management system, databases, messaging, Web servers, and file servers,” said Rich Jackson, Vice President of Technology Operations at Hilton Grand Vacations. “With 3cV, we have quadrupled administrative efficiency and can now provision virtualised servers and storage within minutes versus weeks.”
 
Besides Hilton Grand Vacations, many other leading enterprises including Ariba, Deutsche Bank, Martin’s Point Health Care, and SAVVIS have adopted 3cV in their datacenters as a virtualized computing architecture. “SAVVIS is focused on providing carrier-class integrated IT infrastructure solutions that tap into advanced technologies such as virtualization and automation to add value for our enterprise customers in the form of better performance, lower cost, and higher availability,” said Bryan Doerr, Chief Technology Officer for SAVVIS. “Using 3cV, we have been able to significantly broaden our portfolio of hosting services that deliver these benefits.”
 
“IT organizations are resourceful,” said Arun Taneja, Founder and Consulting Analyst at Taneja Group. “Through necessity they will find and combine the fittest technologies to solve real business issues. 3cV is a terrific example of vendors modeling and supporting a solution that is customer-proven and effective.”
 
The Elements of 3cV
3cV combines the following products from 3PAR, HP, and VMware to deliver the virtual data center:
 
* 3PAR InServ Storage Server featuring Virtual Domains and thin technologies—The leading utility storage platform, the 3PAR InServ is a highly virtualized tiered-storage array built for utility computing. Organizations creating virtualized IT infrastructures for workload consolidation use the 3PAR InServ to reduce the cost of allocated storage capacity, storage administration, and the SAN infrastructure.
 
* HP BladeSystem c-Class—The No. 1 blade infrastructure on the market for datacenters of all sizes, the HP BladeSystem c-Class minimizes energy and space requirements and increases administrative productivity through advantages in I/O virtualization, power and cooling, and manageability. (1)
 
* VMware Infrastructure—Infrastructure virtualisation suite for industry-standard servers. VMware Infrastructure delivers the production-proven efficiency, availability, and dynamic management needed to build the responsive data center.
 
The Advantages of 3cV
3cV offers combined benefits that enable customers to manage and scale their server and storage environments simply, allowing them to halve server, storage and operational costs while lowering the environmental impact of the datacenter.
 
* Reduces storage and server costs by 50%—The inherently modular architectures of the HP BladeSystem c-Class and the 3PAR InServ Storage Server—coupled with the increased utilization provided by VMware Infrastructure and 3PAR Thin Provisioning—allow 3cV customers to do more with less capital expenditure. As a result, customers are able to reduce overall storage and server costs by 50% or more. High levels of availability and disaster recovery can also be affordably extended to more applications through VMware Infrastructure and 3PAR thin copy technologies.
 
* Cuts operational costs by 50% and increases business agility—With 3cV, customers are able to provision and change server and storage resources on demand. By using VMware Infrastructure’s capabilities for rapid server provisioning and the dynamic optimisation provided by VMware VMotion and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), HP Virtual Connect and Insight Control management software, and 3PAR Rapid Provisioning and Dynamic Optimization, customers are able to provision and re-provision physical servers, virtual hosts, and virtual arrays with tailored storage services in a matter of minutes, not days. These same technologies also improve operational simplicity, allowing overall server and storage administrative efficiency to increase by 3x or more.
 
* Lowers environmental impact—With 3cV, customers are able to cut floor space and power requirements dramatically. Server floor space is minimized through server consolidation enabled by VMware Infrastructure (up to 70% savings) and HP BladeSystem density (up to 50% savings). Additional server power requirements are cut by 30% or more through the unique virtual power management capabilities of HP Thermal Logic technology. Storage floor space is reduced by the 3PAR InServ Storage Server, which delivers twice the capacity per floor tile as compared to alternatives. In addition, 3PAR thin technologies, Fast RAID 5, and wide striping allow customers to power and cool as much as 75% less disk capacity for a given project without sacrificing performance.
 
* Delivers security through virtualization, not dedicated hardware silos—Whereas traditional datacenter architectures force tradeoffs between high resource utilization and the need for secure segregation of application resources for disparate user groups, 3cV resolves these competing needs through advanced virtualization. For instance, just as VMware Infrastructure securely isolates virtual machines on shared severs, 3PAR Virtual Domains provides secure “virtual arrays” for private, autonomous storage provisioning from a single, massively-parallel InServ Storage Server.
 
“VMware believes in the power of virtualization to change the way IT is done,” said Parag Patel, Vice President, Alliances at VMware. “By partnering with other leading platforms, we provide customers the opportunity to derive even more business advantage from virtualization.”
 
“Now more than ever before, agility is the watchword of budget- and time-pressured CIOs,” said David Scott, CEO of 3PAR. “3cV’s virtualization demonstrates how true utility computing can make a dramatic difference in the agility and efficiency of today’s IT organizations.”
 
“When others were resolved to the commoditisation of blade architectures, HP focused on innovation and delivering a product family that addresses customer pains around time, energy, cost and change,” said Jim Ganthier, Director, Enterprise Storage and Servers, BladeSystem, HP. “We see the success of that strategy not only in the wide adoption of the BladeSystem c-Class, but in Solution Builder Program member collaboration that combines the c-Class with complementary technologies for the benefit of our customers.”

(1) IDC, Q207 Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, August 2007.

3PAR