New Storage Software by 3par

3par, Inc. announced several new software capabilities for the 3PAR InServ Storage Server to give cloud and enterprise datacenters increased resilience and agility at a lower cost than traditional storage arrays.

Together, these new software features from 3PAR – Synchronous Long Distance Remote Copy, Persistent Cache, and RAID MP (Multi-Parity) – help protect 3PAR Utility Storage customers against disasters, preserve service levels in the event of a component outage, and protect against double disk failures. These features are designed to work with the InServ platform to deliver the robust functionality demanded by Tier 1 datacenters, the cost structure attractiveness of Tier 2 environments, and the agility of a highly virtualized infrastructure.

"Cloud computing datacenters demand resilience, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness," said Steve Scully, Research Manager for IDC’s Enterprise Storage Systems research group. "With the announcement of these new software features for the public and private cloud datacenter, 3PAR has delivered a confluence of high-end features, advanced virtualization, and attractive cost-of-ownership to the high-end storage market. What’s more, 3PAR has brought this exciting combination to the midrange market as well."

Low RTO and RPO for Long Distance DR:
Synchronous Long Distance Remote Copy
3PAR Remote Copy dramatically reduces the cost of remote data replication and disaster recovery by leveraging thin copy technology, permitting the combination of midrange and high-end arrays, and eliminating the requirement for professional services. Announced today, 3PAR Remote Copy support for Synchronous Long Distance replication gives 3PAR customers a new, affordable, multi-site alternative for achieving low Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and zero-data-loss Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) with complete distance flexibility.

Synchronous Long Distance Remote Copy delivers the best of both worlds – offering the data integrity of synchronous mode disaster recovery and the extended distances (including cross-continental reach) traditionally only associated with asynchronous replication. Synchronous Long Distance Remote Copy delivers these benefits without the complexity or professional services required by the monolithic vendors that offer multi-target disaster recovery products, and at half the cost. In addition, 3PAR is the first storage vendor to support multi-site capability on midrange arrays, enabling cloud service providers and enterprise customers alike to reduce their equipment costs.

"In the past, we have looked at multi-site, multi-mode disaster recovery but never made the investment because we found the offerings complex, expensive, and difficult to configure," said Dwayne Sye, CIO at Cvent, Inc. "We were never able to justify the cost premium and significant up-front and ongoing professional services that the monolithic arrays required. In contrast, 3PAR Remote Copy provided us with far simpler, relatively affordable Synchronous Long Distance replication. This has allowed us to save considerable dollars by using a combination of InServ T-Class and F-Class Storage Servers in place of premium-priced monolithic arrays."

Maintaining Service Levels Under Failure:
Persistent Cache
3PAR Persistent Cache is a resiliency feature built into the latest version of the 3PAR InForm Operating System that allows ‘always on’ environments to gracefully handle both planned and unplanned downtime. Persistent Cache eliminates the substantial performance penalties associated with ‘write-through’ mode so that InServ arrays can maintain required service levels even in the event of a cache or controller node failure. ‘Write-through’ mode suspends the use of write caching for data integrity reasons – an approach typically used in dual-controller array architectures when such failures occur. Even monolithic arrays experience ‘degraded mode’ in these situations, which can impact required application performance levels to the point of being considered an outage.

3PAR Persistent Cache leverages the clustered InSpire Architecture with its unique Mesh-Active design to preserve write-caching in the event of a controller node failure by rapidly re-mirroring cache to the other nodes in the cluster. Persistent Cache is supported on all quad-node and larger 3PAR arrays, including the InServ F400 – making 3PAR the only vendor to incorporate this industry-leading service level protection capability into midrange as well as high-end arrays.

Protection Against Double Disk Failures:
3PAR RAID MP
3PAR RAID MP (Multi-Parity) introduces Fast RAID 6 technology backed by the accelerated performance and Rapid RAID Rebuild capabilities of the 3PAR ASIC. RAID MP is designed to deliver extra RAID protection and to work particularly well with large disk drive configurations – for example, Serial ATA (SATA) drives above 1 TB in capacity. While the 3PAR architecture is capable of delivering up to quadruple parity protection, this first introduction of RAID MP technology supports double parity modes of 6+2 and ultra-efficient 14+2. 3PAR RAID MP offers protection against data loss due to double disk failures while delivering performance levels within 15% of RAID 10. In addition, 3PAR RAID MP capacity overheads are comparable to popular RAID 5 modes. RAID MP is supported on all InServ models.

"The builders of public and private cloud computing solutions want to design resilient service architectures that offer both agility and cost-effectiveness," said David Scott, 3PAR President and CEO. "Traditionally, finding storage systems that facilitate this combination of service capabilities has been nearly impossible. The new resilience features announced today affirm 3PAR as a leader in providing the storage building blocks best suited to helping customers and service providers achieve their solution design goals."

Synchronous Long Distance replication is bundled in the latest version of 3PAR Remote Copy. Persistent Cache and RAID MP are enhancements to the latest version of the InForm Operating System. These versions of Remote Copy and the InForm Operating System are both orderable now.