HP Enhances SSD 3par Models

Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP announced several enhancements to 3PAR StoreServ Storage that allow customers to take advantage of the performance and efficiency benefits of flash-based capacity while preserving current infrastructure investments.

StoreServ 7200

With the price of usable flash storage capacity now equal to that of high-performance spinning disk drives, customers want to use flash to accelerate the speed and agility of mainstream applications. However, to protect existing investments, organizations need access to the performance gains and operational savings offered by flash storage without the complexity and cost of having to rip-and-replace existing infrastructure.

To address this need, HP is lowering the cost of usable flash storage with the availability of 3PAR Thin Deduplication software across flash/SSD tiers on all new and existing 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and 10000 models. Also, all 3PAR StoreServ systems gain application acceleration benefits without additional hardware or software licensing with new Adaptive Flash Cache and Express Write features.

To help customers assess the benefits of these new capabilities and determine the most efficient, low-risk path to flash storage, HP has introduced the Flash Advisor toolset. It uses analytics and reporting to help customers determine how to best use flash storage to increase efficiency, improve SLAs, and lower costs.

Customers modernizing deployments of SAP solutions can also take advantage of a new configuration for SAP HANA tailored data center integration that includes all-flash arrays for 3PAR StoreServ Storage.

“As more customers look to deploy flash-based storage for performance and operational cost benefits, they need ways to do this non-disruptively while protecting their current investments,” said David Scott, SVP and GM, HP storage. “By extending all-flash array benefits to all hybrid storage models with an SSD tier, HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage allows customers to achieve flash performance without having to purchase additional hardware.”

Accelerate business applications and improve response times
Two new software improve application performance without hardware changes, including online transaction processing workloads and databases, thanks to random read acceleration with Adaptive Flash Cache and write acceleration with Express Writes technology.

A new standard feature of the 3PAR OS, Adaptive Flash Cache uses flash capacity to extend storage system cache-selectively, or across the entire array. This feature allows customers to accelerate applications by adding SSDs to the 3PAR StoreServ array, thereby avoiding a ‘rip-and-replace’ upgrade to an all-flash array. Adaptive Flash Cache can potentially double the rate at which data can be read from a disk, and reduce latency by up to 70% when used with SSD capacity, based on HP performance testing on an average configuration with 100% random reads at 8K block size.

In addition, the 3PAR OS allows the concurrent use of both Adaptive Flash Cache and Adaptive Optimization sub-LUN tiering for cost savings and performance benefits on 3PAR StoreServ Storage. Adaptive Optimization lowers costs for a given performance level and Adaptive Flash Cache delivers faster response times on data being read from a cold storage tier.

3PAR Express Writes is another standard OS feature that gives 3PAR StoreServ storage customers an additional performance boost without hardware changes by lowering storage write latencies by up to 10% and helping increase overall write throughput, based on HP internal testing and measurements with initial customer engagements.

Increase usable flash capacity and improve visibility into duplicate data
3PAR Thin Deduplication software is now available across SSD tiers on all 3PAR StoreServ models. For customers considering a move to flash within new or existing infrastructure, 3PAR Flash Advisor provides a no-cost, built-in toolset that delivers actionable insight about StoreServ systems in order to optimize current and future flash investments.

With the Flash Advisor toolset, customers can:

• Intelligently lower costs by analyzing application data and selectively applying inline 3PAR Thin Deduplication with Inline Selective Deduplication to optimize performance and efficiency.
• Increase usable space-online and non-disruptively-by reclaiming flash capacity associated with duplicate data within existing thin or fully provisioned volumes with 3PAR Dynamic Optimization.
• Accelerate read-intensive applications by analyzing read and write ratios per storage volume and identifying suitable volumes to use with 3PAR Adaptive Flash Cache.
• Right-size investments by determining the precise amount of flash required to support hot data when using 3PAR Adaptive Optimization for sub-LUN tiering.

Overcome limitations with all-flash arrays certifiedby for SAP HANA
The 3PAR StoreServ 7450 is one of the industry’s first all-flash array certified by SAP as an enterprise storage solution for the SAP HANA platform. With this all-flash array, storage for a four-node, scale-up server environment running SAP HANA can be configured with 60% less space and power than a competitive alternative from EMC.

HP is now certifying the 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit  as well as an all-flash 3PAR StoreServ 7400 configuration. These all-flash systems break through a technology hurdle by offering storage density to storage environments for SAP HANA, which are frequently subject to space and power limitations.

3PAR StoreServ all-flash arrays allow customers to deploy an affordable, scalable alternative to spinning disks for environments for SAP HANA tailored data center integration. To date, HP has certified all 3PAR StoreServ models as enterprise storage solutions for SAP HANA, many with configurations that expand scalability and reduce drive counts over previously certified configurations. HP has also received Energy Star certification for 3PAR StoreServ 7200 and 7400 arrays under the Data Center Storage Specification Version 1.0.

Pricing and availability

• 3PAR Flash Advisor, Adaptive Flash Cache and Express Writes are available with no additional charge as part of 3PAR OS version 3.2.1 or later. Existing customers with current support contracts can upgrade to 3PAR OS 3.2.1 or later at no additional charge.
• 3PAR Thin Deduplication, Thin Clones and the associated Flash Advisor elements are available for SSD/flash tiers only, at no additional charge and as part of 3PAR OS version 3.2.1 MU1. Existing customers with current support contracts can upgrade to 3PAR OS version 3.2.1 MU1 at no additional charge.
• 3PAR Dynamic Optimization is licensable software and is available as part of the 3PAR Data Optimization Software Suite.

3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit is available worldwide starting at $35,000, estimated U.S. average street price using 480GB cMLCs. Starter kit includes eight 480GB cMLC SSDs, OS software, Virtual Copy software, Reporting Suite and three-year HP Proactive Care 24 support.