HP Lowering Price of Flash Storage

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP (HP) announced innovations for 3PAR StoreServ Storage to support the transformation to hybrid IT and all-flash data centers, including a 8000 family featuring the industry’s most affordable all-flash array (AFA), ⁽¹⁾ twice the workload performance of previous generations ⁽²⁾ and automated performance assurance with flash-optimized QoS controls.

3PAR StoreServ 8000

The flash storage market is growing at over 46% compound annual growth as customers embrace flash to accelerate more applications across their data centers.⁽³⁾ Within this fast-paced segment, Gartner identified the company as a leader in its Magic Quadrant for Solid State Arrays ⁽⁴⁾ and noted that HP was the fastest growing flash vendor based on revenue shipments in 2014.⁽⁵⁾ More recently the company moved up to the number two market share position in all-flash ⁽⁶⁾ and announced the 3PAR StoreServ 20000 family, an eight-node enterprise flash family with leading density and costs as low as $1.50 per usable gigabyte.⁽⁷⁾

 3PAR StoreServ 20000 Storage

The company is accelerating customer transition to all-flash data centers with the new quad-controller 3PAR StoreServ 8000 Storage family as well as a new eight-controller 3PAR StoreServ 20800 AFA Starter Kit and software updates for the full 3PAR StoreServ family. Only 3PAR StoreServ is able to span from a $19,000 entry price to multi-petabyte systems reaching 3.2 million IO/s, with scale-out capabilities from two to eight controllers, and proven tier-1 resiliency giving businesses a simple approach to meet virtually any workload requirement.

3PAR StoreServ 20800

“Regardless of your size, budget, growth rate, QoS requirements, or even your storage network environment, HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage offers a best-in-class flash solution to power your public, private, or hybrid cloud with uncompromising adaptability from a single architecture,” said Manish Goel, SVP and GM, storage, HP.

Tier-1 all-flash from $19,000 brings resilient flash
within reach of even more customers
For customers looking for the most affordable way to accelerate applications and consolidate infrastructure, the 3PAR StoreServ 8000 family is a scale-out, quad-node design that includes all-flash configurations starting at $19K as well as converged-flash arrays that support expansion via spinning media. Like the 3PAR StoreServ Storage 20000 family, the 8000 family delivers up to 5.5PB of usable flash capacity within a single floor tile without compromising data services or scalability.

3PAR StoreServ 20450

Additionally, the company introduced new models in the eight-controller 20000 family, including a 20800 All-Flash Starter Kit starting at US $99K, ⁽⁸⁾ placing the industry’s most scalable flash platform within reach of more enterprises and service providers. HP also announced the new 3PAR StoreServ 20450, an All-Flash Array which scales to 5PB and 1.8 million IO/s.⁽⁹⁾ Built-in storage federation capabilities allow 8000 and 20000 models to be pooled together for up to 60PB of aggregate usable capacity in a four-system federation with non-disruptive workload mobility across systems with just a single mouse click for unmatched agility.⁽¹⁰⁾

Twice bandwidth and next-gen hardware-acceleration to boost application performance
Sharing the same hardware acceleration as the eight-node enterprise-flash 20000 family, the new 8000 family features the 3PAR Gen5 Thin Express ASIC and double the bandwidth of competitive platforms, enabling the 8000 family to more effectively deal with mixed and highly unpredictable workloads. With over 20GB/s of read bandwidth, this hardware lets customers double the workload performance of bandwidth-heavy database applications, assuring that end users get the response times required to make faster business decisions.

Click to enlarge

Additionally, both the 3PAR StoreServ 8000 and 20000 flash arrays are now certified for SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI), assuring that customers can accelerate these mission-critical applications with confidence.⁽¹¹⁾ Lastly, the 3PAR File Persona software has been enhanced to support even larger unstructured data applications, meaning customers can expand consolidation of both file and block workloads on a single, Tier-1 flash platform.⁽¹²⁾

Built-in automation of flash-optimized data services to boost agility and reduce risk
The company announced enhancements to the 3PAR OS that deepen the portfolio’s rich set of autonomic, Tier-1 data services for greater return on flash investments and accelerated time to value. These software enhancements span the entire 3PAR StoreServ Storage family – across media types, data types, and connectivity protocols – even extending beyond the array to include SAN infrastructure.

3PAR Priority Optimization software allows users to specify latency goals as low as 0.5 milliseconds to ensure consistent service levels in multi-tenant environments where a large number of latency-sensitive applications are consolidated. ⁽¹³⁾ This level of hands-free, fine-grained QoS is unique in the industry and assures administrators can deliver consistent application performance through simple, policy-driven templates.

The company announced data protection enhancements to the 3PAR StoreServ powered by StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central for VMware (RMC-V). As a flash-integrated, protection solution, RMC-V delivers 17x faster VM protection by taking application-consistent snapshots on the 3PAR StoreServ array, then automatically copying changed blocks directly to any StoreOnce appliance.⁽¹⁴⁾ RMC-V enhancements include support for vSphere 6.0 with VMware Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) as well as more granular recovery of individual VMs and files to simplify data recovery.

For customers who are deploying flash over FC, SmartSAN for 3PAR StoreServ uses Express Provisioning technology to orchestrate SAN fabric zoning autonomically, reducing the number of steps required to provision a SAN by 80%.⁽¹⁵⁾

For service providers and midsize organizations looking to leverage Ethernet networking to reduce costs, 3PAR StoreServ enhancements reduce iSCSI latency and add support for iSCSI VLAN tagging. These iSCSI features assure flash-optimized performance while lowering total storage networking infrastructure acquisition costs by $25K or more. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Pricing and availability: ⁽¹⁷⁾

• All-flash 3PAR StoreServ 8000 Storage systems are available worldwide, orderable immediately with US street pricing starting from $19,479.

• The 20800 All-Flash starter kit with 2 controllers, 8x480GB cMLC SSD drives, and three years of Proactive Care 24×7 support, is available worldwide, orderable September 2015 with US street pricing starting at $99,995.

• The 20450 All-Flash arrays are available worldwide, orderable immediately with US street pricing starting from $85,167.

• 3PAR Priority Optimization is available worldwide as part of the HP 3PAR Data Optimization Suite starting at $1,210.

• Smart SAN 1.0 is available worldwide, licensed on a per-system basis, starting at $200 for 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and 8000 models.

• RMC-V 1.2 available worldwide in October 2015 and is licensed per-array, starting at US $2,500.

(1) HP 3PAR StoreServ 8200, 6 480GB cMLC SSD drives, base OS starting at $19,479
⁽²⁾ Twice the workload performance measured with a 3PAR StoreServ 8450 vs a 3PAR StoreServ 7450 on a 64K I/O blocksize, RAID-1 with a 60:40 R/W ratio
⁽³⁾ IDC, IDC Analyst Connection: New Mixed Workload Consolidation Focus for AFAs Forces Customers to Look Beyond Just Performance, April 2015.
⁽⁴⁾ Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Solid State Arrays, June 2015 Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
⁽⁵⁾ Gartner, Market Share Analysis: SSDs and Solid-State Arrays, Worldwide 2014, May 2015
⁽⁶⁾ Based on IDC Q1 2105 external disk tracker and comparison of 3PAR StoreServ All-Flash Array revenue compared to public statements by Pure Storage as part of IPO filing requirements.
⁽⁷⁾ HP internal analysis; 3.84TB cMLC SSDs, when used in conjunction with 3PAR StoreServ compaction technologies, bring the cost of all-flash 3PAR StoreServ Storage to less than $1.50 per gigabyte of usable storage capacity.
⁽⁸⁾ 3PAR StoreServ 20800 All-Flash Starter Kit includes 2 x 20800 controller nodes, two drive enclosures, 8 480GB cMLC drives, 3PAR OS suite, start-up/installation services and 3 years Proactive Care 24×7 support
⁽⁹⁾ 1.8 million IO/s based on HP internal testing using a quad-controller 3PAR StoreServ 20450, 100% random read workload with an 8k block size and node local volume layout using RAID-1 protection.
⁽¹⁰⁾ Requires the use of 3PAR Peer Motion software. Assuming 4 x 20800 arrays that support 2.5 million IO/s and 15PBs of usable capacity, customers can configure up to 60PBs of usable capacity that supports an aggregate of 10 million IO/s and 300GB/s of bandwidth.
⁽¹¹⁾ Link
⁽¹²⁾ 3PAR StoreServ family includes 8200, 8400, 8440 Converged Flash Arrays as well as 8450 All-Flash Array, and 8200 and 20800 All-Flash Starter Kits.
⁽¹³⁾ Requires 3PAR OS 3.2.2
⁽¹⁴⁾ Compared to traditional ISV backup methods’ and based on HP internal testing, November 2014.
⁽¹⁵⁾ Compared to doing SAN zoning without Smart SAN.
⁽¹⁶⁾ Savings based on average street price of purchasing two 16GB switches (24 ports per switch), associated 16GB cables (quantity of 48) and optics (quantity of 48)
⁽¹⁷⁾ Estimated U.S. street prices. Actual prices may vary.