HP Enterprise Claims a Fast and Safe Path to the All-Flash Data Center

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced new HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage solutions to accelerate the move to all-flash data centers. HPE has also integrated 3PAR StoreServ with new HPE StoreOnce and HPE StoreEver product lines to ensure protection and retention keep pace with demand.

The need for enterprises to move faster is driving trends like IT-as-a-Service and the growth of data analytics, which in turn are driving the adoption of flash storage. In addition to speed and predictable service levels, organizations adopting flash are also reducing storage footprint by up to 85 percent as they move away from spinning disks in favor of this higher density media.<1> In fact, IDC reported that the impact flash-based arrays will have on the data center is undeniable as more flash platforms deliver enterprise-class data services, including snapshots, clones, encryption, replication, and quality of service.2 HPE 3PAR StoreServ delivers all of these data services and has a recently updated flash portfolio that provides industry leading scale,3 record-setting performance,4 and affordability starting at $19K.5 Today’s announcements help legacy storage users migrate more quickly to flash while reducing risk.

“Faced with the need for agility, organizations want to take advantage of game-changers like flash without introducing risk,” said Joybrata Mukherjee, Country Head, Storage, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India. “To meet those demands, Hewlett Packard Enterprise simplifies storage with a single flash-optimized 3PAR StoreServ line from the entry to enterprise with tier-1 resiliency and built-in data protection.”

Accelerating the move to the all-flash data center
3PAR StoreServ Storage enables organizations to accelerate the transformation to the all-flash data center with solutions that accommodate new and mixed media types in the same array while maintaining performance and enterprise-class resiliency. Earlier this month, the Storage Performance Council published a new world record SPC-2 result for the 3PAR StoreServ 20850 all-flash array that demonstrates better performance at half the price of the EMC VMAX 400K.6

Building on this success, HPE is introducing new 3PAR StoreServ products, solutions, and services:
3PAR Flash Acceleration for Oracle – An HPE validated solution that boosts database performance up to 75 percent7 while enabling legacy systems like EMC VMAX to remain in place. These flash arrays can be placed for half the cost8 versus upgrading the legacy storage systems
· 3PAR Online Import software – A free, 12-month license for customers looking to move off hard disk drive (HDD)-bound legacy storage via simple, five-step migration from EMC, HDS, and now IBM XIV storage
Support for 3D NAND drives – Support for this new solid state drive (SSD) technology enables customers to accelerate application performance with a low incremental investment
Lowering cost with flash-ready unified storage and next-gen active archive
Unlike pure flash systems designed for single media types or single SAN protocols, StoreServ Storage features a flash-optimized design that supports both file and block storage as well as a secondary tier of HDDs. Leveraging this architecture, HPE also introduced today the 3PAR StoreServ 8200 Converged File and Block Starter Kit, which enables consolidation onto a single unified system that costs 26 percent less than competitors.9 To help customers deploy these unified systems with more confidence, HPE also released several reference architectures for 3PAR StoreServ Storage, addressing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and SharePoint environments as well as HPE Software solutions for information management.

In addition, HPE is also offering a completely refreshed portfolio of StoreEver LTO-7 media, drives and automated libraries. This refreshed product lineup delivers even more low-cost and reliable long-term data retention solutions to customers, providing 2x the capacity at nearly double the performance of previous generations of LTO technology10 plus a 100x improvement in reliability.11 Pairing high-performance 3PAR StoreServ flash arrays with these new StoreEver Tape offerings gives customers the ability to deploy a “tape as NAS” solution to simply and seamlessly access bulk archives on tape as if they were on disk, ideal for enabling active archive.

Reducing risk with flash- and app-integrated data protection
HPE also announced new solutions to help customers as they move away from traditional backup silos in favor of flash array- and application- integrated data protection, including an entirely new lineup of entry and mid-range HPE StoreOnce Systems. With up to 2.7 times more performance12 and up to twice the density of the competition,13 these new StoreOnce models are priced at under $0.05 per usable gigabyte (GB) of logical capacity14 and support native integration with Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Veeam, and Veritas applications to improve performance, reduce network bandwidth, and eliminate dedicated backup management.

For customers on the path to an all-flash data center, these new StoreOnce models include application-integrated snapshot offload capabilities from 3PAR StoreServ via StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central (RMC) software. Already integrated with VMware, RMC software now enables the rapid creation and movement of Microsoft SQL snapshots directly from the 3PAR StoreServ array to any StoreOnce backup target via unique HPE Express Protect technology. Featuring deep VMware vCenter and Microsoft SQL Studio management integration, this solution reduces risk by allowing users to move data to a secondary storage tier, reduces cost by eliminating licenses for dedicated ISV backup software, and improves agility by accelerating backup and recovery. With the added integration of Data Protector and RMC, customers gain advanced virtual machine recovery options, granular item recovery, and the ability to utilize tiers such as tape and cloud for efficient long-term retention.

Availability
· 3D NAND SSDs are available worldwide on December 17, 2015, and capacity points starting at 400 GB.
· 3PAR Online Import support for IBM XIV is available with 3PAR OS 3.2.2 MU2 in January, 2016.
· The 3PAR StoreServ 8200 Converged File and Block Starter Kit with 8 10K 600-GB SAS drives, 12 2-TB 7.2K SAS drives, OS Suite, Replication Suite, 3 years of 24x7 Proactive Care Support, and a 16-TB File Persona license is available worldwide on December 7, 2015 StoreEver LTO-7 tape media, tape drives, and tape automation products are available worldwide on December 1, 2015.
· The HPE StoreOnce 3100 with 8TB of raw backup capacity is available worldwide on December 14, 2015.
· The StoreOnce 3520 starts at 12TB raw.
· The StoreOnce 3540 starts with 24TB raw.
· The StoreOnce 5100 starts with 48TB raw.
· Version 2.0 of StoreOnce RMC software, which allows native data movement from 3PAR to StoreOnce backup for data protection, is available worldwide on January 15, 2016.