Simplifying the transition to flash

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

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 HP 3PAR Thin Deduplication software across flash/SSD tiers on all new and existing HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and 10000 models. Also, all HP 3PAR StoreServ systems gain application acceleration benefits without additional hardware or software licensing with new 3PAR Adaptive Flash Cache and Express Write features.

To help customers quickly assess the benefits of these new capabilities and determine the most efficient, low-risk path to flash storage, HP has introduced the 3PAR Flash Advisor toolset. This toolset uses in-depth analytics and reporting to help customers determine how to best use flash storage to increase efficiency, improve service levels, 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 HP 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, senior vice president and general manager, 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 innovations 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 HP 3PAR operating system, 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 HP 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 percent when used with SSD capacity.

In addition, the 3PAR operating system allows the concurrent use of both Adaptive Flash Cache and Adaptive Optimization sub-LUN tiering for cost savings and performance benefits on HP 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.

HP 3PAR Express Writes is another standard HP 3PAR OS feature that gives HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage customers an additional performance boost without hardware changes by lowering storage write latencies by up to 10 percent and helping increase overall write throughput.

Increase usable flash capacity and improve visibility into duplicate data
HP 3PAR Thin Deduplication software is now available across SSD tiers on all HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage models. For customers considering a move to flash within new or existing infrastructure, HP 3PAR Flash Advisor provides a no-cost, built-in toolset that delivers actionable insight about HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage 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 HP 3PAR Dynamic Optimization.
• Accelerate read-intensive applications by analyzing read and write ratios per storage volume and identifying suitable volumes to use with HP 3PAR Adaptive Flash Cache.
• Right-size investments by determining the precise amount of flash required to support “hot” data when using HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization for sub-LUN tiering.

Overcome limitations with all-flash arrays certified by SAP as an enterprise storage solution for SAP HANA
The HP 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 the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 All-flash array, storage for a four-node, scale-up server environment running SAP HANA can be configured with 60 percent less space and power than a competitive alternative from EMC.

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

HP 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 HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage models as enterprise storage solutions for SAP HANA, many with configurations that significantly expand scalability and reduce drive counts over previously certified configurations. HP has also received ENERGY STAR certification for HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 and 7400 arrays under the Data Center Storage Specification Version 1.0.