HP is bringing software-defined storage to the small to midsize business (SMB) market with its HP StoreVirtual 4335 Storage system. The StoreVirtual 4335 is a hybrid storage appliance that combines tiered SSD and traditional hard disk storage.
SMBs can use the HP StoreVirtual 4335 system to provide tiered storage at the sub-LUN level, where blocks of data that are frequently accessed are on a higher storage tier, while older blocks of data are stored via a lower-cost storage option. The appliance does this via HP’s Adaptive Optimization technology.
The ability to tier on the sub-LUN level is important for efficient storage, says Dan Molina, Nth Generation Computing CEO:
Most storage technologies tier at the LUN level. The 4335 goes to the sub-LUN level. It makes for very efficient space utilization. If data is tiered in bigger chunks, you need to move excess data between the SSD and the hard drive.
Vish Mulchand, director of product management and marketing for HP Storage, says that virtualization has become an everyday challenge for SMBs, but one that can be overcome:
As flash storage becomes pervasive, we’re introducing capabilities from our enterprise storage to our SMBs. Almost everyone is virtualizing today. And with virtualization, storage becomes the bottleneck. With sub-LUN virtualization, SMBs can virtualize their environments at an affordable price.
