When it comes to Flash storage arrays, the ultimate issue may not be exactly how fast any particular array can go as much as how easily it fits within a larger storage management strategy.
At the HP Discover 2013 conference today, Hewlett-Packard extended its storage portfolio to include a new Flash array that is integrated with the company’s software-defined storage architecture.
The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Flash storage system is capable of delivering over 550,000 input/output operations per second performance using a custom ASIC controller developed by HP.
According to Sean Kinney, director of product marketing for HP storage, in addition to providing the raw horsepower capable of improving application performance by orders of magnitude, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 complements an HP StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance and HP StoreOnce Enterprise Manager software that is at the heart of the HP software-defined storage architecture.
In addition to a new Flash memory offering, HP today also unveiled HP Data Protector 8, which can now scale to handle up to 1 trillion files names, and a new HP StoreEver MSL6480 Tape Library that delivers 60.4 TB/hour across 3.5 PB in a single tape library. HP says this represents 2.1-times faster performance, 1.3-times more scalability and 1.3-times more density than the nearest competitive midrange tape library.
According to Kinney, storage has gone polymorphic in the sense that IT organizations will need to deploy an integrated set of complementary technologies to handle the requirements of different classes of applications. The challenge, says Kinney, is accomplishing that goal in a way that automates storage management based on policies defined by the IT organization versus having to individually manage different classes of storage systems based on multiple, incompatible storage architectures.
There’s no doubt that enterprise IT is getting more complex. The challenge facing IT organizations is finding a way to minimize that complexity by embracing higher levels of automation that make storage resources available to applications as transparently as possible.
