Enabling the Software-Defined Data Centre

HP has announced new storage offerings for the software-defined data center (SDDC) that simplify deployment of scale-out storage for cloud computing and virtual server environments.

The company also introduced a new entry-level all-flash array to enable affordable application performance acceleration.

IT departments and service providers are under pressure to deliver rapid business value with fewer resources. This is fueling the growth of cloud computing and a move to the SDDC, which requires next-generation storage platforms that improve efficiency and control.

To address this need, HP is building on its market leadership in software-defined storage by featuring HP StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) as a fully integrated storage option for HP Helion OpenStack and HP Helion OpenStack Community Edition. HP has also enhanced HP StoreVirtual Storage hypervisor integration and released a new HP StoreOnce VSA license that cuts backup costs by 86 percent for small and remote sites.

Additionally, HP is enabling high service levels while removing cost barriers to flash storage adoption with the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit. Starting at $35,000, SDDC customers can benefit from all-flash performance at half the cost of competing entry-level all-flash arrays. HP also announced that it is continuing to collaborate with VMware to integrate HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage on VMware’s planned Virtual Volumes (VVols) storage architecture.

“As customers move to the software-defined data center, they face gaps with legacy hardware-oriented storage,” said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, HP Storage. “For increased agility, HP delivers software-defined storage via VSAs that optimize cost and all-flash, service-refined storage to optimize service levels—both orchestrated with common tools.”

Software-defined simplicity, even in multi-hypervisor and cloud environments
To enable software-defined storage deployment with ultimate hypervisor and hardware flexibility, HP StoreVirtual VSA supports any physical server and hypervisor-attached external storage. It also now supports Linux Kernel–based Virtual Machine (KVM) as well as VMware vSphere® and Windows Server with Hyper-V. To automate cloud services management, HP StoreVirtual Storage—including both VSA and physical appliances—features an updated Cinder interface to support OpenStack orchestration, plus a full set of RESTful APIs. These enhancements provide highly available, scale-out storage for cloud computing environments and enable HP to offer fully functional, software-defined storage via integration of HP StoreVirtual VSA software within the HP Helion cloud portfolio.

In addition to HP Helion-based management and orchestration, customers may also choose other platforms to simplify storage management for virtual servers and cloud environments. The HP OneView for VMware vCenter™ plug-in and HP StoreFront Manager for Microsoft plug-in enable wizard-driven installation, configuration and monitoring of VSA-based storage. VSA deployment can be set up in minutes, allowing users to provision 32 servers in the same time it takes to provision a single server.

HP StoreVirtual Storage customers—including both VSA and physical appliances—can get immediate, granular visibility into performance, capacity and system health with the HP StoreFront Analytics Pack for VMware vCenter™ Operations Manager™ (vCOPS). To maintain high-capacity utilization, HP StoreVirtual Storage will support space reclamation in VMware and Microsoft environments. This automatically frees up unused space after virtual machines (VMs) and other files are deleted. To optimize performance of flash-based media and multisite storage deployments, an enhanced HP StoreVirtual multipathing extension module for VMware environments increases throughput by up to 58 percent and reduces network latency.

Reducing risk and lowering data protection costs from branch to cloud
To lower data protection costs, HP introduced a 4TB HP StoreOnce VSA, ideal for backing up small sites. For service providers looking to expand cloud services, the new HP StoreOnce VSA is included in a reference architecture from HP for Cloud Backup Infrastructure as a Service. HP StoreOnce VSA provides flexibility via expanded hypervisor support for Windows Server with Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. It also supports the HP StoreOnce Security Pack—including encryption and Secure Erase of data—for governance and compliance.

Expanding VMware integration and lowering all-flash array costs by 50 percent
The new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter Kit accelerates application performance at a low entry street starting price of $35,000, which complements the $2 per usable gigabyte price of the larger HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 All-Flash Array. For less than half the cost of competing entry-level all-flash arrays, the HP 7200 Starter Kit scales from 7 TB to 690 TB of usable flash capacity via hardware-assisted 3PAR Thin Deduplication and Thin Clones software.

Customers can achieve the operational agility promised in the SDDC by leveraging HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage integration with OpenStack Cinder as well as converged infrastructure management via integration with HP OneView. HP now enables even greater agility through collaboration with VMware on its planned VVols storage architecture, currently available via VMware vSphere beta program and ready for use on all HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage models. VVols enables simple, granular VM-level storage control, disaster recovery and quality of service. HP and VMware have partnered for more than three years on the definition, development and testing of the VVols specification, with VMware using HP 3PAR StoreServ as the Fibre Channel reference platform for its testing of this planned capability.

“The software-defined data center extends virtualization concepts such as resource pooling and automation to all infrastructure services including storage, to make the underlying infrastructure as cost-effective and dynamic as virtualized servers,” said John Gilmartin, vice president and general manager, SDDC Suite Business Unit, VMware. “HP has been a critical VMware partner in enabling this transformation for external storage through their engineering design and development support of Virtual Volumes with HP 3PAR StoreServ.”