HP has refreshed its mid-range 3PAR StoreServe range, a move it says extends the company’s vision for the ‘all-flash data centre’.
In June, HP announced the 3PAR StoreServ 20000 family, its Tier 1, high-end array, which promised costs as low as US$1.50 per usable gigabyte.
The latest release, the 8000 family, extends the same architecture, firmware, software, data services and support from the 20000 series into a model for the SMB market, with a starting price point of around $40,000, and twice the workload performance of previous generations.
Both the 3PAR StoreServ 8000 and 20000 flash arrays are now certified for SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI).
Paul Shaw, general manager, HP Storage, Enterprise Group, HP South Pacific, said that this is exciting for customers who are looking to refresh their storage with a 3PAR storage array and have existing HANA workloads.
“For HP South Pacific, we do have a big focus on SAP HANA. We are working heavily with SAP and other organsiations, and have a strong focus on helping our customers take advantage of converged data infrastructure, the all-flash data centre, and drive business improvements in conjunction with SAP HANA,” Shaw said.
According to IDC, the flash storage market is growing at over 46 per cent on a compound annual basis, as customers embrace flash to accelerate applications across their data centres. HP is number two in terms of market share in all-flash.
Shaw said that some of the typical concerns about all-flash storage have been overcome.
“I think there’s been some reservations in the past about hardware endurance, and that’s no longer a problem. We offer five years’ warranty in our all-flash products,” he said. “Secondly I think one of the biggest inhibitors in the past has been cost. What you’re seeing now with HP uniquely having access to some technology in 4TB flash drives, deduplication and compaction, the economies of scale suddenly become much more achievable.”
Customers are still grappling with the question of whether they continue to use traditional infrastructure or make the move to upgrade or refresh, and if so, whether they buy into the concept of the all-flash data centre. Those who do take the plunge are reaping the benefits, Shaw said.
“We see customers who engage in that technology inflection discussion are really seeing some huge savings – there are cost savings, there are green IT savings, we get customers here in Australia with 75 per cent space savings, 75 per cent cooling savings, and then with the new technology there are just huge performance gains of between 60 and 90 per cent.”
