HP: Our 3PAR kit can cram twice as many VMs into your server
Offers 'virtual guarantee' to back punchy boast
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HP is so confident its 3PAR storage arrays will double a server's virtual machine count that it's guaranteeing it - and will pay for any extra 3PAR storage needed beyond what it replaces to get to the 2x VM count number.
The HP Get Virtual Guarantee Program states uncompromisingly:
Clients deploying HP 3PAR systems with VMware vSphere version 4.1 or later are guaranteed a 2x increase in virtual machine density on physical servers in comparison to their VM density with previously installed storage … If a two times increase in virtual server density is not achieved, HP will provide participants with the disk capacity and related HP software and support necessary to achieve the guaranteed program results.
The HP Get Virtual Guarantee Program is available to clients globally through HP and HP-authorized channel partners.
HP specifies: "To participate in the program, qualified participants must purchase an HP 3PAR Storage System with HP 3PAR Optimization Suite Software for autonomic load balancing and HP 3PAR System Reporter Software. Clients also must be running VMware vSphere version 4.1 or higher." ®
COMMENTS
Re: Clustered Pairs < Grid Cluster
So you're aware that 3par isn't a dual controller array but can scale to 8 active acti
ve nodes, right? And that 3par has the world record spc-1 benchmark whereas xiv is the only array IBM haven't submitted? Strange that!
Wunderbar, you're embarrassing yourself and IBM
Man, there has been some drivel posted on here. We all know benchmarks are exactly that - a flat out speed test and vendors use a variety of tactics to maximise their score. IBM in fact is normally a huge supporter of the SPC-1 and has benchmarked pretty much every other array in their portfolio - apart from the XIV which is what speaks volumes. As for the 3PAR benchmark, it was pretty much out of the box (500 commands vs 12,000 commands for Hitachi's VSP for example) and wasn't short stroked if you look at the usable capacity figures in the submission. The impressive thing about the 3PAR benchmark is that is was achieved using a single array fully configured with 15k drives. It didn't rely on cobbling separate arrays together, or stacking them full of SSDs, or performance from cache. The best performance it could achieve was when it was full of drives - so that is predictable, real, disk-based performance. Look at the VSP submission for example and their best score was with an array that was half full. So the assumption would be that any extra drives added beyond that didn't add any performance.
The XIV bubble has burst. I am consistently meeting customers who say it's ok but it's not what it was claimed to be. It's not 'Tier 1 at Tier 3 pricing' as IBM claimed (I worked for IBM selling storage for a long time), it's fairly simple general purpose storage that is looking for a problem to solve. It's not performent or resilient enough for Tier 1 and it's not dense / cheap enough for lower Tier storage. It's Tier 1.5 which could be claimed to be the best of both worlds but in reality is the best of neither.
Re: Clustered Pairs > What were you smoking ?
I'm sorry you need to walk away now before you embarrass IBM further. You've already stated the box does ~50,000 IOps at 15ms and to do that it needs 15 controllers running in parallel with a close coupled inifinband architecture.
Yet the dual controller IBM V7000 does better in the SPC-1 benchmark and I'll bet it's much cheaper, the 3PAR F400, not the newest box on the block blows away both with 4 controllers at ~90,000 and the 3PAR V800 smokes all comers with 8 controllers doing 450,000 IOps. All of which combined totally destroy your architectual argument.
XIV doesn't have a SPC-1 benchmark why ? It has SPC-2 which is based on sequential performance, which is pretty good, but not the sweetspot for most workloads including VMWare.
All can also provide much greater choice in terms of disk type and capacity efficiency, supporting differing raid levels etc and all are very simple to use and provision. 3PAR has the same OS and management across all boxes, so if you can manage the smaller FClass then you can also manage the VClass. BTW it's not really about achieving maximum performance, it's knowing you can do if you need to, being able to scale the platform with confidence.
Nothing against XIV it just needs to be pitched where it fits and not pretend to be something it isn't and suggesting it smokes everything out there with absolutely no evidence is a silly place to start.
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