3PAR goes all-flash, shaves hefty wodge off price tag
All solid state, all the time....
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HP has announced an all-flash version of its 3PAR P10000 single tier storage array delivering the same performance at 70 per cent less cost.
This configuration can have up to 512 solid-state drives, of unrevealed capacity, and should deliver the same IOPS performance as the P10000 V800 model with some 1,900 300GB 15K hard disk drives. The disk-based P10000 achieved $6.59 per IOPS, so the all-SSD one should do $1.98/IOPS. HP says its cost-per-kilowatt-hour is more than 80 per cent less than the V800's as well.
That level of SPC-1 performance by an all-solid-state storage array is overshadowed by today's news from Kaminario of a 1.2 million-plus SPC-1 IOPS rating by its K2 all-DRAM array.
Since the P10000 has 1,920 bays available for drive bays the restriction to 512 SSDS must be due to some other consideration than bay availability. One would think that, were the array's internal network or fabric able to take advantage of them, the P10000 could have many more than 512 SSDs. We've asked HP but it's not immediately able to respond.
For example, the P10000 system used in the SPC-1 benchmark run cost $2,965,892. An all-SSD P10000 which went faster than that and cost significantly less might be thought likely to cannibalise existing high-end P10000 revenues. Perhaps there is a technical limitation we are unaware of.
The ProLiant Gen 8 server's SmartCache feature will be ready soon. This caches hot data in a flash cache on the server to accelerate applications, up to six times for transaction-based workloads. HP will link 3PAR arrays and ProLiant Gen 8 server's SmartCache such that hot data will be transferred (copied) in real time from the 3PAR array to the flash SmartCache on the gen 8 ProLIant.
SVP David Scott, general manager of HP's storage division, said: “The ability to intelligently automate data mobility between HP ProLiant servers and HP 3PAR systems within array tiers fully actualizes SSD performance and efficiency so clients can focus more time growing the business instead of managing the back office.”
The all-SSD P10000 is available now. No dates were revealed for ProLiant SmartCache availability, though we think "soon" means within two months, or for the 3PAR-SmartCache linkage. Maybe that will be ready in time for HP Discover in Frankfurt in December. Perhaps HP will even deliver storage array-server cache linkage before HDS, EMC, Dell and IBM. ®
COMMENTS
i/o limits
the reason for "only" 512 SSDs is that is the i/o limit of the system. 3PAR doesn't want customers to be able to oversubscribe the controllers/ports with more I/O then they can handle.
The limits have been well documented by them ever since SSDs were announced, though made more public since HP bought them since HP publishes the specs on the interwebs
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14103_na/14103_na.html
"What's New
Increase in maximum number of solid state drives (SSDs) in HP 3PAR P10000 Storage:
* The maximum number of SSDs has been increased to 128 per node pair
* This translates into a maximum of SSDs of 256 for the V400 and 512 for the V800"
For the older T-class
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13883_na/13883_na.html
"* Minimum of 2 SSD magazines (8 drives) spread across a minimum of 2 drive chassis on a given node-pair
* Maximum of 8 SSD magazines (32 drives) on a given node-pair
* Minimum of 1 SSD magazine (4 drives) per drive chassis
* Maximum of 2 SSD magazines (8 drives) per drive chassis"
The all SSD offering is interesting, since before it was not a valid configuration(not sure why other than probably no customers would get it). Though interesting to see the results, wonder when they will get officially posted.
Tuff to Say
Project Sage - Hot Cache was tried and dismissed as not effective. EMC Thunder has is still a bit of drizzle, just not enough energy to create a critical mass to drive a storm.
The old HP Embraced EMC Symmetrix and helped them become the storage company they are. After a few courthouse meetings, HP shuns EMC and Turns Eastward (westward depending on your location) and embraces Hitachi. Including a Deep co-engineering/development effort.
Then as with most things (for go the flames etc), DEC (creator of some cool technology much like Sony) is acquired by Compaq and then later ingested by HP with a little pepto-bismal and bit of pixie dust to boot. The Compaq EMA becomes the EVA....
Then when no-one is looking HP hires people from EMC that have no future growth to shape the future at EMC so the move out - to move 'cept. They cannot seem to determine a direction.... a Vector if you will.
Let's see. ( a short list of technology owned or OEMed by HP)
PolyServe
Ibrix
Veritas (no HP didn't buy them nor did they think to buy them)
LSI
Fusion IO
Violin
TMS
Hitachi
Outerbay
OCZ
..
The engineers at HP came up with a partial Flash Array technology (yep partial if you have 1900 slots but can only fill 512 that is not a full anything..)
HP needs to set a direction or maybe they should get out of the storage business they never clearly understood.
Though I did like the AutoRaid 12H. It was fun to watch it rebalance itself once you set up AutoRaid and then pulled out a disk and re-inserted it before the rebuild was done....
Re: Wunderbar1
They already are -
http://c970058.r58.cf2.rackcdn.com/individual_results/IBM/IBM_780cluster_20100816_ES.pdf
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