P10000: What HP wants to make instead of PCs, tablets

Recent rumours have renewed storage industry interest in a forthcoming topping-out of the HP 3PAR range with the P10000.

We first heard about a new, unnamed box in July, but sources are now telling us about a P10000 which will slot in above the current range-topper, the 800TB raw capacity T-Class and its smaller brother, the F-Class. Architecturally, it will be part of the 3PAR family, though it will adopt HP nomenclature, the sources said.

As we were told back in July, there will be support of 2.5-inch SAS disk drives and dual ASIC controllers to boost performance. There is speculation that in-line deduplication is included to increase storage efficiency. HP at the time didn't exactly deny that a 3PAR range refresh might be coming but it didn't confirm any specifics whatsoever.

The P10000 name suggests it is marginally higher in performance and/or capacity terms than the P9500, the Hitachi-sourced array based on that company's VSP. The P9500 fits in HP's storage array line-up above the Hitachi USP-V-sourced XP20000 and XP24000 drive arrays in performance terms we understand, though the XP product range does have a higher capacity.

Our information is that the P10000's design was completed before HP bought 3PAR.

Exactly how much capacity improvement and performance improvement the P10000 will have over the T-Class is not known. Nor do we know when it will be introduced. Back in July we heard that there would be a fourth quarter announcement with shipments starting in 2012.

Incidentally, we are hearing that 3PAR sales have gone something like 200 per cent over plan and that HP is constrained by its ability to manufacture the systems. European-based production should come online in the autumn.

The Register also hears there could be a partial refresh of the P4000 LeftHand iSCSI array family as well, but we have no details of that yet. ®