Category: HP Storage

OpenStack has caught the fancy of enterprise data centers (EDCs) as they look to move their virtualized applications in and out of the cloud. However when it comes to storage and enterprise storage in particular, OpenStack still lacks a number of block-based storage capabilities which it must offer in order for enterprise data centers (EDCs) and service providers to view it as a viable cloud option. The availability of OpenStack block storage services in HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage alleviates these concerns as they pave the way for EDC OpenStack adoption.

The value of HP 3PAR StoreServ’s mesh active controller architecture and its ALUA support come into focus as enterprises look to deliver a “higher” form of HA. Since the HP 3PAR StoreServ does not need ALUA to identify the best or “active” path to the backend LUNs on a single array as all of its LUNs are “Active” on all of controllers, HP 3PAR StoreServ repurposes ALUA to deliver a “higher” form of HA.

Business continuity planning (BCP) is already a mainstay at many midsized enterprises. An AT&T 2012 online survey of IT executives from organizations throughout the United States found that over 80% of them, to include businesses with revenues of no more than $25 million, have BCP in place. The ready availability of cloud technologies means that almost any size enterprise can realistically implement and maintain this environment – potentially more affordably and easily than BCP. Yet to achieve this higher form of HA for all of their applications requires they first put in place the right set of technologies.

Flash’s high performance and low power consumption makes it almost an inevitable replacement for hard disk drives (HDDs) as a primary storage technology. Yet deploying flash on storage arrays throughout the data center is more than a technology choice; it is becoming a “bet the farm” type of decision. In this second part of my two-part blog series, I examine how the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 delivers the underlying technologies that an all flash array requires and complements them with a mature, proven architecture which makes selecting this HP storage system an easy choice.

Many analyst firms have for a number of years acknowledged that flash will rise to prominence in corporate data centers and likely replace HDDs as the primary storage technology in production storage arrays. As far back as 2009, the Gartner analyst group described flash as “one of the most important technologies in future data centers.” More recently in 2012 the analyst firm IDC forecast that worldwide solid state disk (SSD) shipments would increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 51.5% from 2010 to 2015.

There is no dispute that whether one operates in the physical or virtual world, neighbors impact one another when sharing the same resources. However unlike the physical world where unwritten ground rules exist that govern such interaction no such rules exist in the virtual world. This is why organizations want some assurances that virtualized mission critical applications get the resources they need when they need them. Using HP 3PAR StoreServ’s Priority Optimization software, virtualized mission critical applications get access to the resources they need when they need them.

Corporate interest in data encryption grows with each passing day as companies fret over third party attacks and stricter regulations. But a set of data that organizations may fail to encrypt – and which may be the easiest to access – is data stored on storage system hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs). By using encrypted drives on the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, organizations close this security loophole while ensuring data stored on these drives remains safe from prying eyes.

Deduplicating backup appliances have revolutionized backup. They work with most backup software, increase backup success rates, shorten backup windows, reduce backup storage footprints and help centralize data protection. But these appliances sometimes exceed the budgets and capabilities of remote and branch offices (ROBOs), small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and service providers to install and support them. The HP StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) brings deduplication to these size offices in a new virtual form factor that better fits their specific needs.

The allure of client virtualization is the promise that it can deliver a robust corporate desktop experience to any user at any time or place using any device. The reality is that to date client virtualization deployments pretty much required rocket scientists to configure, implement and manage them, especially when it came to the underlying storage architectures upon which they are based.

When it comes to hosting Microsoft Exchange 2010, small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) have many if not all of the same performance requirements of a storage system that hosts Exchange that large enterprises have. What these smaller companies do not possess are the deep pockets that enterprises have and which are typically needed to acquire such a storage system. Using the latest midrange HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 storage system, these organizations can get the storage performance attributes that they need while staying within their budget constraints.