Dan's Take

Is HPE's All-Flash Storage a Fit for Your Datacenter?

For all-HPE shops, it's a good fit. Others will have to look more carefully.

• By Dan Kusnetzky
• 07/21/2016

A couple of folks from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Storage -- Patrick Osborne and Vish Mulchand, both senior directors for product management and marketing -- recently came by to discuss what the company was doing to improve storage performance, increase storage density and simplify storage configurations. It's part of HPE's efforts to have the first "composable storage architecture."

Deploying Next-Generation Solid-State Storage
An important part of the conversation was HPE's support for new 7.68TB and 15.36TB 3D NAND solid-state drives (SSDs) across the 3PAR StoreServ family. The company claims that "with these drives, HPE 3PAR StoreServ is the most dense and scalable all-flash array in the industry, now supporting up to 24PB of usable SSD capacity in a single system."

While compact, high-performance storage devices are important, HPE stresses that how they're used is one of the company's key advantages. HPE uses this new technology to support 3PAR Adaptive Sparing and 3PAR Express Layout.

3PAR Adaptive Sparing
Adaptive sparing is a storage virtualization technology that optimizes the use of storage capacity by allowing excess capacity to be used as "spares," allowing storage systems to better survive component failures. The company claims this technology serves "to protect SSD performance and extend media endurance for greater investment protection."

3PAR Express Layout
Express layout is another storage virtualization technology. It makes it easier for storage administrators to control where and how data is stored.

The discussion also touched on how HPE has expanded security capabilities of HPE 3PAR File Persona, and made updates to HPE Recovery Manager Central (RMC) software that extends flash array-integrated and application-integrated data protection to 3PAR File Persona and Oracle databases.