3Par News Bonanza – New model + NAS Capability + New Management Console + More

Day one in Barcelona at HP Discover 2014 and it has not failed to deliver, there has been so much 3Par news I wondered if I needed to split it into several posts.  Let’s take each major announcement one at a time:

1 New Hybrid Model

Normally it’s in January when people start hitting the gym trying to get buff.  Well judging by what’s been announced at HP Discover today it looks like the 3Par 7000 series has broken with tradition and hit the gym early and hard this year.  Not only have the 7200 and 7400 model been on the protein shakes with 7200c and 7400c versions, but there is a brand new pumped up 7440 model.

The 7440 is being marketed by HP as converged flash array, the proposition here is why choose between the performance of an all flash array and the capacity of spinning disk when you can get all that in one array.  The performance is certainly there, rated to a max of 900,000 IOPS at under 0.7ms the same as HP’s own all flash 7450 model.  Under the hood the 7440 has been given some significant extra grunt to allow the system to perform at the level of an all flash array.  To get a feel for the additional hardware capabilities check out the table below which compares the existing 7400 to the 7440

 

Existing 7400 v New 7440

	Existing 7400 Spec	New 7440 Spec	Change
Processors	2-4 six-core 1.8 GHz	2-4 eight-core 2.3 GHz	+2 cores, +0.5 Ghz / processor
Total Cache	800 GB – 1564 GB	1596 – 3192 GB	+1628GB
Total Flash Cache	768 GB – 1500 GB	500 – 3000 GB	+1500 GB
Total On-Node Cache	32-64 GB	96 – 192 GB	+128GB
Number of Disk Drives	8-480 drives	8 – 960 drives	+480 disks
Raw Capacity (approx.)	1.2 – 1200 TB	1.2 – 2000 TB	+800 TB
Number of Add-on Drive Enclosures	0 – 18 enclosures	0 – 38 enclosures	+20

In terms of capacity the 7440 is a beast compared to the existing 7400 model, more than doubling the number of enclosures you can add, up to 38 enclosure providing up to 2000TB of raw capacity.  To drive this extra capacity and deliver the stellar flash performance faster 8 core 2.3GHz processors like those found in the 7450 are utilised, plus cache gets a big 1628GB increase taking it to a max of 3192GB. As with all previous models of 3Par this follows trend by sharing the same base OS and therefore features and managements as the rest of the range.   Tasty, I wonder if it’s too late to change my letter to Santa and if it would fit down my chimney.

 

You can watch this ShortTake video for more information

 

2 File and Object Based Storage Added

Until now the 3Par has been a block based system that only offered file based storage through a NAS gateway.  The NAS gateway was provided in the form of the StoreEasy 3000 gateway device, which was essentially a NAS header running Windows Storage Server 2012. Given that the 3Par’s main 2 rivals the EMC’s VNX and Netapp’s FAS both have offered integral file based storage, this has been a chink in 3Pars armour.

Today it has been announced that the 3Par will have file storage natively available, i.e. without the need to buy and manage additional hardware, it’s all in the box and just needs activating with a licence. Although HP have been later to market than its rivals with Native NAS support, it was highlighted that this has been a ground up development, not a bundling of two separate products like the VNX and whilst the Netapp has native support for NAS it then has to emulate block storage. File based storage will be provided via the new 7440 model and the enhanced 7200c and 7400c models, the c indicates its a converged model offering block and file storage.  Existing 7200 and 7400 models would require a controller upgrade to provide file based storage.

 

All the major features you would expect from a NAS box are there NFS/ SMB support, NDMP and support for 3rd party antivirus.  The file storage component is also able to take advantage of other 3Par features such as replication.

 

Object based storage was also unveiled today as being natively available on 3Par.  Object based storage has always promised much but its uptake has been slow outside of the very largest enterprises / cloud providers.  I would again be interested to see how many users will adopt object based storage, but I think the key point is this is another box ticked by HP when direct comparisons are made against its rivals such as the VNX which does provide it.

 

For more information check out these ShortTake and ChalkTalk videos

 

3 New Management Console

It’s always interesting how GUI’s of applications and OS’s tend to be generational and what I mean by that is they tend to have a look of the time, led by one of the major vendors.  I remember when Windows XP first came out every application after had that look and feel and more recently Apple have led the way again, closely followed by Windows with its metro look.  The new 3Par management console or SSMC (StoreServ Management Console) as it’s now called follows the current format for minimal, clean and crisp looking applications.  The SSMC also now replaces System Reporter with the functionality in place to consolidate more applications in the future.

 

On trend with VMware the thick based application is now gone and the management console is web based allowing it to be run on non PC devices such as tablets.  Those of you that are VMware administrators will see other features are already established in Vsphere such as a global search box, which allows any part of the storage inventory to be searched and a maps view to show how the physical and logical relationship between storage devices fit together. There is a new dashboard screen that gives you an overview of your systems status and health which looks great, see below.

 

Like before you can manage all your systems from a single management console and the new NAS functionality will also be managed through the same console.  If I get a chance to play with this over the next couple of days I will try and get some more screenshots of this and put up another post.

You can see more of the new console in this video.

4 Enhanced StoreOnce Integration

StoreOnce is HP’s disk based backup appliance, a software suite called StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central was announced.  The feature that will probably most interest 3Par owners is Flat Backup, this allows snapshots taken on the 3Par to be directly utilised by the StoreOnce device to take application consistent backups without the need for a 3rd party backup application.  Currently flat backups only support VMware although the supported application list is expected to grow over time.

 

Again more information is available in this video.

Final Thoughts

My first time at HP Discover and wow what a first day I just wasn’t expecting that many announcements, and to be fair any one of them would have stood alone as a significant announcement.  I’m especially interested to see the 7440 and the idea now being promoted by HP of a hybrid array with flash performance, since I already wrote a post several months back stating that at least in the shorter term I saw the future in hybrid.

 

Since originally writing this I have learnt more about the announcements and put the details in this post .