HP announces new storage offerings for software-defined data centers

HP has announced new storage offerings for the software-defined data center (SDDC) that simplify deployment of scale-out storage for cloud computing and virtual server environments. In addition, the company also introduced a new entry-level all-flash array to enable affordable application performance acceleration.

Among the many new storage offerings announced the company highlighted the HP StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance as a fully integrated storage option for HP Helion OpenStack and HP Helion OpenStack Community Edition. HP also enhanced its StoreVirtual Storage hypervisor integration and released a new HP StoreOnce VSA license to cut backup costs by up to 86 percent for small and remote sites.

[caption id="attachment_79710" align="alignleft" width="380"] Image: Reuters[/caption]

With its new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All-Flash Starter kit, HP said its customers can benefit from all-flash performance at half the cost of competing entry-level all-flash arrays. Also, the company expanded its collaboration with VMware to integrate HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage on VMware's planned Virtual Volumes (VVols) storage architecture.

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"As customers move to the software-defined data center, they face gaps with legacy hardware-oriented storage," said Barun Lala, director, HP Storage, India. "For increased agility, HP delivers software-defined storage via VSAs that optimize cost and all-flash, service-refined storage to optimize service levels-both orchestrated with common tools."

According to the company, HP StoreVirtual VSA supports any physical server and hypervisor-attached external storage. It also now supports Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) as well as VMware vSphere and Windows Server with Hyper-V. HP StoreVirtual Storage-including both VSA and physical appliances-features an updated Cinder interface to support OpenStack orchestration, plus a full set of RESTful APIs. "These enhancements provide highly available, scale-out storage for cloud computing environments and enable HP to offer fully functional, software-defined storage via integration of HP StoreVirtual VSA software within the HP Helion cloud portfolio."

In addition to HP Helion-based management and orchestration, customers may also choose other platforms to simplify storage management for virtual servers and cloud environments. The HP OneView for VMware vCenter plug-in and HP StoreFront Manager for Microsoft plug-in enable wizard-driven installation, configuration and monitoring of VSA-based storage.

HP StoreVirtual Storage customers-including both VSA and physical appliances-can get immediate, granular visibility into performance, capacity and system health with the HP StoreFront Analytics Pack for VMware vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS).

HP introduced a 4TB HP StoreOnce VSA, ideal for backing up small sites. For service providers looking to expand cloud services, the new HP StoreOnce VSA is included in a reference architecture from HP for Cloud Backup Infrastructure as a Service. HP StoreOnce VSA provides flexibility via expanded hypervisor support for Windows Server with Hyper-V and VMware vSphere. It also supports the HP StoreOnce Security Pack.