The "Third Wave" of All-Flash Arrays: HPE Launches Next-Gen 3PAR OS
April 26, 2017 • Blog Post
Read about our futureproof foundation for hybrid IT
The transition to all-flash storage has entered what many in the storage industry refer to as the "third wave," where all-flash arrays are quickly becoming the default storage tier for business-critical applications. Since all-flash storage first came on the scene, the industry has weathered the rise and fall of several "first-wave" vendors that were too narrowly focused on performance and "second-wave" vendors purely focused on lowering costs.
This rapid adoption, evolution, and upheaval isnt surprising given the improvements in predictable performance and operational efficiency that have come from flash. However, these innovations have placed new requirements on all-flash arrays and, more broadly, on the all-flash data center as a whole. One key to meeting these new requirements is the ability to anticipate emerging technologies and to develop capabilities that extend beyond the boundaries of the all-flash array itself.
Today, HPE is announcing a series of new 3PAR flash storage updates designed to do just that.
A Futureproof Foundation for Hybrid IT
As all-flash storage becomes the new standard and the time between technology refreshes becomes longer, there is a need to design and evaluate all-flash arrays in terms of how they support hybrid IT projects and how well they insulate the business from underlying technology shifts.
Today, we have taken these next-generation flash media and third-wave requirements into account in a series of new 3PAR flash storage updates that mark our most significant feature release to date. These updates give customers the ability to:
- Lower cost and boost performance with 3PAR Adaptive Data Reduction (ADR), which delivers 4:1 data compaction to lower capacity requirements by 75 percent for massive cost and operational savings. One of the most notable elements of ADR is a unique capability called Data Packing, a feature that picks up where other data reduction technologies leave off. By assuring that individually compressed blocks of data are organized and written to disk in the most efficient and performant way possible, it's the key to optimizing data reduction not just today but on an ongoing basis. We also expanded support for unstructured file data and cloud-native applications. Best of all, new all-inclusive licensing for 3PAR delivers these and other benefits at no additional charge while reducing total system costs by up to 30 percent.
- Mitigate risk increasing all-flash data center resiliency, from core to cloud to edge . HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence now has three-data center support for disaster recovery across greater distances. Looking beyond the datacenter, data protected on HPE StoreOnce Systems can now be replicated to the cloud thanks to HPE StoreOnce VSA software running in Microsoft Azure using StoreOnce Catalyst integration by HPE Data Protector and third party partners. At the edge of the enterprise, new HPE Peer Copy enables bi-directional data movement between HPE StoreVirtual VSA running at remote sites and 3PAR all-flash arrays in the data center.
- Simplify operations by automating for agility, from data center to data service. Enhancements to the HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console (SSMC) include the ability to automate and schedule large-scale data migrations and fully automated, one-click SAN zoning of Fibre Channel networks—reducing fabric provisioning effort by 90 percent.
As all-flash arrays become the "new normal" in the datacenter, enterprises that make all-flash purchasing decisions based solely on price and performance are going to be less successful in their transformation to hybrid IT. Its time to start riding the third wave.