HP has added to its Converged Storage portfolio, as the firm aims to simplify architecture and cut deployment management costs, all whilst offering at least double the performance.
David Scott SVP and GM at HP took the stage at the firm's Discover 2012 event in Frankfurt to launch three key platforms. He claimed that legacy storage architectures which were designed 15 to 25 years ago are struggling to keep up with advancements in the fields cloud and virtualisation.
"That's not the only problems customers face. If you look at the environmentthere are a tremendous number of different architectures (10+) that provide different tiers of storage," Scott told attendees.
Scott guaranteed businesses will be able to undergo "storage liposuction" if they move from legacy architecture to HP's Converged Storage products.
"Different architectures fundamentally bring increased inefficiency and cost."
HP aims reduce this complex management and facilitate interoperability between platforms though its "polymorphic" architecture a single-system which can scale from low to high-end, but which retains support for common block, object and file applications.
The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 was the first flagship product to be unveiled. This can support traditional HDDs, but its SSD configuration can be scaled up to 240 drives to deliver maximum throughput of 320,000 IOPS. This provides twice the performance of similarly priced arrays, according to HP with a starting price of $20,000.
Scott guaranteed businesses will be able to undergo "storage liposuction" if they move from legacy architecture to HP's Converged Storage products.
"We have a get thin guarantee. If we don't save [you] 50 per cent in that move we will provide extra equipment [until we do]."
HP also introduced the StoreAll Storage product a scalable platform, which aims to allow business to store and mine data.
StoreAll sorts data into a metadata database using software developed by HP Labs known as Express Query. This allows users to conduct search queries 100,000 times faster than traditional file system search methods allowing businesses to mark decisions faster.
The platform has the HP Autonomy Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) software integrated allowing businesses to analyse vast amounts of data in seconds, without the need for supercomputers.
Ironically, the first demonstration on stage at Discover involved technology from Autonomy, despite the highly publicised acquisition woes. HP demonstrated how it took one second to answer a query from 500 million objects using one server.
Finally HP unveiled its StoreOne Backup system, which works together with HP StoreOnce Catalyst software to provide efficient data movement and high-performance deduplication.
This system aims to perform backups up to three times faster at a 35 per cent lower cost than the closest competitive system, HP added.
The HP StoreServ 7200 is available now, which starting price of $20,000. The 7400 model starts at $32,000.
HP StoreAll Storage will be launched on 20 December, with prices starting at $0.91 per GB.
HP StoreOnce Backup systems are also available now. The 6200 model is priced at $250,000. HP StoreOnce 2000 Backup systems start at $10,000 and HP StoreOnce 4000 Backup systems retails at $30,000.
