HP Debuts New Storage, Backup Systems, Cuts Prices

7 Cheap Cloud Storage Options

HP on Monday at HP Discover in Frankfurt, Germany, introduced storage products in what the company says is its largest storage launch ever. HP converged its storage arrays into a new family, the HP StoreServ; introduced a new file and object-based system, the HP StoreAll; and rolled out HP StoreOnce Backup, a deduplication platform for SMBs, enterprise-size businesses and service providers.

HP's converged storage is designed to serve the primary storage needs of its mid-range to large customers, while providing data protection, information analytics and retention services, the company said. It supports block, object and file-based storage and accommodates both hard disk drives and solid state drive storage.

Two new mid-range models join the StoreServ family: The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 and the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400. Included with these arrays is 3PAR StoreServ file services, which allows IT managers to deduplicate storage capacity taken by home directories; tier data to different types of hard disk and solid state storage; and provide support for SMB 3.0, encryption and local or distributed clustering capability.

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Also new is the all-SSD 3PAR StoreServ 7000, which accommodates as many as 240 SSDs with as much as 320,000 IOPS of performance. It supports multiple applications as tenants, with each application capable of having different performance levels. The 7000 can be used with any HP 3PAR StoreServ array.

The HP StoreServ 7200 has dual controllers, 144 hard disk drives and 120 SSDs, 24GB of cache, 12 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports, four iSCSI ports and two built-in remote copy ports. The 7400 differs in that it has two or four controllers, between 240 and 480 HDDs and 240 SSDs, 32 GB to 64 GB of cache, 24 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports, and two to four remote copy ports.

In addition, all of the HP StoreServ arrays have software hooks to Autonomy and HP software and include a gateway to HP cloud services. HP also provides an upgrade path for HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) customers to the new HP 3PAR StoreServ arrays, which will replace the EVA at some point.

The new StoreServ arrays compete with arrays from EMC such as the VMAX and VNX. The StoreServ 7200 starts at $20,000, and the 7400 starts at $32,000.

HP StoreOnce appliances are now available with StoreOnce Catalyst, which provides three times faster recovery than EMC Data Domain appliances and three times faster backup than previous StoreOnce appliances. StoreOnce Catalyst allows server-based deduplication. The HP StoreOnce 6000 appliance has been enhanced with multi-tenancy characteristics for service providers and large enterprises to include granular reporting to easy chargeback, enhanced permissions for end-users and administrators, and separation of management and data traffic.

The company also upgraded the HP StoreOnce 2000 and 4000 appliances with faster performance and a lower price. The new appliances cost 25% less than previous appliances. The 2000 costs $10,000 and the 4000 cost $25,000.

Finally, HP announced the HP StoreAll object and file storage array, which incorporates querying capability. The HP StoreAll is capable of storing 16 PB of data and thousands of objects, and can consist of as many as 1,000 nodes. Retention policies and WORM capability are included, as is integration with Autonomy IDOL and Express Query, a product from HP Labs that enables discovery, compliance and analytics. The HP StoreAll also supports RESTful APIs for synchronization and sharing and concurrent access for all nodes and file shares. StoreAll is expected to be available later this month for as little as $0.91 per gigabyte.

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