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HP 3PAR Utility Storage Benefits Summary Next-Generation Storage for Virtual and Cloud Data Centers

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HP 3PAR Utility Storage

Benefits Summary

Next-Generation Storage for Virtual and Cloud Data Centers

WHITE PAPER

Table of contents

What experts are saying... 2

 

Introduction ... 3

 

What is utility storage? ... 3

 

Reducing CAPEX... 5

 

OPEX savings ... 13

 

Greater ROI for applications and services ... 16

 

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What experts are saying

ESG Lab’s hands-on testing has confirmed that 3PAR has developed a solution that can not only reduce provisioning time by up to 90% as compared to traditional storage systems that use wizards, but which works with any high-availability cluster, database cluster, or virtual server environment.

–Tony Palmer, Enterprise Strategy Group Lab

3PAR has delivered a confluence of high-end features, advanced virtualization, and attractive cost-of-ownership to the high-end storage market. What’s more, 3PAR has brought this exciting combination to the midrange market as well.

– Laura DuBois, IDC Program Vice President, Storage Software and Solutions

As competition heats up, cloud service providers must rein in capital and operating costs while retaining the ability to scale to meet unpredictable but potentially massive data storage requirements. Thin provisioning in HP 3PAR Utility Storage does this most efficiently and provides the needed agility to operate at large scale.

–Mike Kahn, Managing Director, The Clipper Group

The design of all 3PAR systems provide optimal performance to the random I/O workloads driving today’s growing application mix….Features such as thin provisioning and wide striping were the primary design points for 3PAR, not added as an afterthought to a legacy architecture.

– Russ Fellows, Evaluator Group

The incumbency of 3PAR Utility Storage in the global service provider market—with many of the world’s top service providers relying on 3PAR Utility Storage for their cloud-based service offerings—makes it a valuable addition to the CSA.

–Jim Reavis, Cloud Security Alliance

Basically 3PAR took thin provisioning and the other storage management features that won high grades for their enterprise systems and brought those features down to the midrange with the F-Class series. The timing was good, as 3PAR had just recently upgraded its high-end T-Class platform with new features that came down to the F-Class, such as mesh-active quad-controller technology, thin provisioning, ASIC and new management software for 3PAR's thin technologies.

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Introduction

The growth and use of information has outpaced traditional storage technologies whose fundamental designs are in some cases now decades old. In many cases, the limited scalability and functionality of these outdated storage platforms have forced organizations to cobble together storage infrastructures with multiple layers of interlocking hardware and software. This perpetuates not only IT sprawl, but prevents businesses from becoming what HP calls “instant-on.” The Instant-On Enterprise serves customers, employees, partners, and citizens with precisely what they want and need, precisely when they need it—instantly, at any point in time, and through any channel. It uses technology to integrate and automate the value chain. It adapts easily and innovates rapidly. It manages risk and

environmental responsibilities. Behind the scenes, the Instant-On Enterprise streamlines everything that is required to deliver a service.

Escalating investment in storage management and SAN purchases ultimately frustrating efforts to consolidate, simplify, virtualize, and achieve cost-efficiency through realizing a converged

infrastructure that is at the heart of the Instant-On Enterprise. The continuing trends toward server and client virtualization only serve to amplify the rigidity of technology silos, the complexity of legacy application architectures, and the inefficiency of traditional storage arrays.

Virtualization is transforming data centers and the businesses they fuel. This shift is placing new demands on infrastructure that legacy storage platforms were never designed to handle. A converged infrastructure holds the keys to enabling organizations to overcome the inflexibility and high costs created by IT sprawl in order to have the freedom to shift resources away from operations in favor of fostering innovation and driving strategic initiatives that will grow the business. A fundamental element of this strategy is the deployment of a storage infrastructure that addresses the specific needs of virtual and cloud data centers with the fundamental flexibility to handle not only today’s demands, but to serve as the foundation for a data center transformation with the power to poise that data center for what comes next. While there is indeed no way to “future-proof” the data center, there are certainly actions that can be taken today to maximize infrastructure efficiency and to build in the agility necessary to meet even rapidly changing business demands.

HP 3PAR Utility Storage was built from the ground up to exceed the economic and operational requirements of even the most demanding and dynamic IT environments, and to support a converged infrastructure by providing the SAN performance, scalability, and availability that clients need to transform their data centers. The next generation of Tier 1 storage, HP 3PAR Utility Storage delivers 100% of the agility and efficiency demanded by virtual data centers and cloud computing

environments. It does this through an innovative system architecture that offers secure multi-tenancy, built-in thin processing capabilities, and autonomic management and storage tiering features that are unique in the industry.

What is utility storage?

Utility storage is a category of storage systems developed to support the “on-demand” utility

computing model that first introduced the concept of delivering IT resources as a service, much like a public utility (such as water, electricity, and natural gas). Utility storage systems were developed to not only deliver storage as if it were a utility—by enabling users to buy only what they need and pay for only what they use—but to support the broader goals of delivering IT as a Service (ITaaS) and helping businesses become “instant-on.” By far, the form of utility computing that receives the most attention today is cloud computing, a service delivery model that leverages the Internet instead of using a specific network—a condition that adds the new requirement of massive infrastructure scalability and security.

The leading global provider of utility storage, 3PAR and its unique technologies were acquired by HP in 2010. With particularly strong adoption within the hosting and enterprise cloud computing

markets, prior to this acquisition 3PAR was also ranked as the preferred utility storage vendor to 7 of the world’s top 10 revenue-generating managed service providers1. The platform’s delivery of secure

multi-tenancy was a particularly important element of this success. In addition, the company’s utility storage arrays continually achieved high marks from both enterprise and service provider clients for

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providing green storage advantages, with 95% of users recommending 3PAR arrays as a strategic component of any green IT initiative2.

The green advantages of the HP 3PAR Utility Storage platform were a direct result of improved efficiency, including the elimination of unnecessary storage capacity purchases, increased utilization of the storage capacity that is purchased, and thin copy technologies to eliminate the needless replication of empty space. According to Arun Taneja, Founder of the Taneja Group, the platform’s pioneering introduction of thin provisioning and thin copy technologies within open-systems storage arrays, combined with its administrative simplicity, was responsible for bringing to market a business model that changed the cost structure of storage and paved the way for new Hardware- and

Software-as-a-Service offerings, Web 2.0 innovation, and cloud computing3.

As part of the HP Converged Infrastructure, HP 3PAR Utility Storage helps promote infrastructure efficiency and agility, enabling clients to overcome the inflexibility and high costs of IT sprawl so that resources can be shifted toward innovation and strategic initiatives instead of operations. The integration of HP 3PAR Utility Storage with HP CloudSystem and HP BladeSystem Matrix provides clients with a simplified way to provision and scale storage for public and private cloud environments. The combination of the HP X9300 Network Storage Gateway (based on IBRIX technology) and HP 3PAR Storage Systems helps clients gain control over massive amounts of unstructured file data by enabling file and block data access on a consolidated storage infrastructure.

Whether deployed on its own or in combination with other HP storage products and solutions, the efficiency and agility benefits of HP 3PAR Utility Storage can be grouped into three broad categories: • Reduced capital expense (CAPEX)

• Reduced operating expense (OPEX)

• Greater return on investment (ROI) for applications and services

This paper discusses these benefits in detail by exploring the unique advantages and benefits of the HP 3PAR Utility Storage platform.

2 Based on a 2009 survey of 3PAR customers performed by TechValidate (www.techvalidate.com). 3 3PAR Inc., “3PAR Celebrates a Decade of Innovation,” press release, 27 May 2009,

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Reducing CAPEX

With the efficiency and agility of HP 3PAR Utility Storage, clients do not need to overprovision capacity to get the flexibility they need either today or in the future. Designed to deliver massive consolidation and scalability, HP 3PAR Utility Storage allows clients to reduce storage infrastructure while gaining the ability to respond rapidly to changing business needs. With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, clients can:

• Start small and scale smartly: With HP 3PAR Storage Systems, users can start with a small, cost-efficient footprint, avoiding the cost premiums associated with monolithic arrays. The unique HP 3PAR Architecture also allows users to scale in a granular and independent way to deliver higher performance, greater capacity, or more connectivity when and where it is needed. And since elements of the HP 3PAR Architecture are common across the entire platform, HP 3PAR Utility Storage delivers maximum investment protection as business needs grow.

All HP 3PAR Storage Systems feature a unique Mesh-Active controller technology as part of a next-generation storage architecture designed for virtual and cloud data centers. This Mesh-Active design combines the benefits of monolithic and modular architectures while eliminating price premiums and scaling complexities. Unlike legacy “active-active” controller architectures—where a storage volume is active on only a single controller—this design allows each volume to be active on every mesh controller in the system. The result is an architecture that delivers robust, load-balanced performance and greater headroom for cost-effective scalability, overcoming the tradeoffs typically associated with modular and monolithic storage.

• Purchase less storage infrastructure: HP 3PAR Utility Storage enables massive consolidation through secure multi-tenancy that enables clients to support multiple external or internal customers (user groups, departments, business units, lines of business, etc.) from a single, consolidated storage array. The key to this capability is the platform’s highly flexible and secure Virtual Private Array (VPA) technology and high-performance, massively load-balanced architecture. The result is a simple, efficient, and scalable approach to delivering secure segregation within a consolidated platform and without performance tradeoffs.

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With HP 3PAR Virtual Domains Software, clients can deliver secure administrative segregation of users and hosts within a consolidated, massively parallel HP 3PAR Storage System, allowing individual user groups and applications to leverage the high-performance architecture of HP 3PAR Storage Systems to achieve greater storage service levels (performance, availability, and

functionality). Virtual Domains enables IT organizations to deliver customized, secure, and even “self-service” storage to multiple administrators, applications, departments, or user groups while retaining the efficiency benefits of storage consolidation. It enables service providers to be more competitive by offering shared storage options without compromising security or service levels. With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, application-tailored volumes with assured and measurable service levels enable the centralization of volume management activities, which reduces the requirement to purchase multiple host-based volume management software licenses. Clients can also simplify, delay, or eliminate complex SAN infrastructures with the enormous connectivity potential and built-in LUN security of HP 3PAR Storage Systems, which allow users to connect directly to more than a hundred physical host servers and to eliminate switching layers associated with “fanning-out” to storage devices4.

Purchase storage capacity only for written data: Today’s storage arrays often force users

to provision storage in odd or over-sized amounts, or hold large amounts of storage in reserve for future uses. This can result in large pockets of unutilized capacity. HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software allows users to safely allocate more storage capacity to host applications than has actually been purchased. This means that clients can eliminate physical disk purchases immediately and postpone them indefinitely—until capacity is physically required. HP 3PAR Utility Storage takes a reservationless, dedicate-on-write approach to thin provisioning that enables the platform’s thin software applications to draw and configure capacity in fine-grained increments from a single free space reservoir without prior dedication of any kind. Other vendors claim to offer thin provisioning but actually require separate thin provisioning pools for each data service level. Such pools are silos of allocated-but-unused capacity that can require manual setup, provisioning, and

management that decreases thin provisioning return on investment (ROI) and flexibility.

In addition, HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software (InForm OS) improves capacity efficiency by allowing a given application to use fine-grained portions of hundreds of drives—a feature which also has performance benefits discussed later. The system uses sub-disk virtualization to divide each physical disk into granular allocation units, each of which can be independently assigned and dynamically reassigned to virtual volumes of different QoS levels. These chunklets are selected and grouped to meet user-defined levels of performance, cost, and availability—varying such

parameters as RAID level, drive type, radial placement, and stripe width. This fine-grained

virtualization means that each disk drive can support many QoS levels, enabling HP 3PAR Storage Systems to use physical assets in the most efficient manner possible. Fine-grained virtualization also delivers the flexibility to respond to changing application workloads quickly and non-disruptively so organizations have the agility to meet dynamic business needs.

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• Only copy what has changed: On legacy storage arrays, when “fat” volumes are copied, the extra space within those volumes is also copied. As if this weren’t enough, volume copies created for data recovery purposes can compound this waste by replicating the empty space yet again. The resulting inefficiency is a serious challenge, particularly in virtual server and virtual desktop

deployments where large amounts of capacity are typically required at the outset. HP 3PAR Virtual Copy Software allows clients to take capacity-minimizing, non-duplicative, copy-on-write snapshots of data. This represents a significant savings in capacity purchases versus the use of traditional full physical copies. Virtual Copy’s fine-grained auto-growth capability also makes it more efficient than other copy-on-write technologies, which, in addition to duplicating unused space, require

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HP 3PAR Remote Copy Software leverages Virtual Copy for remote replication and disaster recovery and is “thin-aware,” so target volumes provide the same cost and ease-of-use benefits as thin source volumes. With the combination of HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software and HP 3PAR Remote Copy Software, both primary and remote sites can share in the benefits of allocating volumes just once while consuming only necessary physical capacity. The result is unprecedented efficiency in data replication.

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As an example of this efficiency, consider a scenario where an application user requests 30 TB of capacity with a traditional storage array. If we assume a 33% capacity utilization rate, actual written data only amounts to approximately 10 TB. With traditional RAID 1 mirroring, the 30 TB request translates into 60 TB of raw capacity required. Include remote data replication, and now the required capacity expands to 120 TB raw. All of this capacity is required for only 10 TB of actual written application data. With HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software and HP 3PAR Remote Copy Software, capacity is required only when an application writes data, so by comparison, only 40 TB of raw capacity is needed to support the user’s request, RAID 1 protection, and remote data replication. This is a savings of 80 TB or roughly 67% of the capacity otherwise required with legacy solutions.

• Save 50% on a technology refresh, guaranteed: The HP 3PAR Gen3 ASIC inside each HP 3PAR Storage System features a silicon-based, zero-detection mechanism for converting “fat” volumes to "thin" volumes without impacting storage performance. This technology—known as Thin Built In—leverages a unique, software-based virtualization mapping engine for space reclamation that works with HP 3PAR Thin Conversion Software to remove allocated but unused space in existing storage volumes. HP 3PAR Utility Storage is the only storage platform with this fat-to-thin processing capability built into its system hardware5. With the HP 3PAR Get Thin Guarantee, new

clients deploying HP 3PAR Storage Systems and HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning and Thin Conversion Software as part of a storage technology refresh are guaranteed to halve the amount of capacity required to store their data, or HP will make up the difference with free disk capacity and related software and support6.

• Shrink RAID protection overhead: HP 3PAR Utility Storage offers hardware-accelerated, hyper-efficient Fast RAID 5 and RAID 6 (also known as RAID Multi-Parity, or RAID MP) on all storage system models. Fast RAID 5 boosts RAID 5 performance to within 10% of RAID 17 but with

5 See the “HP 3PAR Thin Technologies Solution Brief” for details:

http://www.3par.com/SiteObjects/E79E9D14AE7ACA31541DDEA841E2BC91/4AA3-2545ENW.pdf

6 Eligibility for the Get Thin Guarantee program is subject to acceptance of a Get Thin Offer containing the Terms and satisfaction of those Terms.

Contact your sales representative for full details

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significantly less capacity overhead.8 HP 3PAR RAID MP introduces Fast RAID 6 technology backed

by the accelerated performance and rapid RAID rebuild capabilities of the HP 3PAR Gen3 ASIC. RAID MP delivers this enhanced protection while maintaining performance levels within 15% of RAID 10 and with capacity overheads comparable to popular RAID 5 modes.9

• Purchase fewer arrays to get the job done: Traditionally, organizations have been forced to purchase additional arrays to meet application service level requirements and for cost

optimization of data. With the InForm OS, the massively parallel and fine-grained striping of data across internal resources assures high and predictable levels of service for all workload types to enable clients to consolidate with confidence. At the same time, autonomic tiering capabilities and support for multiple drive types enable clients to achieve an optimal balance of price and

performance for multiple types of data within a single, cost-efficient array.

– Performance advantages

With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, data is striped widely across all system resources (controllers, cache, disks, and loops) to leverage fine-grained virtualization capabilities and provide superior performance. This is particularly important in virtual server and virtual desktop environments, where storage is often the performance bottleneck. With the InForm OS, wide striping enables the system to collectively leverage resources across all disk and controller resources to eliminate tradeoffs between utilization and performance. Even the smallest volumes can leverage the performance of 50 or 100 disk drives and all of the system’s clustered Controller Nodes for optimal performance without compromising utilization—something that can’t be said about manual performance boosting techniques such as “short stroking.”

The HP 3PAR Architecture also features mixed workload support that enables transaction- and throughput-intensive workloads to run without contention on a single storage system without manual segregation of workloads to different physical resources. This capability is a key enabler of multi-tenancy, and eliminates the need to purchase and maintain separate arrays to support individual applications. The resulting alleviation of data center sprawl can reduce storage footprint by 50% or more.

8 3PAR Inc. and Oracle Corporation, “Simplified Database Storage Management That Lowers Management Costs and Yields High Storage

Utilization,” April 2008, http://www.3par.com/SiteObjects/FAD0993865AC1636B4E2A3CEF6B64131/oracle_3par_wp_final_0.pdf (1 March 2011).

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– Autonomic storage tiering

HP 3PAR Utility Storage features unique autonomic storage tiering capabilities that reduce costs while delivering the agility and efficiency to meet changing and unpredictable workloads in even the most demanding virtual and cloud data centers. The platform’s autonomic approach to service level optimization is designed to pair data with the most cost-effective resource capable of

meeting service level requirements at any given time, giving organizations the agility to react quickly to changing application and infrastructure requirements with total confidence. Clients can achieve service level targets at the lowest possible cost while increasing infrastructure agility and minimizing the risks typically associated with moving data between storage tiers.

Traditional approaches to service level optimization rely on static, application-level tiering. Key limitations of this approach include: complexity; inability to move data without downtime or service level impacts; and time-consuming planning, configuration, and migration. HP 3PAR Dynamic Optimization Software offers non-disruptive, autonomic workload rebalancing across HP 3PAR Storage Systems. With Dynamic Optimization, application volumes are non-disruptively distributed and redistributed across tiers to align application requirements with data QoS levels on demand.

HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization Software leverages the same fine-grained data movement engine as Dynamic Optimization but applies it to independent regions within a volume. The result is highly reliable, non-disruptive autonomic tiered storage that delivers the right QoS to the right data at the right time to meet service level targets for the lowest possible cost.

With Adaptive Optimization, HP 3PAR Storage Systems are also able to deliver high

performance levels in even the most challenging environments using an extremely lean Solid State Drive (SSD) tier in combination with highly affordable Nearline (Enterprise SATA) drives. At any given time, only the most performance-intensive data is placed onto SSDs, meaning that service level targets can be met with a minimal number of these premium drives. Meanwhile, the ability to stripe writes widely across all system resources, combined with abundantly scalable levels of performance, enables the use of highly cost-efficient Nearline drives to meet broader capacity requirements. This combination of HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization Software, SSDs, and widely striped SATA drives delivers a savings of up to 30% over the cost of using Fibre Channel drives alone.10

10 Savings based on the comparison of an HP 3PAR T400 Storage System configured with 320 x 300-GB 15K Fibre Channel drives and an HP

3PAR T400 Storage System configured with 24 x 50-GB Solid State Drives and 96 x 1-TB Serial ATA drives using HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization Software.

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• Spend less on remote replication and disaster recovery: HP 3PAR Remote Copy

Software allows clients to protect and share data from any application more simply, efficiently, and affordably. Remote Copy dramatically reduces the cost of remote data replication and disaster on several fronts: by leveraging virtual and thin copy technologies unique to HP 3PAR Utility

Storage; by enabling the use of a combination of mid-range and high-end arrays; by eliminating costly professional services engagements; and by providing both Fibre Channel and native IP-over-Ethernet support so clients are not forced to convert or extend Fibre Channel connections with expensive devices. Unique to HP 3PAR Remote Copy, the Synchronous Long Distance

replication mode gives clients an affordable, multi-site alternative for achieving low Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and zero-data-loss Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) with complete distance flexibility. Synchronous Long Distance replication combines the best of both worlds by offering the data integrity of synchronous mode disaster recovery and the extended distances (including cross-continental reach) possible with asynchronous replication.

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OPEX savings

According to Gartner, not only does operational spending consistently account for a higher percentage of overall IT spending on a global scale than do capital expenses, but in 2009-2010, operational expenses rose while capital expenditures fell.11 HP 3PAR Utility Storage lowers operating

expenses year after year by optimizing storage efficiency and maintaining it autonomically.

Simplified management reduces storage administration while thin replication technologies enable thin capacity to stay thin over time to maximize the ongoing cost benefits of deploying thin storage. These savings allow clients to maintain a sustained focused on innovation rather than operations. With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, clients can:

• Reduce storage footprint: The ultra-dense Controller Nodes and Drive Chassis of HP 3PAR Storage Systems, combined with Mixed workload support and autonomic tiering enable clients to consolidate onto fewer arrays, that consume less real estate and thus cost less to house. This footprint reduction is particularly important for cost control when leasing data center space, and for data centers located in highly dense urban areas such as London and New York City, where real estate and power resources are limited and controlling data center sprawl is crucial to keeping operating costs down.

Capacity reduction using HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software and HP 3PAR Thin Conversion software further reduce storage requirements to conserve precious data center floor space and save on operating costs related to housing storage equipment. In addition, for multiple-cabinet systems, no adjacency requirements and the ability to place individual cabinets up to 100 meters apart eliminate the need for costly data center space reservations and planning when using HP 3PAR Storage Systems. This allows customers to reduce operating expenses by squeezing every inch out of their data centers.

• Maximize administrative efficiency: Most arrays available today require as many as 30 steps just to provision a single volume, and involve burdensome restrictions that users must remember to ensure proper capacity planning. The InForm OS provides dramatically simplified, autonomic provisioning and management that relieves users of tedious planning chores and reduces the potential for error. With HP 3PAR Storage Systems, there is no pre-planning, and provisioning is cut to just two steps that can be completed in less than 15 seconds. With HP 3PAR Thin

Provisioning Software, users can provision just once for the lifetime of an application. This represents a dramatic savings, year after year.

The multi-dimensional scalability of HP 3PAR Storage Systems, coupled with the ease-of-use and autonomic management capabilities built into the InForm OS, allow clients to achieve more with less. Competing systems require customers to manage complex and layered storage infrastructures composed of multiple storage devices, switches, and host elements—all with their related

management software. When multiplied by the typical activities of any storage environment and the need to maintain compatibility between the many levels of hardware and software, management and training for such an environment can be daunting, time consuming, and expensive.

In comparison, HP 3PAR Utility Storage has been shown to improve administrative efficiency tenfold by reducing administration time by up to 90%.12 For example, HP 3PAR Rapid Provisioning

eliminates array planning by delivering instant, application-tailored, autonomic provisioning through the fine-grained virtualization of lower-level components. Provisioning is managed intelligently and automatically while striping of data across internal resources assures high and predictable service levels for all workload types. Now three clicks and 60 seconds are all that is needed to fully create and provision multiple volumes to multiple hosts.13

11 Gartner, Inc., “IT Metrics: IT Spending and Staffing Report, 2011,” 25 January, 2011.

12 Based on documented client results that are subject to unique business conditions, client IT environment, HP products deployed, and other

factors. These results may not be typical; your results may vary.

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The latest version of the HP 3PAR Management Console is fully integrated with signature HP 3PAR applications such as HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning, Virtual Copy, Dynamic Optimization, Virtual Domains, and Remote Copy Software so that it consolidates all the tools that clients need to provision, manage, optimize, and protect their entire utility storage deployment from a single console. This one console enables administrators to do it all, including: unified management of all arrays (local and remote; all storage system models, including mid-range and high-end arrays); multi-site replication set up and tested in just minutes (even using multiple replication modes and system models); and autonomic disaster recovery configuration.

• Maintain capacity efficiency over time: By dramatically reducing overall capacity requirements and keeping utilization rates high over time, HP 3PAR thin technologies not only minimize ongoing storage administration and real estate requirements, but also the cost of

powering, cooling, and managing storage—which are three major contributors to OPEX. Only HP 3PAR Utility Storage features a multifaceted thin storage approach that gives clients the ability to start thin, get thin, and stay thin.

To optimize the cost savings achieved with Thin Provisioning and Thin Conversion, thin environments must stay thin, which is where HP 3PAR Thin Persistence and Thin Reclamation Software come into play. These unique solutions keep thin storage lean and efficient by

autonomically reclaiming free but unused space on an ongoing basis. In addition, for environments that use VMware vSphere™, Microsoft® Windows® (with SDelete), and Oracle® Database (with the

ASM Storage Reclamation Utility), Thin Persistence can help free significant amounts of stranded storage. HP 3PAR Utility Storage can also drive additional capacity benefits for environments using Veritas Storage Foundation™ by Symantec™. The HP 3PAR Thin Persistence Software package includes HP 3PAR Thin Reclamation Software for Veritas Storage Foundation, which enables the use of granular file system-level information to autonomically reclaim unused space within thin volumes so they remain thin over time.

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• Reduce server change management costs: Managing patches, new releases, and parameters for operating systems and applications across multiple servers is a laborious,

error-prone, and capacity-intensive ongoing process. HP 3PAR Utility Storage solves this problem by allowing users to maintain a few “golden” boot images, and then to distribute these tested images to countless servers using space-efficient read-write snapshots. Using Virtual Copy, an administrator can create a golden image—a read-only snapshot of a given operating system or application. This enables the administrator to then create multiple read-write instances of this image, one for each server. The writable nature of the image allows simple customization (like unique parameter settings) to be specified for each server as required. Administrators gain a high degree of

centralized control and a highly scalable solution applicable to multiple servers. The results: rapid, “bare-metal” provisioning and simplified server patch management.

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Greater ROI for applications and services

For companies in the information business, the potential to generate returns from applications and services is directly related to the ability to access and serve up data to customers. For service providers, it’s about getting new clients up and running more quickly or speeding time to market for new services. For IT organizations, it’s all about new project ROI. HP 3PAR Utility Storage improves both efficiency and agility to enable enterprise and service provider clients alike to improve return on investment as compared to competing storage technologies. With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, clients can:

• Initiate revenue-generating projects sooner: With HP 3PAR Thin Provisioning Software, clients are not required to wait until next quarter’s or next year’s budget allocation in order to deploy additional applications or provision new clients to grow the business. Nor are they required to wait until needed storage is planned, sized, negotiated, procured, and installed before storage can be allocated. By maintaining a small buffer of physical capacity, clients can quickly and easily deploy new applications and services or provision new clients as needed for scheduled use and when needed for surges in demand. In either case, delays are eliminated and the focus shifted away from resource procurement to adding value to the business. Capacity is always available to start new projects, and administrator productivity does not depend on storage purchase, planning, or installation.

• Accelerate time-to-deployment: Deploying, maintaining, and upgrading mission-critical applications and services affects the ability to generate revenue and decrease costs. The rapid, autonomic provisioning capabilities of the InForm OS enable clients to reduce new project deployment windows and speed time-to-market for new applications and services.

• Reduce planned downtime: In brittle IT environments, growth or change often means

downtime. With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, change management is non-disruptive—making it easy to upgrade, reconfigure, or reconnect HP 3PAR Storage Systems. Costly and time-consuming data migrations are also a thing of the past.

• Increase availability: The hardware and software fault tolerance of HP 3PAR Storage Systems represents a new paradigm in availability measurement. With a clustered architecture that combines the best of modular and monolithic arrays, high levels of performance can be sustained even under major component failure conditions.

• Protect against demand volatility: Sustained growth and demand spikes can strain the attainable service levels of any IT department or service provider. As indicated in the table below, HP 3PAR Utility Storage improves the level of storage performance by delivering 2 to 6 times greater performance than competing monolithic or modular arrays. In addition, increasing performance is non-disruptive and easy to implement. As a result, clients can react quickly to new opportunities or unplanned demands.

• Maintain business continuity: HP 3PAR Utility Storage delivers fast and economical application and disaster recovery based on HP 3PAR Virtual Copy and Remote Copy Software. With Virtual Copy, clients can maintain an archive of frequent online copies of production data sets. After a database corruption event, administrators can quickly and automatically recover data from a “clean” copy while retaining a complete set of protected copies. This minimizes the costs of downtime and improves service levels─efficiently and with reduced chance for error. By backing up from snapshots, Virtual Copy allows clients to eliminate impact on production servers and, in the case of SAN-based backups, network resources as well.

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HP 3PAR Utility Storage also offers an automated backup solution with database-awareness and backup server integration that delivers fast, efficient database backup with minimal impact on the production server. The intelligence and automation of the platform’s data protection solutions minimize complexity, human resource requirements, and potential errors at critical moments. HP 3PAR Recovery Manager Software for Oracle, HP 3PAR Recovery Manager Software for Microsoft SQL Server, and HP 3PAR Recovery Manager Software for Exchange are application-aware snapshot management solutions that ensure complete and consistent snapshot sets. A point-and-click management console minimizes operator error and speeds time to recovery. For Oracle

environments, additional backup integration is included with Symantec™ NetBackup™, providing "one-click," non-disruptive, immediate off-host backup.

HP 3PAR Recovery Manager Software for VMware vSphere gives VMware administrators simple cost-effective control over storage resources and superior granularity when it comes to data protection and recovery. This plug-in powers the creation of hundreds of VM-aware, point-in-time snapshots via a simple, automated process for protecting and recovering Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs), VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File Systems (VMFS), individual VMs, and even individual files within VMware vSphere environments.

HP 3PAR GeoCluster Software for Microsoft Windows works with Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and HP 3PAR Remote Copy Software to automate application failover and recovery. As a result, the entire disaster recovery process becomes simpler, quicker, and more efficient. These benefits transfer to disaster recovery testing as well, which supports compliance efforts and eases the administrative burden.

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• Accelerate time-to-decision: The scale of HP 3PAR Utility Storage allows users to centrally maintain data, thus avoiding the delays and complexity associated with aggregating data from dispersed locations. For example, HP 3PAR Virtual Copy Software can be used to enable real-time data analysis. Users can make an instant copy of production data available to a data warehouse application for extraction and analysis, all with minimal performance impact to production

resources. By allowing administrators to co-locate production and decision support datasets, Virtual Copy enables IT departments to create instant snapshots of production datasets for use in extract, transform, and load (ETL) operations, thereby accelerating data warehouse creation. Afterwards, snapshots of the data warehouse can become multiple sources for parallel datamart creation, speeding data mining and reporting application delivery.

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Conclusions

HP 3PAR Utility Storage was designed from the ground up to deliver massive scalability, secure multi-tenancy, high performance, and high availability to fuel enterprise-class virtual data centers and cloud computing environments. Industry-leading software solutions provide unique benefits that make any cloud more agile and efficient while ensuring secure segregation of user groups and

applications.

By reducing or eliminating capital and operating expense, and by enhancing, accelerating, and protecting application and service ROI, HP 3PAR Utility Storage improves the return on IT, and on information itself. With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, clients can:

Get efficient

• Purchase 50% less capacity to store data.

• Spend 90% less time managing the SAN infrastructure.

• Support multiple tenants securely on a single, consolidated system.

Get agile

• Instantly provision storage to expedite new applications and services. • Scale SANs rapidly to meet dynamic business needs.

• Meet service level changes autonomically and without active management.

Most importantly, HP 3PAR Utility Storage provides the storage foundation necessary in building a converged infrastructure that transforms the data center. Such transformation is key to overcoming the inflexibility and high costs created by IT sprawl and shifting the focus to innovation and strategic initiatives that add value to the business.

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© Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Oracle is registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates. 4AA3-4024ENW, Created April 2011

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