HP integrates 3Par technology for cloud computing push

HP has announced the integration of 3Par's Utility Storage technology across its Converged Infrastructure portfolio, in a move designed to make HP's datacentre offerings more flexible and cost-effective for service providers and enterprises building cloud infrastructure.

Following HP's acquisition of 3Par last autumn, the company has moved quickly to integrate 3Par's thin provisioning Utility Storage technology, announcing today that this has been implemented across HP's BladeSystem Matrix and HP CloudSystem stack.

This integration improves BladeSystem Matrix storage utilisation by 50 per cent, HP said, and provides better support for multi-tenancy, a key requirement for service providers looking to build out cloud infrastructure for customers.

Additionally, HP said that the integration of Utility Storage with its HP X9300 Network Storage Gateway simplifies storage management by enabling independent scaling of file- or block-based storage up to a maximum of 16PB.

"You can now mix file and block storage without having to pre-judge which one will grow the fastest," said Gerhard Keller, head of marketing for HP StorageWorks in EMEA.

HP also announced an update to last year's P4800 BladeSystem SAN. The P4800 G2 SAN, which fits HP's BladeSystem c7000 enclosure, is the first to be fully converged with the BladeSystem platform, eliminating the need for external storage networking, according to HP.

The P4800 G2 also runs updated SAN/IQ 9.0 software with enhanced VMware vStorage support, accelerating cloning by up to 95 per cent while cutting the load on ESX servers by 94 per cent, HP claimed.

Finally, HP has introduced a backup appliance powered by its StoreOnce de-duplication technology. The D2D4324 Backup System can protect up to 1.4PB of data using just 96TB of raw disk capacity, the firm said, greatly reducing backup storage costs.