HP LeftHand P4900 SSD arrays target virtualised infrastructure

HP is aiming to boost storage performance within highly virtualised environments with a new SSD-based LeftHand iSCSI storage area network (SAN) array, claimed to offer better scaling in performance as workloads increase.

Available worldwide from this month, the HP LeftHand P4900 Solid State Drive (SSD) storage system can be deployed in either a dedicated SSD configuration, or as an SSD tier within a larger LeftHand management group.

According to HP, increasing use of virtualisation in corporate datacentres is placing a greater strain on storage infrastructure. Deploying SSDs is one solution, but even their performance can be hindered by restricted throughput, it said.

In contrast, HP claims the new LeftHand model is capable of scaling linearly in capacity and performance as workload demands increase.

The LeftHand P4900 itself is configured as a dual-node cluster, with each node fitting up to 16 serial attached SCSI (SAS) SSD drives, redundant hot-swappable power supplies, and redundant fans.

Out of the box, buyers get eight 400GB drives per node, for a starting price of £82,278 including VAT.

This configuration is capable of delivering 70,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) with a 3ms response time, HP said.

The launch follows on from the firm's announcement that it has overhauled its Always On support platform to better handle cloud computing and virtualisation, as well as reducing the time needed to assess and resolve issues on virtualised infrastructure.