Infotech Lead Asia: HP is set to take on IBM in the storage space with a number of new initiatives.
Both IBM and HP are not the top storage player, according to a report by IDC for Q4 2012.
IDC says EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 30.7 percent revenue share in the fourth quarter of 2012, followed by IBM and NetApp with 15.0 percent and 11.6 percent market share, respectively. HP and Hitachi ended the quarter in a statistical tie for the number four position with market shares of 9.3 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.
HP on Tuesday expanded its Converged Storage portfolio with a solid-state optimized all-flash HP 3PAR StoreServ system.
The IT giant also announced its StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) that cuts the cost of small site backup by up to 65 percent.
On the other hand, IBM on Monday added support for 4TB drives to its Storwize V7000 and XIV storage systems for 33 percent more capacity in the same space, and new capabilities to XIV that let clients send large volumes of data between systems through the cloud without performance degradation.
What IBM says
IBM enhanced its Easy Tier technology, which moves data to the most effective storage tier in a storage system for faster performance and greater efficiency.
The new Easy Tier Server function helps boost performance even further by caching the most-frequently accessed data to the EXP30 Ultra SSD I/O Drawer on IBM Power Systems.
IBM says that when these servers are used in conjunction with the IBM DS8870 Storage System, the new Easy Tier Server capabilities can help boost storage performance by up to five times.
HP in storage space
HP claims that maximizing enterprise agility with an all-flash, solid-state-optimized array The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage system delivers more than 550,000 input/output operations per second with less than 0.7 millisecond response time.
Flash-specific caching algorithms dynamically adjust read/write granularity to reduce latency and speed transactions. In addition, HP 3PAR Priority Optimization software assures performance for specific workloads to improve overall productivity.
To deliver a rapid return on investment, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage system has hardware-accelerated data compaction that reduces capacity needs by up to 50 percent without degrading performance.
Unlike offerings from startup companies, the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 assures business continuity with persistent technologies that provide constant application access in the event of local hardware issues or a site disaster.
David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, Storage Division, HP, said: “With the new 3PAR StoreServ and StoreOnce innovations, customers get best-in-class, purpose-built solutions to address critical new requirements while retaining the simplicity that comes from an approach that can manage and serve a variety of needs without creating new storage silos.”
HP is the only vendor to offer a single product architecture that spans midrange-priced platforms, all-flash performance-optimized platforms and enterprise platforms with multipetabyte scale.
Competitors with legacy portfolios are unable to make the leap from traditional storage to flash optimized systems without starting from scratch or introducing separate storage silos.
A new mobile solution based on IBM Worklight server on PureSystems for both Power and x86 was created to accelerate clients’ access to millions of mobile users by allowing mobile applications to be deployed in as little as 30 minutes.
“Cloud computing and Big Data analytics are playing key roles in helping organizations lower operating expenses, improve efficiencies, and increase productivity,” said Ajay Mittal, director, Systems & Technology Group, IBM India/ South Asia.
IBM says its Linear Tape File System Enterprise Edition is based on LTFS Library Edition and it can help lower storage and archive costs up to 90 percent.
According to HP, unlike competitors that require the separate expense of a dedicated appliance, HP 3PAR Peer Persistence is an active-active stretch cluster that provides transparent data center failover to eliminate workflow disruptions.
HP’s new HP StoreFabric 16-gigabit (Gb) SAN infrastructure eliminates bandwidth bottlenecks to maximize the performance of flash-based systems.
IBM FlashSystem series deliver less than 1/10 the cost per transaction while using 4 percent of the energy and 2 percent of the space compared to hybrid disk and flash systems.
HP StoreOnce VSA reduces physical hardware requirements by up to 50 percent and energy costs by up to 70 percent.
HP says unlike the fragmented complexity of competitive solutions, only HP StoreOnce meets enterprise disk backup needs with a single storage architecture.
It can be deployed across application and backup servers, as well as on physical and virtual storage appliances. This enables customers to transfer deduplicated data between any HP StoreOnce system without adding the bandwidth and management overhead of disparate systems.
Krishna K
editor@infotechlead.com
