HP eliminates barriers to storage modernisation

HP has introduced HP 3PAR Online Import support for migrating data from EMC VNX and EMC CLARiiON CX4 arrays to HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, enabling customers to easily and quickly modernize legacy storage infrastructure.

With support for HP EVA Storage and now EMC VNX(1) and CLARiiON CX4 storage systems, customers can save time and money by performing self-directed platform migrations without professional services engagements or external hardware appliances.

The introduction of virtualization, cloud and IT-as-a-Service workloads into the data center adds unpredictable demands on legacy storage, compromising an organization’s ability to be agile and efficient. Additionally, moving to a new storage system often requires resource-intensive planning, change management and data migration.

To overcome the roadblocks that enterprises face when modernizing storage, HP 3PAR Online Import software now allows customers to migrate data easily from EMC VNX(1) and EMC CLARiiON CX4 systems to any HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000-Series, 10000-Series or all-flash 7450 array. This user-directed migration utility allows upgrades from legacy EMC arrays to HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage without requiring the use of host resources, specialized host software or additional hardware appliances. By using federated storage innovations and eliminating reliance on host resources, data migration with 3PAR Online Import is less disruptive to applications and can performed faster than other methods.

For existing EMC VNX customers, the latest generation of EMC VNX arrays—or VNX2—use an operating system that is not supported on earlier VNX models, so the upgrade path from a first-generation VNX array to VNX2 requires a full data migration. Replacing EMC VNX(1) and CLARiiON CX4 arrays with VNX2 requires 40 percent to 80 percent more commands than upgrading to HP 3PAR StoreServ, and involves either data migration tools that consume host resourcesand impact application performance or necessitates the use of costly additional hardware appliances.

“IT managers are challenged to increase business agility and efficiency but are constantly held back by gaps in fragmented and complex legacy storage systems,” said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, HP Storage. “HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage delivers features not available on EMC VNX and now we’re removing the data migration roadblock to enable affordable tier-1 storage for trapped EMC customers.”

Reduce the cost of storage modernization and data migration
According to industry analysts and the professional IT community at Wikibon, data migration has traditionally been a source of pain for customers. A Wikibon study states that the time to provision new arrays averages five months and migration costs exceed one-half of the initial array cost itself.

To help customers reduce storage costs, HP 3PAR Online Import software leverages the HP 3PAR Gen4 ASIC to drive efficient, inline, fat-to-thin conversion that takes fully provisioned (or fat) volumes from a legacy storage system and uses zero-block deduplication technology to convert them into thin-provisioned volumes on HP 3PAR StoreServ. It is this built-in fat-to-thin conversion capability that enables HP to offer a 50 percent capacity savings guarantee to EMC customers as part of the Get Thin Guarantee program.

HP 3PAR Online Import software is provided to new HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage customers at no charge for 180 days as part of the HP 3PAR Operating System (OS) Suite and does not require professional services. This means that migrating from older EMC VNX and EMC CLARiiON CX4 storage systems to HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage is now extremely cost-efficient and, in many cases, less costly than migrating to VNX2 since no additional hardware is ever required.

Increase agility with storage born for virtualization and IT as a Service
HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage is a multitenant storage platform with tier-1 resiliency features and a single operating system that spans high-end, midrange, all-flash and hybrid arrays. This allows customers to reduce administrative complexity via common management across multiple classes of storage. In addition, customers can increase resource utilization by consolidating diverse and unpredictable workloads onto a single system and by nondisruptively load balancing between HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems. A common architecture also allows customers to upgrade to the latest version of the HP 3PAR OS on any model HP 3PAR StoreServ System.