HP’s 3PAR P1000 system announcement with its all-flash option is an important validation of flash storage in the marketplace, writes Wikibon Analyst Scott Lowe in his latest Professional Alert. While the P1000 also supports traditional spinning disk drives through 8 GB Fiber Channel and 10 GB iSCSI connections, it is the first system from a major vendor designed to support all-flash storage configurations. For HP customers, it also provides a path to an all-flash storage future when flash cost-per-GB drops to a level comparable to that of SATA disk. And it gives HP a product that can compete with the all-flash storage startups for applications that demand the high speed of all-flash storage today.

The P10000 supports up to 512 solid-state disks (SSDs) of up to 200 GB each with four controller pairs for a total of 128 SSDs per controller pair and a raw capacity of 100 TB. This is both massive scale and high performance in a single storage tier, which, Lowe points out, effectively eliminates the need for constant manual administrator intervention in very large, high-speed transactional systems such as airline and large hotel chain reservation and financial trading systems.

And he says, it gives HP customers the assurance that they can build hybrid storage systems today using solid state for “hot” data where cost-per-IO and pure read/write speeds are the important measures and SATA drives for “cool” data. But as the cost of flash falls to the point where it makes sense to move more of that cooler data to flash, they can adjust their existing P10000 systems until they have migrated to all-flash arrays without expensive forklift upgrades.

Like all Wikibon community research, this Professional Alert is available in its entirety without charge on the Wikibon.org Web site. Interested IT professionals are invited to register on the Wikibon site, which allows them to read, correct, and comment on this and other Wikibon research as well as receive Wikibon’s Peer Incite announcements and newsletters.