back to article What's that you say? HP's going to do WHAT to 3PAR StoreServs?

Rumours circulating today suggest HP is going to add full data deduplication to its StoreServ (3PAR) storage arrays. Deduplication identifies and removes duplicated blocks to prevent space being taken up by repetitive content. With a flash array, this also helps to reduce the amount of data written to the silicon which …

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  1. Nate Amsden

    they talked about it a bit last year

    Not sure where your rumors came from but they came out about adding this functionality last year, I don't know how broadly they talked about it but they mentioned they were going to add de-dupe and compression at a small "HP Storage tech day" which had a bunch of bloggers(inc myself) last August.

    (from my blog)

    http://www.techopsguys.com/2013/07/30/hp-storage-tech-day-3par/

    "They didn't talk about it, other than mention it on a slide, but this is the first time I've seen HP 3PAR publicly mention the terms. Specifically they mention in-line de-dupe for file and block, as well as compression support. Again, no details."

    And in case your rumor mill is sounding any other things, another feature they announced at this event last year was adding native file+object controller functionality to the 3PAR as well (mentioned in above blog - no details other than they were planning on it of course plans could change between then and now)

    If you want to see the source HP posted videos of the event here

    http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Videos-from-HP-Storage-Tech-Day-4/ba-p/143191#.U4i3C_EpKIA

  2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Meh

    Meh.

    As far as I can tell from what I hear from other 3PAR users, the majority of 3PARs are serving up storage to Windows servers, and dedupe is included with Win Server 2012, so why bother? I suspect someone is making a tick-box implementation like NetApp's, just so they can put a tick in the box on those tenders where the customers insist on dedupe as a requirement because someone like NetApp told them it is 'vital'.

    1. NotYourITSalesGuy
      Alert

      Re: Meh.

      There's a big difference for file vs block dedupe. WSS will not do as much as at the array level.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: NotYourITSalesGuy Re: Meh.

        "There's a big difference for file vs block dedupe....." Yes, one of the differences being the dedupe with WS2012 is done at the server level and doesn't take up processing power on the array, meaning it has virtually zero impact for the other servers the array is providing storage to. Since dedupe is most often done on data at rest (such as multiple copies of docs on a fileserver or in email attachments) why would I want to slow my tier 1 applications down by making my array dedupe tier 3? Do the dedupe off the array on the fileserver, and why not use the built-in tool you have already paid for with the fileserver OS?

        ".....WSS will not do as much as at the array level." Stupid comment - apart from the fact WS2012 seems to do dedupe just fine, it also knows what is happening on the server and can balance out the performance of the server with the need to dedupe. It is annoying as fudge when your tier 1 application is going slow because some gormless email admin has kicked off a dedupe of tier 3 email archives that happen to be on the same storage device. You do realise you don't get dedupe for 'free', that it chews up both disk IO, cache and processing power, right?

  3. Fuzz

    Reasons for revealing a new feature

    1. said feature currently sucks ass and you've no idea when it's going to be ready for use so you don't want to be done for misselling

    2. You intend to release said feature soon but when you do it will be part of a new product so you don't want people to not buy your current product whilst they wait for your new product to be released.

  4. M. B.

    Hopefully...

    ...this comes to fruition, even as a check-box item it can only help them. More so if they can leverage their ASIC technology to accelerate the dedupe process, if it's as transparent (and effective) as the thin suite it'll be solid.

    I wonder how a 2-node 7450 would then compare to a Pure FlashArray, considering the robust options and maturity of the InServ software and the availability of the 960GB SSD from HP (compared with Pure's 512GB modules).

  5. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    3Par finally gets dedupe? Suddenly, 3par becomes interesting to me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Trevor finally gets 3par? Suddenly, trevor becomes interesting.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Oh look, an anonymous coward with a product/vendor fetish. How boring.

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