The Next Generation « Tech. Ops. Guys. com(Cue Star Trek: The Next Generation theme music). Thanks for reading!! Just been using it for a long time and it's one of the very few technologies that I am passionate about - I have written a ton about 3. PAR over past three years. They say it's the biggest announcement for storage from HP in more than a decade. I first got wind of what was coming last Fall, though there wasn't much information available at the time other than a picture and some thoughts as to what might happen. Stuff wasn't nailed down yet. I was fortunate enough to finally visit 3. PAR HQ a couple of months ago and get a much more in depth briefing as to what was coming, and I'll tell you what it's been damn hard to contain my excitement. HP announced a 7. PAR sales, along with more than 1,2. Along with that HP said that their Store. Once growth is 4. By contrast HP did not reveal any growth numbers for either their Lefthand Store. Virtual platform nor their IBRIX Store. ![]() All platforms. David Scott, former CEO of 3. PAR tried to set the tone as a general storage product launch, they have enhancements to primary storage, to file/object scale- out storage as well as backup/archive storage. You know I'm biased, I don't try to hide that. But it was obvious to me at the end of the presentation this announcement was all about one thing: David's baby - 3. PAR. Based on the web site, I believe the T- class of 3. PAR systems is finally retired now. Replaced last year by the V- Class (aka P1. Biggest changes to 3. PAR in at least six years. The products that are coming out today are in my opinion, the largest set of product (AND policy) enhancements/changes/etc from 3. PAR in at least the past six years that I've been a customer. First - a blast from the past. The first mid range 3. PAR system - the E2. Hello 2. 00. 6! There is some re- hashing of old concepts, specifically the concept of mid range. ![]() Following on from my first post which set the scene for what I was trying to achieve with my new test environment (Dubbed the Customer Experience Center within. NetApp SnapVault and SnapMirror: NetApp Snap Management: 1 license per CommCell. The concept of a tiered automotive supply base has become so ingrained that it is almost difficult to remember when it first began impacting industry thinking. PAR introduced their first mid range system back in 2. I was able to deploy - the E2. The E2. 00 was a dual node system that went up to 4. GB data cache per controller and up to 1. TB of usable capacity whichever came first. It was powered by the same software and same second generation ASIC (code named Eagle if I remember right) that was in the high end S- class at the time. The E2. 00 was replaced by the F2. F4. 00 in 2. 00. 9. The F- class, along with the T- class (which replaced the S- class) had the third generation ASIC in it (code named Osprey if I remember right?? The V- class which was released last year, along with what came out today has the 4th generation ASIC (code named Harrier). To- date - as far as I know the F4. SPC- 1 result out there, with greater than 9. PAR included) before or since have come close. These systems, while coined mid range in the 3. PAR world were still fairly costly. The main reason behind this was the 3. PAR architecture itself. It is a high end architecture. Where other vendors like EMC and HDS chose radically different designs for their high end vs. Net. App on the other hand was an exception - they too have a single architecture that scales from the bottom on up. Though as you might expect - Net. App and 3. PAR architectures aren't remotely comparable. Here is a diagram of the V- series controller architecture, which is very similar to the 7. PAR V- Series ASIC/CPU/PCI/Memory Architecture. Here is a diagram of the inter- node communications on an 8- node P1. T8. 00 before it, again similar to the new 7. PAR Cluster Architecture with low cost high speed passive backplane with point to point connections totalling 9. Gigabytes/second of throughput. Another reason for the higher costs was the capacity based licensing (& associated support). Some things were licensed per controller pair, some things based on raw capacity, some things licensed per system, etc. PAR licensing was not very friendly to the newbie. Renamed Products. There was some basic name changes for 3. PAR product lines: The HP 3. PAR In. Serv is now the HP 3. PAR Stor. Serv. The HP 3. PAR V8. 00 is now the HP 3. PAR 1. 08. 00. The HP 3. PAR V4. 00 is now the HP 3. PAR 1. 04. 00. The 3. PAR 7. 00. 0- series - mid range done right. The 3. PAR 7. 00. I've seen the base 7. More on this later. Note that it is not possible to upgrade in place a 7. So you still have to be sure if you want a 4- node capable system to choose the 7. Dual vs quad controller. The controller configurations are different between the two and the 7. The 7. 40. 0 is the first 3. PAR system that is not leveraging a passive backplane for all inter- node communications. I don't know what technology 3. PAR is using to provide this interconnect over a physical cable - it may be entirely proprietary. They use their own custom light weight protocols on the connection, so from a software standpoint it is their own stuff. Hardware - I don't have that information yet. A unique and key selling point for having a 4- node 3. PAR system is persistent cache, which keeps the cache in write back mode during planned or unplanned controller maintenance. PAR Persistent Cache mirrors cache from a degraded controller pair to another pair in the cluster automatically. The 3. PAR 7. 00. I believe is the Xyratex One. Stor SP- 2. 22. 4 enclosure, the same one IBM uses for their V7. Stor. Wize system (again, speculation). Speaking of the V7. I learned tonight that this IBM system implemented RAID 5 in software resulting in terrible performance. PAR RAID 5 is well - you really can't get any faster than 3. PAR RAID, that's another topic though. PAR 7. 00. 0 Series Stor. Servs. 3PAR has managed to keep it's yellow color, and not go to the HP beige/grey. Somewhat surprising though I'm told it's because it helps the systems stand out in the data center. The 7. 00. 0 series comes in two flavors - a two node 7. Both will be available starting December 1. There are also 3. This is based, I believe on the Xyratex One. Stor SP- 2. 42. 4. Xyratex One. Stor SP- 2. This is a 4. U, 2. U chassis). 3. PAR kept their system flexible by continuing to allow customers to use large capacity disks, however do keep in mind that for the best availability you do need to maintain at least two (RAID 1. RAID 5), or six (RAID 6) drive enclosures. You can forgo cage level availability if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it - that provides an extra layer of protection from hardware faults, at basically no cost of complexity on the software side (no manual layouts of volumes etc). HP has never supported the high density 3. By contrast the high end systems only support the high density enclosures at this time. PAR High Density 3. The disks are not directly accessible with this design. In order to replace disks the typical process is to run a software task on the array which then migrates all of the data from the disks in that particular drive sled (pack of four drives), to other disks on the system(any disks of the same RPM), once the drive sled is evacuated it can be safely removed. Another method is you can just pull the sled, the system will go into logging mode for writes for those disks(sending the writes elsewhere), and you have roughly seven minutes to do what you need to do and re- insert the sled before the system marks those drives as failed and begins the rebuild process. The one thing that HP does not allow on SP- 2. So you will not be able to build a 7. GB 1. 5k RPM drives that are available on the high end 1. However they do have a nice 9. GB 1. 0k RPM option in a 2. I don't think there is a technical reason behind this, so I imagine if enough customers really want this sort of setup and yell about it, then HP will cave and start supporting it. Probably won't be enough demand though. Basic array specifications. Array Model. Max. Cont. Nodes. Max. Raw. Capacity. Max. Drives. Max. Ports. Max. Data. Cache. TB1. 44. Up to 1. Gbps FC OR4x. 8Gbps FC AND 4x. Gbps i. SCSI2. 4GB7. TB4. 80. Up to 2. Gbps FC OR8x. 8Gbps FC AND 8x. Gbps i. SCSI6. 4GB1. TB9. 60. Up to 9. Gbps FC ports. Up to 1. Gbps i. SCSI1. 28. GB1. 08. 00. 81. 60. TB1. 92. 0Up to 1.
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