HP has unveiled Flat SAN architecture, an industry first that it says will significantly reduce complexity and cost, while lowering latency between servers and storage by eliminating the need for multi-tier SANs.
Businesses are battling to keep up with increased network traffic in the data centre due to existing legacy, multi-tier fibre-channel network architectures that need a smorgasbord of network cards, cables, switches and suchlike, says David Scott, SVP and GM, HP Storage.
He says up to 80% of network traffic in virtual and cloud data centres travels server-to-server and server-to-storage, adding complexity and cost to data centre operations.
In addition, some configurations consist of as many as 3 900 parts to connect 32 blade enclosures, creating performance bottlenecks, driving higher costs and increased complexity to build, maintain and secure.
HP Virtual Connect for 3PAR builds on the revolutionary design of HP Virtual Connect for HP BladeSystem by utilising its wire-once technology that lets customers easily add, move and change servers connected to networks without rewiring.
It also delivers a simplified architecture across storage, servers and networks, which simplifies the fibre-channel SAN fabric layer and eliminates error-causing complexity by removing fibre-channel switches and associated cables between compute and storage.
Says Scott, as a result, customers benefit from lower infrastructure costs of up to 50%, as it uses less components. It also provides decreased time to provision fibre-channel storage from hours to minutes. “Another benefit is reduced network latency - the time it takes to send data from the server to the storage array - by up to 55%, accelerating the time to deploy storage capacity.”
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