In one of my previous posts I mentioned a new reference architecture from HP to attack the hyper-converged systems environment based on HP Proliant SL servers with VMware and VSAN.
Seen the number of visits on this page it seems to be a ‘hot’ topic.
It is obvious that HP would create also a solution with its own software defined storage VSA based on StoreVirtual storage (which has several advantages compared to VSAN imho).
Well: the solution is there, announced at VMWorld in Barcelona. It is nicely positioned in the existing Converged Systems portfolio.
After the CS100/300/700/700x series there is now the newly released Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual System.
Two models will be initially released:
CS 240-HC
– 4 compute nodes with VMware vSphere and StoreVirtual software
– 64 CPU cores @ 2.0 GHz
– 512 GB RAM
– 8 x 10GbE + 8 x 1GbE
– 24 x 1.2 TB SAS drives
CS 242-HC
– 4 compute nodes with VMware vSphere and StoreVirtual software
– 80 CPU cores @ 2.8 GHz
– 1 TB RAM
– 8 x 10GbE + 8 x 1GbE
– 16 x 1.2 TB SAS drives + 8 x 400GB SSD including Adaptive Optimization
All this is combined in a 2U chassis. You can scale out up to four CS 200-HC appliances in one resource pool. Multiple pools can be managed from the same management console.
In a later release (early 2015) there will be also a EVO RAIL version as well.
One important difference with solutions from competitors like EVO RAIL and Nutanix you have the choice between a solution with or without auto-tiering so SSD/SAS or SAS only storage.
HP guarantees a quick and easy setup in under 15 minutes with management through the VMware vCenter console.
Thanks to the Network RAID on storage level HP delivers a five 9’s high availability solution. And with Peer Motion technology from StoreVirtual it is possible to non-disruptively add, migrate or replicate data between physical and virtual appliances without scarifying performance.
The solution is pre-installed and pre-configured with VMware software and can be integrated in an existing infrastructure managed by vCenter and optionally Operations Manager for increased analytics. It is obvious the system is VMware certified for multi-site DR, high availability (HA and fault tolerant (FT) features.
Find more information on the hyper-converged systems here
Take also a look at the great blog from Calvin Zito aka HPStorageGuy on the new CS 200-HC
Another great read is the article of 3PARdude