More on Virtual Connect with 3PAR with Flat SAN technology

[#1]

 By Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy

Part of our announcement at HP Discover on Monday was around the new HP Virtual Connect Direct-Attach FC for 3PAR with Flat SAN technology. This is pretty cool stuff - as I said yesterday, it reduces complexity and cost with while reducing latency between servers and storage by eliminating the need for multi-tier SANs.

I have a GREAT podcast with Alex Kramer.  Alex is on the Virtual Connect engineering team in our ProLiant software team and he really helped me to understand exactly what we announced.  Here's my podcast with Alex:

You can download this podcast by doing a right-click and "Save as" here. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes - go to the iTunes store and search for "Around the Storage Block" or you can open this link and click on the "View in iTunes" button under my picture.

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Dig deeper

There's an hp.com announcement page with a bit more info you can dig into so check that out.  There have also been several press articles that have focused on this - here's a link to a few of them:

• Via Datacenter Dynamics, "HP Discover: HP does away with multi-tier SAN"
• Via CRN, "HP's 3PAR storage connects to blades without SAN, targeting Cisco, EMC offerings"
• Via Chris Mellor at The Register, "HP freezes out SAN fabric".

If you have any comments or questions about our news on Monday, don't hesitate to leave a comment or send me a Tweet.

[#2]

I work for an SMB-sized, quasi-governmental entity that has already made an investment in the HP blade infrastructure, but this announcement while interesting, may not be a cost-effective solution as I would need to replace my existing 4gbps VC-FC modules with the new FlexFabric modules, probably using the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10/24 Enterprise Edition BLc7000 Option (2 x HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-port modules plus 1 x VCEM BL-c7000 enclosure license) for each enclosure.  Am I missing something here?  How would Flat SAN benefit a business my size?

[#3]

Thanks for your question about the new Virtual Connect Direct-attach Fibre Channel feature we announced at Discover 2012 this week.  Customer requirements, and what infrastructure makes sense to deploy, will vary from customer to customer.  In your case, you describe that you already have a current Virtual Connect FC Module in place.  I’m assuming that’s paired with a VC Ethernet module – maintaining separate fabrics.  This feature does require the VC FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port module as you mentioned, so the expense of moving the Converged Networking model probably won’t make sense for you at this time.   When it’s time to refresh your infrastructure, you could consider converging your fabrics into one VC Module, eliminating the need to refresh your VC FC modules – since you would eliminate the SAN Fabric infrastructure too.  If you were to add an enclosure (with new interconnects), you may find it an option as well.  It will also give you faster provisioning, and reduced latency in your SAN Fabric infrastructure.  Fewer components to set up, configure, maintain, and even stock as spares, is always a good thing.

[#4]

what about F-class and FLAT SAN?

[#5]

@sf - its supported on F- and T-class 3PAR systems.