Around the Storage Block Blog

[#1]

By James R. Wilson,  XP Disk Array Product Manager

Recently Chris Mellor, a widely read columnist and blogger, wrote an article speculating on the possible next step of HP with respect to the HP StorageWorks XP ..., HP's enterprise storage offering, and the possibility of HP acquiring another product in this market space. With respect to that article on XP and Hitachi, let me make a couple of important distinctions. HP has no business or technical relationship with HDS. By contrast, HP has both an Engineering partnership and an OEM sales relationship with Hitachi, LTD of Japan .

This distinction is significant to a key premise of Chris Mellors' article that HP prefers to have control over the technology it ships. HP participates very actively in the design and core technology of the XP product family. We do not control the technology per se, but we have a very active involvement in the design and creation of the products through our engineering partnership. This engineering relationship has existed from the begining of the XP product introduction by HP, and was in fact a key component of our decision to form a relationship with Hitachi. The engineering relationship is directly with Hitachi Japan, the creators and owners of the technology, not through HDS. Sun, by contrast, is simply a reseller of the HDS technology and has no such input or connection with Hitachi Japan.

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[#2]

James,

Can you offer any meat as to what is entailed in this "engineering agreement". Do your guys have a conf call with RSD in Japan once per month... do you have guys over in Japan... do you have Hitachi Ltd staff on site at any HP corporate sites working on XP field experience and feeding back to engineering...

Putting two paragraphs up like that clarifies nothing, you dont even explain the difference between Hitachi and HDS.

[#3]

Nigel, thanks for your interest in the details of our relationship with Hitachi. Our Engineering partnership with Hitachi has many facets. Our HP XP storage architects and lead engineers have regular detailed design planning, analysis and reviews with Hitachi engineers onsite in Japan. These meetings take approximately 3-5 days per meeting and are held on a regularly scheduled basis. We also have regularly scheduled management, engineering, and marketing planning and review meetings with respect to future technology with Hitachi. I just returned from one of these held in Japan just last week. These meetings alternate on a regular basis between Japan and our HP XP headquarters in Roseville, CA. These meeting typically take 3 days per event.  

Hitachi has 6-8 engineers on site in Calilfornia to work with HP's engineering teams on a continual basis. HP engineers travel to Japan on a regular basis to work with counterparts there. HP and Hitachi also have weekly and daily conference calls as needed to manage the engineering work as required. HP and Hitachi also cooperate on operating system connectivity testing, sharing the work load between teams. Collectively, the engineering partnership between Hitachi Japan and HP serves very well to provide HP sufficient opportunities to impact the development of the XP family to meet the needs of our customers in a most satisfactory way.

[#4]

I think HP should look at having the same relationship with 3PAR. The 3PAR arrays would fit nicely betwen the EVA and the XP. Yes it would compete with the XP in some markets, but other customers like mainframe and those needing external virtualization would stick with the XP. That would give 3PAR more market visibility, and beef up HP's portfolio.

[#5]

Hi Derek - you're raising a point around positioning of the XP and EVA families.  I think there's already a bit of overlap between the EVA and XP families, not a gap - but I'm also a big fan of Al Ries and Jack Trout who said that a product's position is how potential buyers see the product".  

So that leads me to ask - what is the gap that you see between the XP and EVA families that you think requires HP to have another array?  With our current disk arrays in our portfolio (MSA, P4000, EVA, XP and the unified storage options with the X1000 and X3000),  adding another array choice isn't a comment I've ever heard anyone suggest before.

[#6]

Would it be possible for you to advise as to how much HP directs & steers the technology futures & roadmaps of the Hitachi product line? Ie is your relationship one of integration and support OR are you directly driving the design, functionality, priorities & feature roadmaps of the products? Who owns the IPR / patents? What is the future duration / commitment of the relationship?

What are the features / RFEs that are on HP's list for Hitachi?

And of course the $100m question - how do you see this changing in the future, both with products and company relationships?

[#7]

I think the 3PAR family is a good hybrid of the EVA and XP. The EVA is easy to use, simple installation, and has good internal virtualization. But it's not active/active concurrent, limited to two controllers, needs an additional appliance for iSCSI, and isn't as phyiscally dense as the 3PAR T class.

The XP is a full active/active concurrent design, scales up larger, has higher performance, but requires professional services to install and maintain. It's very complex to configure and use (at least a few years ago when I took the XP 12000 class), and also has a VERY high price tag. I'd call the XP industrial strength, but you pay for that in up front $$ and required expertise to maintain and operate it.

The 3PAR is drastically less expensive than an XP, but is an active/active concurrent design, can scale up to 8 clustered controllers, highly virtualized, customers can self-install, self-maintain, and requires no professional services. Its on par with the XP in terms of raw performance, but has the ease of use of the EVA. Like the XP, the 3PAR can be carved up into virtual domains so that service providers or multi-tenant arrays can have delegated administration.

So for customers that want a more robust array than an EVA, but don't need the added features of the XP like mainframe connectivity, or don't have the $$ or expertise required to operate an XP, the 3PAR I think is a solid choice.

My project is a BIG HP customer, utilizing Proliant servers, business desktops, racks, UPSes, monitors, printers, and lots of tape backup and older disk arrays. But 3PAR took the cake when it came to shopping for an enterprise array that had the XP features we needed at a price which the XP can't match, and importantly didn't need professional services to install and maintain.  

[#8]

Ianhf, I believe I have given as much clarity and detail as I can within the bounds of our HP/Hitachi confidentiality agreements. Clearly our relationship goes beyond integration and support. It includes active participation in the design, functionality, priorities and feature roadmaps. Both companies own patents, but have access to each other's patents through a variety of agreements. The relationship is on an automatically renewing multiyear contract. We will not comment on our detailed future feature plans in this forum. Your last question is way more than a $100 million dollar question. The XP business is a huge successful business for both parthers. We look forward to continued development, product introductions and long term success of the business.

[#9]

The current 3PAR T- and F-Models are based on the Osprey chip which supports only PCI-X ( 64 Bit, 133 MHz ). It is impossible with this basic design to implement 8GBit/s Fibre Channel , 10GBit/s iSCSI and 10 GBit/s FCoE. Therefore HP should wait for the next V- and G-Models which use the Harrier chip based on PCI Express.  

[#10]

In the end the points made are all in support in creating the persception that HP makes storage. They do not. They do not have a clue.

There is nothing beneficial about any HP storage product if it can not be supported by knowledgeable people. Try them out and see how long you wait for an answer to a real problem...

Buy from HDS with a real service ethic steeped in Mainframe tradition.

[#11]

So does this mean that HP will not use it's acquisition of 3PAR to  develop an Enterprise Storage System that will compete directly with the HDS USPV / HPXP/ EMC Symmetrix in terms of performance and scalability and hence spell the end of the Hitachi / HP relationship?

[#12]

Hi Archie,

HP didn't acquire 3Par.  I'm not in a position to even speculate on that.

Calvin

[#13]

It doesn't make sense for Hitachi to maintain 2 firmware codes in the same machine...

[#14]

I did tell you back in January....and it's finally a done deal. This deal has been going on for months behind closed doors and the Dell issue was  just a smokescreen. Now to my original point  will this now spell the end of the Hitachi / HP relationship or is thsi going to be a direct competitor to the VBlock, interesting times ahead.