Hewlett Packard Enterprise has added automated management based on predictive analytics and expanded integration with automation and containerization platforms to its 3PAR all-flash storage products.
The new capabilities are the latest steps in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based hardware vendor’s ongoing campaign to turn the 3PAR portfolio into the storage platform of choice for self-managing, “autonomous data centers.”
Powered by machine learning technology, the automated predictive support functionality announced today draws on existing integration between 3PAR arrays and HPE’s InfoSight storage analytics solution. Utilizing historical telemetry from tens of thousands of 3PAR systems currently in production, InfoSight can now reduce storage-related downtime by anticipating and automatically addressing impending technical issues before they occur.
The new functionality is available immediately at no extra charge to all users of 3PAR products with an active support contract. HPE expects the feature to grow continually more accurate as the underlying data set it’s based on gets larger.
“You can envision over time, as we learn from a very large install base, we’re going to be able to get better and improve the customer experience significantly,” says Vish Mulchand, senior director of product management for 3PAR at HPE.
The 3PAR family now offers broader support for containerized environments as well through integration with Google’s Kubernetes platform and Red Hat OpenShift. It already supported the Docker and Mesosphere DC/OS container platforms.
New “pre-built blueprints” for Chef, Puppet, and Ansible and software development kits for the Ruby and Python scripting languages, meanwhile, enable companies to embed 3PAR arrays more easily in automation and orchestration schemes for private and hybrid cloud infrastructure as well.
The containerization and automation extensions are available now at no extra charge to all 3PAR customers.
HPE took the first steps towards its autonomous data center strategy for 3PAR systems last November, when it added “cross-stack analytics” and “global visibility” features to the product line. The former helps administrators more quickly diagnose issues between storage arrays and the virtual machines they support. The latter offers detailed storage performance and usage information that companies can draw on for forecasting and capacity planning purposes. Like the predictive support automation functionality introduced today, both those features are delivered via HPE InfoSight.
Last month, HPE enabled channel partners to offer consumption-based pricing for select 3PAR models through its GreenLake Flex Capacity subscription service.
“You end up paying only for what you use,” Mulchand notes, which makes incorporating 3PAR arrays in pay-as-you-go cloud computing environments easier.
According to Mulchand, future analytics-based additions to the 3PAR family will include “intelligent workload placement” functionality that determines the most efficient place within a bank of arrays to put new workloads and a performance benchmarking feature that will let companies see how their metrics compare to those of other organizations with similar combinations of hardware and software.
Forthcoming 3PAR systems will offer built-in support for storage class memory and NVMe as well, Mulchand says. HPE equipped its Nimble Storage product line to support those emerging technologies, which are eventually expected to improve storage performance dramatically, in May.
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