On the HP Discover in June 2013 (I wrote 2014, sorry for that typo). HP has announced the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 All-Flash Array. To optimize the StoreServ platform for all-flash workloads, HP made some changes to the hardware of the nodes. The 7450 uses 8-core Intel Xeon CPUs instead 6-core 1.8 Ghz CPUs, the cache was doubled from 64GB to 128GB and they added some changes to the 3PAR OS: HP added additional cache flush queues to separate the flushing of cache for rotating rust and SSD devices.
The developtment of the Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) goes back to H3C, a joint venture between Huawai and 3COM. With the acquisition of 3COM by HP, IRF capable products were integrated into the HP Networking product portfolio.
What is IRF? IRF is a software-based solution to connect multiple switches together and create a logical switching devices. The idea behind IRF is to create a logical device with one control and multiple data planes.
I’m a bit late, but HP released a new version of their HP Service Pack for ProLiant in June 2014. This version of the SPP supersedes the version 2014.02.0(B). This release adds support for HPs new 20 GbE adapter
HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 630FLB Adapter HP FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 630M Adapter and contains new firmware (v4.20b) for HP BladeSystem c-Class Virtual Connect, 4/8Gb 20-port and 8Gb 24-port FC components. HP also added the following firmware and software components to this release:
HP StoreOnce Catalyst is an enterprise-wide deduplication algorithm which is used in HP StoreOnce appliances, HP StoreOnce VSA and HP Data Protector. With StoreOnce Catalyst, deduplicated data can be moved between Catalyst capable devices without the need to rehydrate the data. Think about the backup in your remote location. You can move the deduplicated data to your central StoreOnce appliance in your HQ without rehydrating the data. This saves bandwidth and time.
Yesterday I received the following tweet:
@vMario156 Yes, this was stated in an older version of the best practice guide. 1 IO is currently best practice, not only for 3PAR.
— Patrick Terlisten (@PTerlisten) June 5, 2014 Later Craig Kilborn joined the conversation and I decided to clarify this 100 or 1 IOPS myth the next morning.
@Craig_Kilborn @vMario156 I check this tomorrow at the office. I don't know why this was changed, but it has changed from 100 to 1 IO.
One of the tasks that I finish before I present the first Virtual Volumes (VV) to hosts is to discuss the need of a custom SATP claimrule with the customer. Requirement for a custom claimrule is usually, that the active and optimized path should be switched after each IO and not after 1000 IOs. Duncan Epping wrote a nice blog post some years ago. I recommend to read it.
Some basics The Storage Array Type Plug-In (SATP) is responsable for array-specific operations, like health monitoring of physical paths, reporting of path state changes and path failover.
HP 3PAR Adaptive Optimization (AO) enables autonomic storage tiering on HP 3PAR storage arrays. With this feature the HP 3PAR storage system analyzes IO and then migrates regions of 128 MB between different storage tiers. Frequently accessed regions of volumes are moved to higher tiers, less frequently accessed regions are shifted to lower tiers. I often talk with customers about AO and I know that this feature is sometimes misunderstood and misconfigured.
Some weeks ago, Frank Denneman wrote a short blog post about accessing his Supermicro IPMI with SSH. He used this access to power on his lab servers.I don’t use Supermicro boards in my lab, but I have four HP ProLiants with iLO and iLO has a also a SSH interface. This way to power on my servers seemed very practical, especially because the iLO web interface isn’t the fastest. But I wanted it a bit more automated, so I decided to use Plink to send commands via SSH.
HP StoreOnce Appliances or VSA offers three different types of backup destinations:
Virtual Tape Library (VTL) NAS (CIFS or NFS) StoreOnce Catalyst If you use Veeam Backup & Replication, the NAS feature is possibly worth a try. Using the NAS feature, the StoreOnce appliance or VSA offers a CIFS or NFS share, which can be used as a backup destionation. Today I want to show you how you can use a NAS share of a StoreOnce VSA with Veeam Backup & Replication.
In part I of this series I showed you the download and the deployment of the HP StoreOnce VSA. Part II showed you the configuration of two libraries and the connection of the backup server to this two tape libraries. Part III of this series covers the configuration of devices and meda pools in HP Data Protector 8.1. This article will not show the installation of HP Data Protector 8.1.
