The title of this blog post mentions two terms that have to be explained. First, a VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (or VMware vMSC) is a configuration of a VMware vSphere cluster, that is based on a a stretched storage cluster. Secondly, HP 3PAR Peer Persistence adds functionalities to HP 3PAR Remote Copy software and HP 3PAR OS, that two 3PAR storage systems form a nearly continuous storage system. HP 3PAR Peer Persistence allows you, to create a VMware vMSC configuration and to achieve a new quality of availability and reliability.

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.