HP Tells Storage Virtualization Future With Left Hand
September 30th, 2009 | 
Author: I’m not a fortune teller and I don’t have a crystal ball, but during my attendance at HP Storage Tech Day I definitely received an impression that the acquisition of Left Hand Networks now plays a key role in future storage offerings at HP. Based on the discussions, presentations, and hands-on-labs I participated in, Left Hand’s storage virtualization model is obviously common strategy among other HP storage products moving forward. I predict a win/win storage scenario is “in the cards” for both HP and it’s customers.
The Left Hand Model
Left Hand Networks established itself with SMB and Mid Market customers by combining storage controllers and disk shelves into one x86 based appliance that serves iSCSI storage to ESX hosts. Linking multiple storage appliances together in a cluster, Left Hand replicates iSCSI volumes across all nodes creating a highly available SAN for virtual hosts. If one node is no longer available the remaining ones seamlessly continue to provide shared storage via the replicated data. Add to this the capability to non disruptively add additional Left Hand appliances, which then enables companies to take advantage of a pay-as-you-grow SAN. Performance improvements and tuning can also be achieved as existing volumes are automatically spread across additional disks provided with each new Left Hand appliance joining the cluster.
The acquisition press release (linked above) provides further insight into HP’s business strategy incorporating Left Hand’s products in it’s portfolio.
“With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions. Customer needs at the low end of the market will be met with the HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System (AiO) and HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) product lines. The high end will be addressed by the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) line. Customers will further benefit since LeftHand Networks’ solutions are already certified to work with a wide range of HP products, including HP ProLiant servers, HP BladeSystem infrastructure, HP ProCurve Networking and HP Insight Control management software.”
Today HP offers P4000 SAN Solutions with Left Hand technologies.
Server and Storage Convergence
HP’s message from the very beginning of Storage Tech Day was that they intended to converge their server and storage infrastructure offerings. This seems to me to be creating products that by design offer similar scale out capabilities as
Left Hand’s model. The reasons for doing so include not only the benefits of storage virtualization, but power optimization, improved disk utilization, less wasted capacity, simplified management and lower cost platforms. Recognizing the explosion of data needs today and the challenges current storage engineers face, HP repeatedly preached of their intent to provide a better way to enable online storage migration between storage tiers while reducing the complexity for doing so. Virtual arrays or pools of disks offer the ease and flexibility to dynamically configure storage.
HP EVA Family
The first storage virtualization product family introduced during the event was HP StorageWorks EVA disk arrays. Discussing the concept of array level virtualization, HP explained the EVA vision of removing traditional disk, RAID, and LUN setup time in a fashion almost like Left Hand – creating pools of disks that hosted multiple arrays. Performance tuning and configuration change sounded as simple as adding more disks or provisioning more LUNs on the same pool. Additional disk pools could be created as well, and the ability to migrate data between RAID types and across pools seems to promise a hardware alternative to VMware’s Storage VMotion. To further establish similarities to the SMB storage appliances of Left Hand, HP also announced it’s intent to migrate from it’s current proprietary storage devices to a more open x86 based standard. I’m speculating they mean storage hosted on Proliant servers.
HP SVSP
Building further on the pools of disks concept, HP also discussed their SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) architecture. Although easily confused as just a storage platform to enable cross vendor migration, HP wanted all of us to know SVSP is designed to be more and can consolidate the management and provisioning of multiple vendors’ network based storage. Therefore, SVSP can create multiple virtual disk pools that span across a mix of separate storage devices.
As HP explains on it’s SVSP communities page:
The SVSP:
- Aggregates capacity via network-based virtualization from HP and non-HP arrays, to form centrally managed pools of virtual storage
- Dynamically provisions storage, reclaim unused space, maximize application uptime by expanding capacity on a “just-in-time” basis,
- Centrally manages multiple arrays and multiple data services with a consistent set of tools
- Creates storage tiers and easily migrates data among the tiers to optimize storage costs
- Improves capacity utilization with thin provisioning for all capacity under management irrespective of the array type
- Maintains unused capacity in pool for future requirements
- Improves in some instances performance by striping LUNs across RAID arrays
Converged Infrastructure and Bladesystem Matrix
With storage products like the examples discussed so far, HP is developing what they are calling Converged Infrastructure. Although at times this converged vision of the future appeared to be a bit blurry to me, it basically outlined the integration of HP servers as the common building block of future storage virtualization solutions. Specifically, the HP Bladesystem Matrix was discussed as an end-to-end environment for virtualization and consolidation already available today. From HP’s ProCurve switches to Blades to storage, a unified platform can be developed with simplified management on the front end. HP Bladesystem Matrix is the genesis of this convergence already and appears poised to compete with similar offerings such as Cisco UCS.
IBRIX for NAS
In what appears to be a related strategy to obtaining Left Hand, HP also aquired IBRIX. I was not familiar with IBRIX before this event, but my understanding now is that IBRIX is to NAS what Left Hand is to iSCSI. IBRIX appliances apparently have been instrumental in managing the large amounts of data necessary to produce animation movies from PIXAR, for example. When I asked about using IBRIX for hosting VMs HP ’s answer indicated that NAS storage for virtual hosts may not be on the immediate roadmap, and that IBRIX was a better fit for application data or file shares.
Conclusion
The product examples mentioned in this post provide a consistent example of HP’s intent to shift storage to a more flexible model. A model that offers the ease and transparency of appliance based, scale out architecture. Like what’s possible today with Left Hand’s appliances, I think a lot of storage administrators would be very happy with a future that no longer requires SAN downtime in order to add disk shelves or controller heads. HP made this strategy very obvious to all of the bloggers attending HP Storage Tech Day in Colorado Springs with me this week.
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