HP Intros New Flash, Data Protection Storage For SMBs

Hewlett-Packard on Monday opened its annual HP Global Partner Conference with the introduction of new flash, NAS and data protection storage offerings geared toward HP's SMB partners.

The new storage solutions for SMBs are leveraging HP's enterprise-class storage experience, said Patrick Osborne, director of product management and marketing for HP storage.

"We're scaling high-performance solutions to SMBs with flash storage, enhanced data protection and enhanced NAS offerings," Osborne told CRN.

[Related: HP Global Partner Conference: 10 New Ways For Partners To Drive Sales Growth]

HP has enhanced its MSA family of SMB storage arrays with the addition of SSDs for use as a low-cost, high-performance read cache. The new SSD option, which lists starting at $1,599, is in addition to the standard flash cache now shipping in about 25 percent of all MSA arrays sold, Osborne said.

HP also expanded its StoreVirtual scale-out storage line with the introduction of its new StoreVirtual 4335 hybrid flash array. The StoreVirtual 4335 features the same user interface, command line interface and data services as HP's StoreVirtual virtual storage appliance, but comes as an integrated hardware appliance with three 400-GB SSDs and seven 900-GB spinning drives.

Also new from HP are a couple of additions to the company's StoreOnce line of disk-based data protection and deduplication appliances.

New to the line is the StoreOnce 2900, which can be configured with between 15.5 TB and 31.5 TB of raw capacity. That, Osborne said, puts it between HP's existing StoreOnce 2700, which starts at 5.5 TB of raw capacity, and the StoreOnce 4500, which can have from 24 TB to 124 TB.

"The StoreOnce 2900 can either be used as a complete purpose-built backup appliance for SMBs, or can be used as a replication target for other StoreOnce solutions," he said.

Also being expanded is the StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance, or VSA. The StoreOnce VSA runs in a virtual machine supporting VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, or KVM hypervisors. It runs on industry-standard hardware to provide a low-cost data protection appliance with raw capacity of up to 50 TB, Osborne said. A 1-TB version is also available for use by SMBs at no charge, he said.

HP on Monday also unveiled three new models in its StoreEasy NAS family, a family of appliances that is the dominating brand in the sub-$15,000 category, Osborne said, citing IDC numbers.

The three new models differ primarily in their capacity and in the number of users they support. The HP StoreEasy 1450, which starts at $5,497, comes with a minimum of four 1-TB SATA hard drives, but scales to up to 24 TB total in 1U. The HP StoreEasy 1650 maxes out at 72 TB of raw internal capacity in a 2U chassis, but starts with eight 2-TB hard drives. The HP StoreEasy 1850, which starts at $14,657 with eight 1.2-TB SAS hard drives, expands to up to 43.2 TB in 2U.

HP is also bundling its StoreEasy NAS appliance and its LiveVault archiving service as a backup-as-a-service offering. Starting price is $7,500, which includes an HP StoreEasy 1450 appliance combined with a 2-TB license for the LiveVault cloud, Osborne said.

HP storage has proven to be a winner for Camera Corner Connecting Point, a Green Bay, Wis.-based solution provider and HP enterprise partner, said CEO Rick Chernick.

"We're winning deals we couldn't before against the competition," Chernick told CRN. "I don't remember the last time we lost a storage deal."

Chernick said HP's StoreOnce product line is quickly picking up steam with his company's clients.

"How to back up clients' data as the amount of that data grows is critical," he said. "People want to back up everything today. HP is making significant improvements."

PUBLISHED MARCH 16, 2015