HP 3PAR StoreServ: Count on availability AND quality

[StorageExperts]

By Ivan Iannaccone, 3PAR StoreServ Product Management

Last week, my colleague Matt M. wrote a great blog on HP 3PAR 6-Nines Guarantee Program. On this availability topic, it’s interesting to note that often availability is used as a way to measure quality But it’s really a proxy for uptime. The quality definition is much broader. While it also includes the concept of availability, the best way to define it is as a way to measure a degree of excellence.

HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage total quality commitment

As with all HP products, assuring the quality of HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage begins with the design process and continues throughout our in-depth quality assurance processes. It even extends to the way that quality is carried through to our post-installation technical services and support solutions. HP has implemented rigorous quality assurance processes to support HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage, backed by quality testing processes that span storage software and system design, with every aspect of the software tested by individual quality assurance groups. With these quality management processes in place, HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage has helped our storage business deliver nine consecutive quarters of growth. We also beat out every other major storage vendor in the final quarter of fiscal 2013 by growing 25 percent over the same period in the previous year.*

The HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage quality assurance model

We build our HP products, including HP 3PAR StoreServ systems and all HP Converged Storage solutions, using strict governance and the highest quality standards. Quality improvement is a continuous process that includes our customer-centric approach, which allows us to apply your feedback throughout product development, testing, delivery and support. When it comes to quality, you can expect two key outcomes with your HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage solution:

1. High data/system availability as measured by system uptime
2. High reliability as measured by the system performing at optimal efficiency

Based on a closed-loop process and monitored by metrics, HP has adopted a quality-assurance model that promotes the highest levels of quality. HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems running HP 3PAR OS 3.1.2 MU3 or later have demonstrated greater than 99.999 percent, or 5-nines, availability. By following the terms of the 6-Nines Guarantee Program you can achieve even greater uptime.

HP business lifecycle

The HP business life cycle model is designed to ensure quality, from design through execution and customer support.

Plan it right: Architectural choices determine product capabilities and are required to meet quality goals. For example, critical choices made in the planning phase are responsible for allowing you to consolidate transaction- and throughput-intensive workloads onto the same HP 3PAR StoreServ array through support for mixed workloads.

Design it right: HP applies the latest design tools and techniques, including user-centered design (UCD), a structured approach for working with customers during design and development. For example, as part of its design, HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage uses Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) to flag any drives that cross specified thresholds, resulting in the controller node marking the degraded drive as a “predictive failure.” This allows the system to identify drives that require replacement before they can fail.

Source it right: This means that we take the time to make sure the components that go into each and every system are compatible, interoperable and sourced by the right supplier or partner. These components are tested at the unit and system levels during development and production. Close attention to supply chain economics is where HP excels, enabling us to bring excellent products to market.

Build it right: After we have assembled the best materials, we build it right. HP operates a large number of its own manufacturing facilities that abide by strict quality-control processes. In those cases where third-party manufacturers are used, they must also comply with HP quality standards. During the build process, manufacturing tests and audits are performed to ensure the components and the systems meet or exceed HP quality before they are shipped to the customer.

Test it right: HP houses a test lab dedicated solely to storage that consists of more than 640 test systems and over 2,000 HP 3PAR StoreServ controller nodes, 25,000 servers and a total of 130,000 disks. The following quality assurance groups test every area of the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage solution:

• System test, scalability and performance
• Storage federation
• Serviceability and upgrades
• Core HP 3PAR OS, Back-End (drives and cages)
• Remote copy, space management and data mover
• Tools and automation
• Development Integration testing
• Management interfaces, host applications and service processor
• Storage ecosystem testing

Sell it right: Part of HP’s commitment to you, our customers, is our company pledge to sell it right. For example, HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 Storage is a great choice for most midsize organizations and enterprises that want reliable, highly available primary storage at a competitive price point. With a vast number of virtualized storage arrays shipped during the last decade, HP sales engineers know when HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 Storage provides you with the most suitable solution for improving efficiency, simplifying operations and reducing TCO.

Support it right: After we sell a system, HP’s relationship with you isn’t over. It’s just beginning. This is where HP engineers become a critical element in enabling us to support it right. For example, because HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage operates in complex environments, we monitor every installation and track and report all issues through a closed-loop corrective-action process. Metrics, surveys and checklists help produce a smooth process and repeatable success, which helps ensure that HP storage solutions are deployed correctly and that our customers are satisfied—on the day of delivery and for years to come.

Dig deeper

Want to know more about HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage?

Check out the HP 3PAR StoreServ product page where you can find white papers and even free assessments.

Download this white paper to learn more about the HP 3PAR Total Quality Commitment

*Kovar, Joseph F., Gartner Q4 Server Shipment Data: HP Beats Dell Again, CRN, January 30, 2014

[nate]

Can you please integrate HP Advanced ECC into the next gen 3PAR platform (not that I myself have had memory related issues on 3PAR in the past 8 years but it is a good feature to have regardless and it is HP technology)

Also vertical clusters of course for mid range (cluster node pairs would span enclosures to survive a enclosure failure)

But in general the quality of 3PAR over the years (I have had my share of bugs over the years) has raised the bar for any other storage platform for my mission critical stuff. It's pretty **bleep** hard to cross these days -- especially if you take into account the ease of use of the platform.

[#3]

At this moment it's a great product, but it would even be better if it had vvols support already.

[#4]

Hi nate,

we already implement something similar than what described in that document so we are able to do all the predictive failure repporting and so on. We also do  not require spare memory as we have a thread called 'memory patrol', it keeps track of soft-errors on 16K memory pages and puts them on a “do not use” list when thresholds are exceeded (an generates an alert).This means that we can eliminate 'bad blocks' 16KB at a time; if there are no bad pages we use all the memory, with no need to reserve spares. This is part of the memory fencing tequinque that is available on 7000 and 10000, I added a section that describes this in our architecture white paper. 

Hi Davi,

if you have the opportunity to join VMWorld 2014 we will be talking extensively about VVOL and 3PAR.

This is the session I will be presenting if you want to register: 

https://vmworld2014.activeevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=2554