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3PAR's tightly-clustered InSpire® Architecture brings together both hardware and software components including the purpose-built 3PAR InForm® Operating System to deliver simplicity and efficiency by eliminating the price premiums and scaling complexities associated with monolithic and modular arrays. Start small and grow as you go—affordably and non-disruptively, and all within a single, dynamically tiered array.
How is the InSpire Architecture uniquely simple and efficient?
Instant, Application-Tailored Volume Provisioning
Fine-Grained Virtualization The InSpire Architecture delivers fine-grained virtualization of lower-level components that enables the 3PAR InForm Operating System to eliminate array planning and deliver instant, application-tailored provisioning.
The InForm OS uses sub-disk virtualization to divide each physical disk into granular allocation units, or 256-MB chunklets, each of which can be independently assigned and dynamically reassigned to virtual volumes of different quality-of-service levels. These chunklets are selected and grouped to meet user-defined levels of performance, cost, and availability—varying such parameters as RAID level, drive type, radial placement, and stripe width).
This fine-grained virtualization unit means that each disk drive can support many QoS levels, enabling the 3PAR InServ® Storage Server to use physical assets in the most efficient manner possible. Fine-grained virtualization also delivers the flexibility to respond to changing application workloads quickly and non-disruptively.
Wide Striping of Data The InSpire Architecture gives the InForm OS the ability to stripe writes widely across all array resources (controllers, cache, disks, and loops) to leverage the InServ’s fine-grained virtualization and provide superior end user performance. Wide striping enables the system to collectively leverage resources across all disk and controller resources to eliminate tradeoffs between utilization and performance. Even the smallest volumes can leverage the performance of 50 or 100 disk drives and all the InServ’s Controller Nodes for optimal performance without compromising utilization—as happens with manual performance boosting techniques such as “short stroking.”
With the InForm OS, provisioning is managed intelligently and autonomically while the massively parallel and fine-grained striping of data across internal resources assures high and predictable levels of service for all workload types. Service conditions remain high and predictable as the use of the system grows or in the event of a component failure. Traditional storage planning, change management, and array-specific professional services are eliminated.
New: Persistent Cache3PAR Persistent Cache is a resiliency feature and part of the InForm OS that enables all quad-node and larger InServ arrays to maintain required service levels even in the event of a cache or controller node failure. With dual-controller arrays from legacy vendors, in the event of a failure, “write-through” mode is used to suspend the use of write caching for data integrity reasons, leading to storage performance degradation of 70-80%. Even monolithic arrays experience “degraded mode” in these situations, which can impact required application performance levels to the point of being considered an outage.
3PAR Persistent Cache preserves write-caching in the event of a controller node failure by rapidly re-mirroring cache to the other nodes in the cluster—made possible by leveraging the InSpire Architecture with its unique Mesh-Active design. 3PAR is the only vendor to incorporate this industry-leading service level protection capability into midrange arrays as well as high-end arrays.
Learn more»
Reservationless, Dedicate-on-Write Provisioning A reservationless, dedicate-on-write approach to thin provisioning enables 3PAR’s thin software applications to draw and configure capacity in fine-grained increments from a single free space reservoir without prededication of any kind. Other vendors claim to offer thin provisioning but actually require separate thin provisioning pools for each data service level. These pools are actually silos of allocated-but-unused capacity that can require manual setup, provisioning, and management that impacts thin provisioning ROI and flexibility. In addition, with reservationless provisioning, virtual private array instances can be provisioned without preallocated capacity.
Mesh-Active Controller TechnologyAll InServ arrays feature 3PAR’s unique Mesh-Active controller technology. Unlike legacy “active-active” midrange controller architectures—where each LUN (or volume) is active on only a single controller—3PAR’s Mesh-Active architecture allows each LUN to be active on every mesh controller in the array. By concurrently applying all node resources to each LUN, Mesh-Active technology delivers far more headroom and load-balanced performance and simplified management for virtual datacenters.
Mixed Workload SupportThe InSpire Architecture features unique mixed workload support that enables transaction- and throughput-intensive workloads to run without contention on a single array without any manual segregation of workloads to different physical resources.
This feature eliminates the need to purchase and maintain separate arrays to support individual applications, alleviating datacenter sprawl by reducing your storage footprint by 50% or more. Mixed workload support within InServ arrays is achieved through parallelizing data movement and metadata processing within each controller. While data movement is handled by the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC and Data Cache, metadata processing happens in the Intel® CPUs and Control Cache. The result is simultaneously high transaction levels and throughput-intensive performance within a single array.
3PAR InSpire Architecture
3PAR's tightly-clustered InSpire® Architecture brings together both hardware and software components including the purpose-built 3PAR InForm® Operating System to deliver simplicity and efficiency by eliminating the price premiums and scaling complexities associated with monolithic and modular arrays. Start small and grow as you go—affordably and non-disruptively, and all within a single, dynamically tiered array.
How is the InSpire Architecture uniquely simple and efficient?
- Fine-Grained Virtualization
- Wide Striping of Data
- New: Persistent Cache
- Reservationless, Dedicate-on-Write Provisioning
- Mesh-Active Controller Technology
- Mixed Workload Support
Instant, Application-Tailored Volume Provisioning
The InForm OS uses sub-disk virtualization to divide each physical disk into granular allocation units, or 256-MB chunklets, each of which can be independently assigned and dynamically reassigned to virtual volumes of different quality-of-service levels. These chunklets are selected and grouped to meet user-defined levels of performance, cost, and availability—varying such parameters as RAID level, drive type, radial placement, and stripe width).
This fine-grained virtualization unit means that each disk drive can support many QoS levels, enabling the 3PAR InServ® Storage Server to use physical assets in the most efficient manner possible. Fine-grained virtualization also delivers the flexibility to respond to changing application workloads quickly and non-disruptively.
Wide Striping of Data The InSpire Architecture gives the InForm OS the ability to stripe writes widely across all array resources (controllers, cache, disks, and loops) to leverage the InServ’s fine-grained virtualization and provide superior end user performance. Wide striping enables the system to collectively leverage resources across all disk and controller resources to eliminate tradeoffs between utilization and performance. Even the smallest volumes can leverage the performance of 50 or 100 disk drives and all the InServ’s Controller Nodes for optimal performance without compromising utilization—as happens with manual performance boosting techniques such as “short stroking.”
With the InForm OS, provisioning is managed intelligently and autonomically while the massively parallel and fine-grained striping of data across internal resources assures high and predictable levels of service for all workload types. Service conditions remain high and predictable as the use of the system grows or in the event of a component failure. Traditional storage planning, change management, and array-specific professional services are eliminated.
New: Persistent Cache3PAR Persistent Cache is a resiliency feature and part of the InForm OS that enables all quad-node and larger InServ arrays to maintain required service levels even in the event of a cache or controller node failure. With dual-controller arrays from legacy vendors, in the event of a failure, “write-through” mode is used to suspend the use of write caching for data integrity reasons, leading to storage performance degradation of 70-80%. Even monolithic arrays experience “degraded mode” in these situations, which can impact required application performance levels to the point of being considered an outage.
3PAR Persistent Cache preserves write-caching in the event of a controller node failure by rapidly re-mirroring cache to the other nodes in the cluster—made possible by leveraging the InSpire Architecture with its unique Mesh-Active design. 3PAR is the only vendor to incorporate this industry-leading service level protection capability into midrange arrays as well as high-end arrays.
Learn more»
Reservationless, Dedicate-on-Write Provisioning A reservationless, dedicate-on-write approach to thin provisioning enables 3PAR’s thin software applications to draw and configure capacity in fine-grained increments from a single free space reservoir without prededication of any kind. Other vendors claim to offer thin provisioning but actually require separate thin provisioning pools for each data service level. These pools are actually silos of allocated-but-unused capacity that can require manual setup, provisioning, and management that impacts thin provisioning ROI and flexibility. In addition, with reservationless provisioning, virtual private array instances can be provisioned without preallocated capacity.
Mesh-Active Controller TechnologyAll InServ arrays feature 3PAR’s unique Mesh-Active controller technology. Unlike legacy “active-active” midrange controller architectures—where each LUN (or volume) is active on only a single controller—3PAR’s Mesh-Active architecture allows each LUN to be active on every mesh controller in the array. By concurrently applying all node resources to each LUN, Mesh-Active technology delivers far more headroom and load-balanced performance and simplified management for virtual datacenters.
Mixed Workload SupportThe InSpire Architecture features unique mixed workload support that enables transaction- and throughput-intensive workloads to run without contention on a single array without any manual segregation of workloads to different physical resources.
This feature eliminates the need to purchase and maintain separate arrays to support individual applications, alleviating datacenter sprawl by reducing your storage footprint by 50% or more. Mixed workload support within InServ arrays is achieved through parallelizing data movement and metadata processing within each controller. While data movement is handled by the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC and Data Cache, metadata processing happens in the Intel® CPUs and Control Cache. The result is simultaneously high transaction levels and throughput-intensive performance within a single array.
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