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What hypervisors do for server utilization, 3PAR’s thin technologies do for storage. Gone are the days of throwing more disks at your storage problems. Tight IT budgets mean that new applications must be deployed on thin storage.
3PAR's thin technologies can save you 50% on the cost of a storage technology refresh—guaranteed, and then help you keep storage costs as low as possible. By dramatically reducing your overall capacity requirements and then working to keep them low, 3PAR® not only minimizes your up-front storage costs, but also the cost of housing, powering, and cooling your storage.
3PAR Thin Technologies
Thin Built In and the 3PAR Thin Engine Not content to be simply a thin provisioning pioneer, 3PAR’s Thin Built In™ technology is one of the most significant storage
innovations of this century. This revolutionary hardware capability, built right into the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC, provides an efficient, silicon-based zero-detection mechanism for converting traditional “fat” volumes from other platforms to more efficient “thin” volumes on the 3PAR array—without performance impact. This hardware capability works with 3PAR’s own “Thin Engine”—a software-based virtualization mapping engine for space reclamation—to give 3PAR arrays the power to remove allocated but unused space in existing volumes. With Thin Built In and the Thin Engine, 3PAR arrays go beyond green and address the root cause of waste that is happening in your datacenter, right now. Now you can not only start thin, but get thin and stay thin.
Start Thin. Get Thin. Stay Thin. Start Thin. Since its introduction, 3PAR Thin Provisioning software has gone on to set the gold standard for thin provisioning—giving 3PAR Utility Storage customers the ability to minimize storage TCO and meet Green IT targets. 3PAR Thin Provisioning makes this possible by cutting SAN costs, floor space requirements, and energy expenses by up to 75% and decreasing administration time by 90%. It does this by allowing you to purchase only the disk capacity you actually need, only as you actually need it. No more up-front capacity allocation. Hardware performance acceleration powers Fast RAID 5 and RAID MP (Fast RAID 6) for increased protection within 10-15% of RAID 1 performance but significantly less capacity overhead.
No more dedicating resources for each application. No more paying to power, house, and cool disks you may not need for months or years to come, or may never actually need. No more tolerating sub-optimal service levels due to root inefficiencies.
Get Thin. In an ideal world, all your storage would start thin with 3PAR Thin Provisioning. But it’s never too late to become more efficient, which is why 3PAR also gives you the ability to get thin. With 3PAR, getting thin has never been so simple, and a technology refresh has never been so rewarding—giving you the opportunity to eliminate up to 70% of the legacy capacity in your storage environment.
3PAR Thin Conversion software leverages our unique Thin Built In architecture and 3PAR Thin Engine to power the simple and rapid conversion of inefficient legacy volumes to more efficient, higher-utilization “thin” volumes on your InServ. Thin Conversion allows you to use any standard data migration utility to convert your "fat" volumes by applying the zero-detection capabilities of the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC to identify unused space and then leveraging the virtualization mapping capacilities of 3PAR Thin Engine to remap the volume without that unnecessary bulk. And because the fat-to-thin conversion mechanism is built into array hardware, volume conversions take place inline, at wire speeds, while preserving service levels, and without disruption to production workloads.
Stay Thin. What good is starting thin or getting thin if you can’t stay thin? An industry first, 3PAR offers several thin reclamation technologies to help you stay as lean and efficient as possible over time in order to defer the cost of purchasing raw capacity to handle new data growth. For example, 3PAR Thin Persistence software augments the benefits of 3PAR Thin Provisioning and 3PAR Thin Conversion by improving the average 60% capacity savings with 3PAR Thin Provisioning to 70% capacity savings or more.
Like Thin Conversion, Thin Persistence uses 3PAR’s Thin Built In and Thin Engine technologies to reclaim unused space associated with deleted data within InServ storage volumes—simply, quickly, and without disruption. 3PAR Thin Copy Reclamation does the same for unused space resulting from deleted virtual copy snapshots and remote copies.
Multiply Your Savings, Not Your Unused Space Think purchasing and maintaining more than twice the capacity you really need sounds like a bad deal? Unfortunately, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. With traditional storage, whenever application data needs to be copied—for example, for data protection, development, or other purposes—this extra empty space is also copied. As if this weren’t enough, remote copies created for data recovery purposes compound this waste even further by replicating empty space yet again. As a result, it is not uncommon for an application with two terabytes of actual written data to require as much as 60 terabytes of capacity.
This waste is an even bigger problem in virtual server environments because server consolidation projects typically require large amounts of capacity at the outset. This leaves a lot of unnecessary disks spinning away in your datacenter, and we are all left footing the bill. 3PAR thin technologies eliminate this waste by not only boosting your capacity utilization, but by ensuring that empty space is not needlessly replicated.
Start multiplying your savings, not your empty space. 3PAR thin technologies, including 3PAR Thin Copy Reclamation software, work with 3PAR Remote Copy and 3PAR Virtual Copy to address capacity underutilization and prevent making the same mistake, over and over, the way that traditional storage does when it needlessly replicates empty capacity.
3PAR Thin Technologies
Slash Your Storage Technology Refresh Costs by 50%—Guaranteed!
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3PAR's thin technologies can save you 50% on the cost of a storage technology refresh—guaranteed, and then help you keep storage costs as low as possible. By dramatically reducing your overall capacity requirements and then working to keep them low, 3PAR® not only minimizes your up-front storage costs, but also the cost of housing, powering, and cooling your storage.
3PAR Thin Technologies
Thin Built In and the 3PAR Thin Engine Not content to be simply a thin provisioning pioneer, 3PAR’s Thin Built In™ technology is one of the most significant storage
innovations of this century. This revolutionary hardware capability, built right into the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC, provides an efficient, silicon-based zero-detection mechanism for converting traditional “fat” volumes from other platforms to more efficient “thin” volumes on the 3PAR array—without performance impact. This hardware capability works with 3PAR’s own “Thin Engine”—a software-based virtualization mapping engine for space reclamation—to give 3PAR arrays the power to remove allocated but unused space in existing volumes. With Thin Built In and the Thin Engine, 3PAR arrays go beyond green and address the root cause of waste that is happening in your datacenter, right now. Now you can not only start thin, but get thin and stay thin. Start Thin. Get Thin. Stay Thin. Start Thin. Since its introduction, 3PAR Thin Provisioning software has gone on to set the gold standard for thin provisioning—giving 3PAR Utility Storage customers the ability to minimize storage TCO and meet Green IT targets. 3PAR Thin Provisioning makes this possible by cutting SAN costs, floor space requirements, and energy expenses by up to 75% and decreasing administration time by 90%. It does this by allowing you to purchase only the disk capacity you actually need, only as you actually need it. No more up-front capacity allocation. Hardware performance acceleration powers Fast RAID 5 and RAID MP (Fast RAID 6) for increased protection within 10-15% of RAID 1 performance but significantly less capacity overhead.
No more dedicating resources for each application. No more paying to power, house, and cool disks you may not need for months or years to come, or may never actually need. No more tolerating sub-optimal service levels due to root inefficiencies.
Get Thin. In an ideal world, all your storage would start thin with 3PAR Thin Provisioning. But it’s never too late to become more efficient, which is why 3PAR also gives you the ability to get thin. With 3PAR, getting thin has never been so simple, and a technology refresh has never been so rewarding—giving you the opportunity to eliminate up to 70% of the legacy capacity in your storage environment.
3PAR Thin Conversion software leverages our unique Thin Built In architecture and 3PAR Thin Engine to power the simple and rapid conversion of inefficient legacy volumes to more efficient, higher-utilization “thin” volumes on your InServ. Thin Conversion allows you to use any standard data migration utility to convert your "fat" volumes by applying the zero-detection capabilities of the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC to identify unused space and then leveraging the virtualization mapping capacilities of 3PAR Thin Engine to remap the volume without that unnecessary bulk. And because the fat-to-thin conversion mechanism is built into array hardware, volume conversions take place inline, at wire speeds, while preserving service levels, and without disruption to production workloads.
Stay Thin. What good is starting thin or getting thin if you can’t stay thin? An industry first, 3PAR offers several thin reclamation technologies to help you stay as lean and efficient as possible over time in order to defer the cost of purchasing raw capacity to handle new data growth. For example, 3PAR Thin Persistence software augments the benefits of 3PAR Thin Provisioning and 3PAR Thin Conversion by improving the average 60% capacity savings with 3PAR Thin Provisioning to 70% capacity savings or more.
Like Thin Conversion, Thin Persistence uses 3PAR’s Thin Built In and Thin Engine technologies to reclaim unused space associated with deleted data within InServ storage volumes—simply, quickly, and without disruption. 3PAR Thin Copy Reclamation does the same for unused space resulting from deleted virtual copy snapshots and remote copies.
Multiply Your Savings, Not Your Unused Space Think purchasing and maintaining more than twice the capacity you really need sounds like a bad deal? Unfortunately, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. With traditional storage, whenever application data needs to be copied—for example, for data protection, development, or other purposes—this extra empty space is also copied. As if this weren’t enough, remote copies created for data recovery purposes compound this waste even further by replicating empty space yet again. As a result, it is not uncommon for an application with two terabytes of actual written data to require as much as 60 terabytes of capacity.
This waste is an even bigger problem in virtual server environments because server consolidation projects typically require large amounts of capacity at the outset. This leaves a lot of unnecessary disks spinning away in your datacenter, and we are all left footing the bill. 3PAR thin technologies eliminate this waste by not only boosting your capacity utilization, but by ensuring that empty space is not needlessly replicated.
Start multiplying your savings, not your empty space. 3PAR thin technologies, including 3PAR Thin Copy Reclamation software, work with 3PAR Remote Copy and 3PAR Virtual Copy to address capacity underutilization and prevent making the same mistake, over and over, the way that traditional storage does when it needlessly replicates empty capacity.
The 3PAR Thin EcosystemAnother way in which 3PAR delivers a comprehensive thin strategy is through the thin ecosystem we have developed in conjunction with partners in order to extend the benefits of 3PAR’s thin technologies across the datacenter. For example, 3PAR Thin Reclamation for Veritas Storage Foundation is the first array software to take advantage of a Thin Reclamation API pioneered by 3PAR and Symantec and which enables InServ arrays to use granular file system-level information to autonomically reclaim unused file-system space within thin InServ volumes.
This API-based approach, which is presently driving the emerging T10 thin provisioning standard, means that, as more file system vendors integrate this same capability, not only will their file systems work with 3PAR arrays to reclaim unused space, but datacenters will move closer to becoming "thin by design."
Technologies
Learn More (see all)
3PAR Thin Provisioning Datasheet (PDF)
3PAR Thin Conversion (PDF)
3PAR Thin Persistence (PDF)
3PAR Thin Technologies (PDF)
Wikibon Case Study: Evaluating the Virtualization and Thin Provisioning Benefits Achieved by 3PAR Customers (Website)
3PAR Thin Conversion (PDF)
3PAR Thin Persistence (PDF)
3PAR Thin Technologies (PDF)
Wikibon Case Study: Evaluating the Virtualization and Thin Provisioning Benefits Achieved by 3PAR Customers (Website)
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