Two tickets to the ARM show: HPE buffs up the StoreVirtual line

HPE has given its SV3200 software a workout to strengthen its muscles with a raft of enhancements, but draws the line at using ARM for file access.

The company introduced a low-cost, entry-level, block-access array with its StoreVirtual 3200 in August last year. It comes with a pair of active-active 64-bit ARM controllers, not Xeon ones, and costs $14,000 for a 2U, 14.4TB product, $33,000 for a 3U, 14.4TB SV4330.

At the time HPE said: “The StoreVirtual 3200 has 100 per cent more usable capacity than a two-node 4330, is 58 per cent cheaper at street price level, costs 80 per cent less in $/GB usable capacity terms, and has equivalent performance.” That’s what you call a Xeon tax.

What’s been added to the flash-ready SV3200?

• Scale
• • Up by adding more drives or drive enclosures
  • Out by grouping controller pairs in a cluster
  • Across by federating clusters and moving workloads with Peer Motion SW

Stretch clusters are supported as is synchronous replication.

Dressed and undressed StoreVirtual 3200

A StoreVirtual 3000 File Controller has been added, and it is based on the ProLiant DL 120 server; no ARMs for file access as this uses Xeon E5-2600 v3, E5-1600 v3, E5-2600 v4, or E5-1600 v4 for its compute. This filer is possibly based on the StoreEasy 3000 (File) Gateway. It’s a shame that it isn’t ARM-powered as well.

HPE says created file shares have native Windows integration and compatibility with Windows Dynamic Access Controls. The 3000 provides sub-file deduplication and compression, and supports up to 2,000 concurrent connections. It integrates with Microsoft Work Folders on users’ PCs, notebooks and devices (Android and iOS).

StoreVirtual 3200 systems start at $6,055 for a 1GB config and $6,475 for a 10GB alternative. StoreVirtual 3000 file controllers start a $2,975. The latest StoreVirtual 3200 SW upgrade is no charge to supported customers and will be available later this quarter. ®

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