HPE XP7 – Product Brief

Overview

The HPE XP7 is an OEM of the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) G1500.  The XP7 builds on the high-end, highly reliable systems before it; the P9500 and the earlier XP models.  Advances in the technology have increased performance, expanded usability with active-active stretched clusters, extended storage virtualization with Virtual Arrays, and added non-disruptive scale out capabilities to extend the life of the system.

The seamless continuation of the HPE XP7 will allow customers familiar with the earlier systems to expand on their value derived from the system with the new capabilities and performance.  Environments where the HPE XP7 are used can be expanded with the new capabilities and simplified operations.

Highlights of the XP7 include:

• Continuation of XP and P9500 hardware design
• Embedded software SVOS – Storage Virtualized Operating System
• Virtualizes up to 200 external storage systems
• Up to 247 PB external storage support
• Thin provisioning for external volumes, fat-to-thin conversion
• Flash Module Devices – 7 and 14 TB with inline hardware compression
• Compression and deduplication in software for all devices
• Automated Dynamic Tiering
  • FMDs, SSDs, SAS, and NL-SAS devices

Usage

The HPE XP7 systems are targeted for usage in the high-end enterprise space for the most demanding applications and as a platform to be used for consolidation with the ability to virtualize other storage systems behind it.  A full complement of advanced features is available with the HPE system including system management software and storage resource management software.

• Characteristics
  • Performance – The HPE systems have a history of being among if not the highest performing storage systems in their class. The SPC-1 performance at the Storage Performance Council website should be consulted for the latest performance information.
  • Availability – The HPE system has multiple redundancies built into the system and is one of the most reliable and highly available systems.
  • Replication for BC/DR – Both asynchronous and synchronous remote replication is available with multiple features.
  • Business continuity – Active-active stretched clusters are supported with Global Active Device providing metro distance stretched clusters and workload mobility in a server virtualization environment.
• Applications
  • The HPE XP7 is targeted at applications that require block I/O and have extreme performance requirements.
  • The features of snapshot and remote replication give customers high-end system capabilities. The performance and features allow applications to be deployed in high availability and business continuity environments.
• System environments
  • The HPE XP7 base is a block storage system accessed using FICON for mainframe access and Fibre Channel for open systems. There is a wide range of server operating systems supported.
• Deployment and Administration
  • The HPE XP7 is a complex system and will require HPE support personnel to install and configure. Storage specialists will need to be trained to manage the XP7.
  • There is a wealth of administrative tools available, which can be utilized by storage professionals to improve usage of the system.

Evaluator Group EvaluScale™: HPE XP7 – SAN Storage

Evaluator Group product review methodology “EvaluScale” assesses each product within a specific technology area.  The definitions of the criteria and explanations of how products are reviewed can be found in the  Evaluator Series Evaluation Guide. Download the product brief now to view the Evaluscale for this product.

Evaluator Group Opinion: Differentiating elements for HPE XP7

The HPE XP7, based on the VSP high-end system is a high-function block storage system.  The XP7 system supports storage virtualization to allow attachment of external storage systems for use as another tier of storage or for migrating data.  With external storage attached, the system can scale very large in capacity and performance.

The XP7 high-end system has an architecture that allows up to eight engines (controllers) to be installed into a backplane with a shared memory space.  This architecture is different than traditional scale-out storage systems but still does allow scaling up to a point.  The system represents the type used in high-end enterprises where reliability is of the utmost importance.  A full set of feature capabilities including storage virtualization makes this one of the premier storage systems for enterprises.

Currently, both SSDs and FMDs are supported, which can be confusing during an evaluation.  Also, the FMDs connect through an adapter card to convert PCIe to SAS.  A change to directly attach with PCIe would provide greater performance through less latency.  Evaluator Group believes this improvement will be introduced to the system in the future.