HPE has added three new models to its StoreOnce purpose-built deduplicating backup appliance range, upping capacities and transfer speeds.
Update: HPE info added 9 September 2021 re HW boosts to performance and 5660 max usable capacity downshift from 5650. 5650 Cloud Bank max storage number corrected.
There are three tiers to the StoreOnce line: 36xx entry level, 525x mid-range and 526x high end. These systems compete with Dell EMC’s PowerProtect/DataDomain systems and also the Exagrid and Quantum DXI products. The new StoreOnce models are the 3660, 5260 and 5660.
HPE’s announcement was made via a blog by product marketeer Ashwin Shetty who rates StoreOnce highly: “This week I will borrow the concept of superheroes, and relate it to our own storage super hero — HPE StoreOnce.”
He blogs: “Today, we are happy to introduce the next generation of HPE StoreOnce Systems that can scale from smaller, remote offices, to the largest enterprises and service providers. … HPE StoreOnce modernizes data protection for your hybrid cloud environment by neutralizing threats like ransomware, simplifying operations, delivering on SLAs, and protecting data — without any lock-in, and with rapid recovery on-premises in your datacenter or low-cost archiving in the cloud.”
Shetty’s blog has a slide showing the new products:
We added them in to a table listing the old ones, with numbers obtained from HPE product spec sheets:
Capacities and speed
The existing models are based on ProLiant Gen-10 servers and we are assuming that HPE has uprated the CPUs in the new products to get the transfer speed acceleration, and increased disk capacities to get the capacities lifted.
The 3660 tops the 36xx model range with enhanced capacities and transfer speed. The 5260 matches the 566x model range with enhanced capacities and transfer speed. But the 5660 has lower maximum usable capacity and Cloud Bank capacity than the 5650, although it has a much enhanced transfer speed. We’ve asked HP to clarify what is happening here, and to confirm the new model CPU upgrades.
An HPE Spokesperson said: “We have updated the StoreOnce platform to the ProLiant DL385 Gen10+ server platform. The StoreOnce 5260 and 5660 boot from Smart Array Controller. In addition, 8 x SSDs are used for data cache in these models. The use of SSDs provides higher performance as an acceleration layer for storage.”
And: “Yes, the maximum usable capacity of the StoreOnce 5660 is 1.1PB as compared to StoreOnce 5650 (1.7PB). Based on our research and customer feedback, we found that a vast majority of customers have not utilized more than 1 PB of storage capacity and with the new StoreOnce Systems we have optimized the overall capacity to align with the customer requirements.”
The 5660 has been optimised for performance over capacity and its 105TB/hour exceeds the high-end PowerProtect DP8900’s 94TB/hour.
The transfer speed performance increases are impressive and Shetty believes Primera and Nimble array users should be pleased with faster backups — ditto for 3PAR and Alletra array userss.
The high-end 5660 can store 1.1PB locally (usable capacity) and this is exceeded by a 32-node Exagrid cluster using EX84 nodes and its 5.4PB. Exagrid has a scale-out architecture.
Shetty’s concluding paragraph goes into blogger’s overkill: “The Avengers, Spiderman, Black Panther, Superman — they have some amazing powers like flight, shape-shifting, super speed and strength. We all need superheroes in our lives, and so do our business data and applications. With our enhanced superhero — HPE StoreOnce — and its amazing capabilities, you can rest assured that your data is always protected”
The entire StoreOnce model range specs can be seen here.
