3PAR Adaptive Optimization overcomes most drawbacks associated with traditional approaches to  service level optimisation.
“Most companies are familiar with one of the latest storage technologies, solid state (SSD), which  allows for increased performance to applications and services,” says Adam Day, storage sales  specialist at HP. “But along with it, companies are also aware of the high-cost associated with running  this advanced technology to address the entire application capacity need.”
Optimally, explains Day, an automatic service-level optimisation system is needed, with SSD limited to only frequently-used data. “And contrary to popular belief, this system doesn’t have to be disruptive,” he  says. “Virtualised storage such as 3PAR allows non-disruptive quality of service.”

Optimisation without disruption Now more than ever, IT managers are under pressure to deliver the  service levels necessary for a wide variety of mission-critical applications at the lowest possible cost,  explains Day. Traditional approaches to service level optimisation cannot meet this need due to  limitations such as:

• Prohibitive cost of placing entire volumes onto SSDs
• Inability to scale sub-volume optimization to accommodate large, missioncritical datacenters
• Insuffi cient administrative controls and override mechanisms
• Inability to move data without impacting service levels
• Unproven technologies that introduce unnecessary risk

3PAR® Adaptive Optimization

This solution is a granular, policydriven, autonomic storage tiering software solution that delivers service level optimisation for enterprises and cloud datacenters at the lowest possible cost while increasing  agility and minimising risk.

Says Day, “3PAR is a leader inautonomic storage tiering for service level optimization.” 3PAR Dynamic  Optimization software has been widely deployed for non-disruptive workload rebalancing across 3PAR InServ® Storage Servers.

“Now, 3PAR Adaptive Optimization delivers the next major advance in autonomic storage tiering by  taking a f ne-grained, highly automated approach to service level optimisation,” says Day. Using the  massively parallel, widely striped, and highly granular 3PAR InSpire® Architecture as a foundation, Adaptive Optimization leverages the proven sub-volume data movement engine built into the 3PAR  InForm® Operating System.

“The result is highly reliable, non-disruptive, cost-optimized sub-volume storage tiering that delivers the  right quality of service to the right data at the right time, says Day.

Reduce cost

According to Day, Sub-volume level optimisation allows organisations to meet even the most stringent  performance targets with an extremely “lean” premium SSD tier, while highly economical, widely striped  Nearline (enterprise SATA) drives meet broader capacity requirements for all but the most performance  intensive data. “This approach enables datacenters using InServ arrays to meet enterprise and cloud  performance demands within a smaller footprint and for up to a 30% lower storage equipment cost than  with Fibre Channel drives alone.,” says Day.

This level of cost savings is made possible in part by application-specific thresholds and  comprehensive support for “thin” and “fat” volumes as well as volume copies. Gain agility 3PAR  Adaptive Optimization enables IT managers to react swiftly to changing business needs while delivering  service level optimization over the entire application lifecycle— autonomically and non-disruptively. Say Day, “Using 3PAR System Reporter, an administrator prioritises each application  by configuring an adaptive optimisation confi guration consisting of up to three storage tiers (each defined by drive type, RAID level, stripe width and/ or radial placement of data).,” he says.

From this point on, 3PAR Adaptive Optimization intelligently monitors sub-volume performance and then  applies user-specifi ed policies to autonomically and non-disruptively move data.

Minimize risk Adaptive Optimization leverages the InForm Operating System’s proven, fi negrained data movement engine, says Day. “This data movement engine has been widely deployed by 3PAR  customers for extremely reliable, non-disruptive rebalancing of storage volumes using 3PAR Dynamic  Optimization,” he says.

According to Day, Adaptive Optimization also protects against user impact by incorporating a high  degree of user control and several policy override mechanisms. A fl exible implementation allows data movement to be scheduled and resource usage limits and tier defi nitions to be varied by application.  User-confi gurable analysis periods, collection of performance data after cache, and built-in stability mechanisms prevent data thrashing.

“With 3PAR Adaptive Optimization, gone are the days of accepting rigid service levels at less than  optimal cost. With this highly autonomic technology, IT managers can now achieve non-disruptive, cost-  and performance-optimized storage within even thelargest enterprise and cloud datacenters,” Day  concludes.