Irreverence

posted on 21 August 2008 17:27

HP is very interested in using solid state drives (SSDs) to boost its mid-range EVA's performance and is ready to use them next year when the pricing is right.

That's the word from a person familiar with the situation. He says that HP Colorado Springs has done all the technical work necessary and the go/no go decision is now a marketing one and not a technology one.

There is no word on the SSD supplier or suppliers involved. STEC must obviously be in the frame. So also Intel given HP joining the Intel SSD love-in at IDF.

We also know HP is keen on flash-accelerating its servers with the Fusion-io SSD. An SSD-enhanced server should have all-round I/O acceleration. An SSD-enhanced EVA will offer extremely fast I/O from a tier zero storage layer to disk I/O-bound applications.

There was no word on HP's XP use of SSDs as that depends utterly on HDS. Our sources indicate HDS will announce USP-V use of SSDs in the near future though.

Other HP-related gossip is that it hasn't yet sold an ExDS9100 in Europe. A source said: "I can see people using it instead of EVAs because of the performance."

Our knowledgeable source said that Dell's EqualLogic PS-Series iSCSI SAN arrays are proving to be strong competition to both HP's low-end MSA arrays to and NetApp low-end products. The PS Series can be installed and usable in an hour or so and customers need minimal training. NetApp products are great but the PS Series is easier to use. The source said: "I could see that product really moving. I think it's got legs."

^{[Chris Mellor.]}