New hyper-converged appliance combines built-in disaster recovery with next-generation servers and hybrid cloud orchestration for half the cost of competitors
HP today announced the new HP ConvergedSystem 250-HC 
StoreVirtual (CS 250), a hyper-converged appliance that offers a highly available virtual server and storage infrastructure that is configurable in minutes for nearly half the price of competitive systems.(1) This new enterprise-grade solution is designed for virtual desktops and remote office productivity but also offers an easy path to hybrid cloud.
Businesses of all sizes are looking for flexible infrastructure solutions that will allow them to quickly deploy and run new applications. According to IDC, this trend has resulted in a 116 percent year-over-year increase in hyper-converged systems sales and 60 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) anticipated through 2019.(2)
Building on HP’s market leading x86 server and virtualization solutions combined with its proven HP StoreVirtual software-defined storage (SDS) technology, the new CS 250 is business continuity-enabled from day one. The CS 250 features enhanced VMware integration, supports hybrid-cloud solution architectures and is accompanied by new delivery services and channel programs.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution for infrastructure,” said Barun Lala, Director, Storage, HP India. “This is why HP continues to offer flexible and interoperable solutions based on HP StoreVirtual technology to help our customers lower costs independent of the hypervisors and hardware platforms they choose. Hyper-convergence is simply the next step in HP’s evolution of the software-defined data center.”
Affordable hyper-convergence with built-in disaster protection and native management Built on the latest HP, Intel, and VMware technologies, the CS 250 is powered by StoreVirtual technology and offers turnkey simplicity in a fully integrated and tested hyper-converged solution. The CS 250 ships ready to quickly respond to new on-demand infrastructure and virtual desktop requirements with greater configuration flexibility designed to fit a wider range of virtualized workloads and customer budgets, including a new three-node configuration that is up to 49 percent more cost effective than comparable configurations from Nutanix and other competitors.(3)
The inclusion of three 4TB StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) licenses delivers multi-site business continuity by leveraging the system’s ability to flexibly replicate data to any other HP StoreVirtual-based solution. This means that customers can leverage their existing infrastructure as a replication target at no additional cost. The new CS 250 also allows customers to tailor the system with a choice of up to 96 processing cores, a mix of SSD and SAS disk drives, and up to 2TB of memory per 4-node appliance—double that of previous generations.(4)
The CS 250 arrives pre-configured for vSphere 5.5 or 6.0 and HP OneView InstantOn to enable customers to be production-ready with only 5 minutes of keyboard time and a total of 15 minutes deployment time, with daily management from VMware vCenter via the HP OneView for VMware vCenter plug-in.(5) This simple plug-in assures IT generalists have a unified management experience for the appliance using tools they already know.
“The storage market is rapidly evolving from traditional external storage with standalone networking and compute to converged solutions that collapse the stack,” said Stu Miniman, principal research contributor, Wikibon. “HP StoreVirtual is the original software-defined storage, it has evolved to be well positioned across multiple use cases with flexibility spanning hyper-converged, VSA, Helion OpenStack and physical storage appliances.”
Hyper-convergence meets hybrid-cloud with new solutions and services
For midsize and enterprise customers seeking an efficient and cost-effective cloud entry point, the new HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 built on the CS 250 is an open, enterprise-grade solution that provides an easy path to the hybrid cloud. This hyper-converged cloud solution leverages the clustered compute and storage resources of the CS 250 for on-premises workloads but adds self-service portal provisioning and public cloud bursting features for those moving beyond server virtualization.
HP is also introducing new Software-Defined Storage Design and Integration services to help customers deploy highly scalable, elastic cloud storage services. The design service enables customers to make informed decisions on how to modernize their storage infrastructure using software-defined storage technologies for automation and capacity pooling. The integration service provides customers with detailed configuration and implementation guidance tailored to their specific needs to accelerate time to value.
Driving velocity with new channel sales programs and demand generation
To help meet the growing interest in software-defined technologies, HP announced that it is enhancing its “Nitro” partner program and opening it up to distributors worldwide, starting with Arrow Electronics in the US. Originally launched with Intel to provide a 1TB HP StoreVirtual VSA license at no cost to customers, the latest enhancements to the program focus on equipping resellers with training tools and customer materials to promote HP StoreVirtual technologies as a cornerstone of the software-defined data center. The enhanced program also provides face-to-face reseller training, web content support, and customized demand generation materials enabling distributors to empower the broader HP reseller community to educate their customers on software-defined infrastructure and provide assistance in the transition to a software-defined data center.
Availability(6)
The 4-node CS 250-HC StoreVirtual is available on August 17th while 3-node configurations are available on September 28th. A sample solution price inclusive of the 3-node CS250 with Foundation Carepack and VMware vSphere Enterprise starts at a list price of $121,483.
HP Helion CloudSystem 9.0 will be available in September.
Software-Defined Storage Design and Integration services are available now.
