HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software -
Overview & Features

Overview

The InForm OS simplifies storage management by handling provisioning and change management autonomically-intelligently, at a subsystem level, and without administrator intervention. Autonomic provisioning features eliminate traditional storage planning by delivering instant, application-tailored provisioning. Fine-grained virtualization of lower-level components and wide striping of data ensure that service levels remain high and predictable, even as the use of the system grows or in the event of a component failure. Industry leading ease of use is delivered through the simple, unified HP 3PAR Management Console and the powerful, scriptable HP 3PAR Command Line Interface (CLI).

What's New

• InForm Operating System now operates in 64-bit mode, enabling the greater scalability levels on P10000 3PAR V-Class Storage Systems. InForm OS 3.1.1 will support 3PAR V, T and F-Class Storage Systems
• Increase in Chunklet size to 1GB for HP 3PAR V-Class Storage System provides headroom for support of future, higher-capacity drives. No change to Chunklet size for T and F-Class Storage Systems
• Configurable priority levels enable users to control the speed of Full Copy creation
• Greater number of parallel Full Copy operations enables use of Full Copy more broadly and at greater scale
• New InForm user roles - Create and Basic Edit - provide restricted privilege levels, empowering less experienced administrators to own subset of administrative tasks safely
• SMI-S 1.4 and SNMPv3 support enables enhanced standards-based management of HP 3PAR Storage Systems

Features

• HP 3PAR Rapid Provisioning is an HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software feature that delivers instant, application-tailored volume provisioning. Provisioning is managed intelligently and autonomically while traditional storage planning and change management are reduced.
• HP 3PAR Autonomic Groups is a feature designed to simplify storage provisioning for clustered and virtual server environments. Use of Autonomic Groups reduces opportunities for human error by reducing manual repetition of tedious commands, making the provisioning process more reliable.
• The HP 3PAR Scheduler feature enhances management automation, reduces administration time, and decreases the chance of administrative error by giving users full control over automated virtual copy snapshot creation and deletion.

• The unified HP 3PAR InForm Management Console simplifies storage management by placing everything you need to administer and optimize your entire HP 3PAR Utility Storage deployment in a single window, including remote replication to disaster recovery sites.
• The scriptable HP 3PAR Command Line Interface (CLI) simplifies storage management by giving you powerful customization capabilities that are simple to configure and which reduce the need for extra management tools and costly consulting services.
• SNMP and the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) enable open, standards-based management.
• Access Guard is an HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software feature that delivers user-configurable volume security at logical and physical levels that enables you to secure hosts and ports to specific virtual volumes.
• Native support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) within the HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software delivers centralized user authentication and authorization using a standard protocol for managing IT resources.

• The HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software stripes data in a massively parallel and fine-grained fashion across all internal resources. This enables service levels to remain high and predictable as the use of the system grows or in the event of a component failure.
• HP 3PAR Persistent Cache maintains service levels by preserving write-caching through rapidly re-mirroring cache to the other nodes in the cluster in the event of a cache or controller node failure.

• HP 3PAR RAID MP (Multi-Parity) uses Fast RAID 6 and the accelerated performance of the HP 3PAR ASIC to prevent data loss as a result of double disk failures. Performance levels are maintained within 15% of RAID 10 and with capacity overheads comparable to popular RAID 5 modes.
• HP 3PAR Full Copy is an HP 3PAR InForm Operating System Software feature that allows you to create thin-aware, point-in-time clones with independent service level parameters which can be rapidly resynchronized with base volumes as needed.
• The HP 3PAR Thin Copy Reclamation feature keeps your storage lean and efficient by reclaiming unused space resulting from the deletion of virtual copy snapshots associated with virtual copy and remote copy volumes.