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3PAR: 3PAR T-Class Utility Storage Array Wins China Computerworld Product of the Year Award

^{Published on 2009-01-19 05:09:15, Last Modified on 2009-01-19 05:10:41 - Market Wire}
 

FREMONT, CA--(Marketwire - January 19, 2009) - [ 3PAR ]® (NYSE: [ PAR ]), the leading global provider of [ utility storage ], announced today that the 3PAR InServ® T-Class Storage Server with Thin Built In™ received the 2008 Product of the Year award in the category of Storage/Disk Storage from China Computerworld Magazine. Each year, China Computerworld Labs (CCW Labs) selects the best products of the year in a range of categories to receive this prestigious award. The selection criteria include innovation of technology, influence on technology development, market adoption and momentum within China, and vendor commitment to strategic, long-term growth within China.

Thin Built In™ Design

The 3PAR Gen3 ASICs within the T-Class arrays feature a Thin Built In™ design to increase capacity utilization while maintaining high service levels. This design incorporates detection of allocated but unused capacity ("zero-detection" capability) into the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC. By offering a silicon-based mechanism for fat-to-thin volume conversions, Gen3 ASICs boost capacity utilization through removing allocated but unused space from traditional storage volumes. 3PAR is the first in the industry to commercially ship storage systems with this fat-to-thin capability designed into the hardware architecture of its arrays.

In addition to Thin Built In, the InServ T-Class has the following features and capabilities:

 -- Enhanced Performance. The T-Class is the fastest array available today, boasting the only single-system storage architecture to achieve 224,989.65 IOPS in a published SPC-1 benchmark -- a result achieved with 83% written capacity utilization and without complex configuration or performance tuning. -- Highly Scalable, Load-Balanced Cluster. The T-Class features a high- bandwidth, low-latency backplane that unifies cost-effective, modular, and scalable components into a highly available and autonomically load-balanced cluster. This architecture delivers industry-leading density as well as the ability to scale non-disruptively from 2 controllers and 16 disk drives to 8 controllers and 1280 disk drives within a single system. -- Tightly-Coupled Cluster with Mixed Workload Support. The full-mesh, completely passive backplane provides a dedicated 1.6-Gigabyte per second data path between the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC in each of the system's clustered controller nodes for a total of 45 Gigabytes per second. This tightly- coupled, clustered architecture enables data and metadata processing to be parallelized and distributed so that both transaction-intensive workloads (such as databases) and throughput-intensive workloads (such as data mining and backup) run without contention on the same storage resources. This feature reduces cost by eliminating the need for dedicated arrays or hardware partitions for each workload. Each drive chassis in the system supports both premium Fibre Channel and more economical Serial ATA drives for tiered storage consolidation. -- 3PAR Fast RAID. The T-Class also supports 3PAR Fast RAID 5, which uses the Gen3 ASIC's silicon-based RAID 5 XOR calculations and high memory bandwidth to deliver performance levels within 10% of RAID 1 but with 50% less RAID capacity overhead. 

"The Product of the Year award from China Computerworld is a significant milestone for 3PAR and recognizes not only the value of the 3PAR Utility Storage platform, but also our commitment to helping customers in China reduce costs and improve their green footprint," said David Scott, 3PAR President and CEO. "3PAR Utility Storage has reduced the cost of storage for customers by 50% and is ideally suited for green datacenter deployments and server consolidation projects with VMware. This is why leading enterprises and cloud service providers in China and the world over have chosen 3PAR to give them a competitive edge in growing their utility computing and utility storage environments."

About China Computerworld

Established in 1980, China Computerworld is the first newspaper in China jointly run by IDG and the Electronic Technology Information Institute of the National Information Industry Department. With its extensive, timely reports and eye-catching advertisements, China Computerworld has become by far the largest and most authoritative medium in the Chinese computer and information technology field. China Computerworld ranks No. 1 in terms of circulation among IT media, according to an audit by BPA International, an independent circulation certification institution. Web Site URL: [ http://www.ccw.com.cn ]

About 3PAR

[ 3PAR ]® (NYSE: [ PAR ]) is the leading global provider of utility storage, a category of [ highly virtualized ], tightly clustered, and dynamically tiered storage arrays built for utility computing. Organizations use utility computing to build cost-effective virtualized IT infrastructures for flexible workload consolidation. 3PAR Utility Storage gives customers an alternative to traditional arrays by delivering resilient infrastructure with increased agility at a lower total cost to meet their rapidly changing business needs. As a pioneer of thin provisioning -- a green technology developed to address storage underutilization and inefficiencies -- 3PAR offers products designed to minimize power consumption and promote environmental responsibility. With 3PAR, customers have reduced the costs of allocated storage capacity, administration, and SAN infrastructure while increasing adaptability and resiliency. 3PAR Utility Storage is built to meet the demands of open systems consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management, and performance-intensive applications. For more information, visit the 3PAR Website at: [ www.3PAR.com ].

© 2009 3PAR Inc. All rights reserved. 3PAR, the 3PAR logo, Serving Information, InServ, InForm, InSpire, and Thin Built In are all trademarks or registered trademarks of 3PAR Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.