HP 3Par StoreServ 7200/7400 announced!

HP has officially removed the covers off the new P7000 3Par storage array.  This is the first 3Par array that HP had direct influence on as the P10000 was already in the works before the HP acquisition. Designed from the ground up for the SMB space the StoreServ 7000 series comes in two models, the 7200&7400. HP states that the 7000 series starts off at an easy to swallow price of only $20K without sacrificing any of the enterprise class features of the parent models.  The 7000 models will rely on the Gen4 ASIC, which is the latest version of the hardware chip.  The primary difference between the two models is the 7400’s hyper-redundant 4 controllers with cache persistence, look for that at a starting price of only $40K.  Another exciting feature on both systems is the support of 2.5 inch SAS SFF hard drives.  That means a 2U 7200 system can provide 21TB of RAW space (via 900GB SAS drives).  Amazing!

Price range for the 7200 is well under 100K with the 7400 falling right around the six figure mark depending on software options, drives and controller count.  No doubt new and existing NetApp/EMC SMB customers will start paying attention to the new 3Par lineup!

I will be posting technical details of each system as they come down the wire.