The recent 3PAR 7200 AFA is a clear attack on the All Flash Array market space. The 7200 AFA maintains 3PAR’s common hardware, OS and feature set across the 3PAR product portfolio enabling all the 3PAR differentiators. The primary difference from the 7200 AFA and it’s bigger brother, 3PAR 7450 is the number of controllers (2 vs. 4 respectively) purely in attempt to create a solution that completes head-to-head with the other AFA manufacturers.
HP Announcement
The much awaited VVOL feature will change the game for managing storage for VMware environment. Every VM will have direct access to a virtual volume eliminating the need for data stores thus providing the best of traditional NFS (storage management at the VM level) and VMFS/block storage (VMware vStorage API for Array Integration - VAAI). The net result is a simpler yet more effect means to manage storage.