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3PAR, Inc. announced support for VMware vSphere 4.1 and the development of a new 3PAR plug-in for VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). 3PAR is working with VMware to support VAAI in order to deliver advanced server and storage virtualization capabilities to improve virtual infrastructure performance, agility, and scalability for public and private cloud datacenters.

"In building a private cloud, we learned first-hand just how critical it is to deploy VMware vSphere on top of an intelligent storage infrastructure that is designed to support server virtualization," said Jerry Hook, Senior Manager at University of Tennessee Medical Center. "This is exactly what 3PAR delivered, and with the new 3PAR Plug-In for VAAI and integration with VMware vSphere 4.1, we anticipate achieving even higher levels of performance, flexibility and efficiency in our virtual datacenter."

The new 3PAR plug-in supports three features of VAAI: Hardware Assisted Locking, Block Zero and Full Copy. The 3PAR Plug-in for VAAI and support for VMware vSphere 4.1 deliver the following benefits, targeted for large-scale enterprise and cloud datacenters:

• Greater scalability by preventing VMs from competing for the same resources. Hardware Assisted Locking reduces SCSI reservation contention that can impact performance in large environments. Reducing conflicting resource requests removes a barrier to virtual machine (VM) performance to enable greater VM density and scalability. 3PAR’s unique implementation of Hardware Assisted Locking takes advantage of the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC to handle data comparisons in silicon with significantly higher performance and throughput, which is especially beneficial in large-scale VMware vSphere deployments.
• Increased performance and efficiency by eliminating repetitive write commands. Block Zero offloads large, block-level write operations of zeros to storage hardware, thus reducing server workload. In addition, with the integration of zero-detection capability built into the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC, in combination with 3PAR Thin Persistence software, provisioning is further accelerated while capacity consumption is reduced since zeros are prevented from being written to physical storage.
• Enhanced agility with faster VM cloning and VMware Storage vMotion. Full Copy increases agility by halving the amount of time required to perform common copy operations like virtual machine cloning and storage workload migrations using VMware Storage vMotion. This is made possible by allowing the storage hardware to transparently manage large data movements, and by minimizing host, network, and disk I/O activity. With the integration of the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC and 3PAR Thin Persistence software, built-in zero-detection capabilities further speed cloning and storage workload migrations while also delivering a capacity savings benefit.
• New quality of service capabilities via support for VMware Storage I/O Controls (SIOC). VMware’s SIOC implements new quality-of-service controls that automatically ensure that the most important virtual machines receive the desired I/O resources, even in times of congestion. 3PAR Utility Storage supports SIOC to ensure consistent performance levels across all VMs.

"VMware vSphere 4.1 represents the next evolution in our industry-leading platform," says Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "As part of this release, we are excited to incorporate new storage capabilities and to offer integration opportunities that allow storage partners like 3PAR to elevate the performance, reliability, and scalability of their virtual infrastructures to lay the foundation for cloud computing."

"Whether internally owned or managed by a cloud service provider, we believe that cloud-based infrastructures enable companies of all sizes to dramatically reduce capital and operating expenses, maintain control over service levels, and increase flexibility," said David Scott, President and CEO of 3PAR. "We are excited to work with VMware under its VAAI initiative to provide joint customers with advanced capabilities to improve performance, efficiency, and agility to boost VMware vSphere ROI in enterprise and cloud datacenters."

3PAR support for VMware vSphere 4.1 is available today and includes the 3PAR InForm Operating System, 3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware, and the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter Server. The 3PAR Plug-In for VMware VAAI will be available in September and is provided at no additional charge.