There has been a lot of recent movement in the converged storage space. And while its not a new topic, it’s definitely a topic that has gotten a lot of buzz in the hype cycle as of late. Converged storage is one of the three components of the emerging vision of converged infrastructure, evolving the data center alongside servers and networks.  And big vendors are taking notice, especially those that are restructuring their entire business model to infrastructure services.

Hewlett-Packard is one such company, pouring a great deal into its Services around cloud management and smarter solutions.  Things seem to be moving in the right direction for HP, as demand for its converged storage solutions increased by 48 percent from last year to $349 million. Within that, sales of 3PAR equipment soared by 82 percent.

It is clear that one of HP’s highest ceiling products/services right now is converged storage. Converged storage combines compute and storage with the goal of more efficient storage and handling of workloads — and HP is transitioning its storage market from EVA to 3PAR. HP is pushing hard to make a total solutions play in the converged infrastructure space, and become a leader at that.

HP can in fact make a case for being the leader on the back nine. Wikibon Chief Analyst Dave Vellante recently laid out exactly what he thought HP had to do, saying

“The key for HP is to stay focused on expanding 3PAR and getting the channel story right. HP has a huge supply chain and distribution channel and it needs to leverage that to compete and gain shares. It also needs to articulate its flash and SW-defined strategies to the world. This is critical because for the time being, because HP’s focused right now on paying down debt; the company’s not going to be a big acquirer.”

But HP isn’t the only one making the shift to converged infrastructure to boost their Services portfolio.  Dell recently announced an upgrade to its Dell Compellent Storage Center operating system (OS), and says that its optimized for plus a new all-flash array, a new SATA dense storage array and an upgrade to its Fluid File System. Dell also unveiled the Flash Optimized Solution, a Storage Center 6.4-driven all-flash array. The Flash Optimized Solution comprises a package of single level cell (SLC) and multi-level cell (MLC) drives on one of its Compellent SC220 expansion enclosures.

One could argue that Dell’s usage of SLC on the Storage Center 6.4 means that it’s not actually fully optimized for all-flash arrays. The storage market as a whole seems to be in a mad dash to gain all-flash capability in their product offerings.
Of course, different market players catch up at different speeds.  While Microsoft’s first release of Windows Server 2012 was encouraging, it lacked robustness and maturity for certain storage functions, and led Wikibon to believe that true software-led storage from Microsoft is still a release cycle or two away. The second release cycle has just been announced. According to PC World, Windows Server 2012 release 2 will focus on offering a number of advanced capabilities in storage and networking, sans the requirement of additional software or a full-fledged storage system.

The most exciting part of the news for me is Automated Tiering, where the system automatically decides which files are accessed most frequently — the OS will then store the most frequently consulted files on the fastest storage medium available. This means storing those most consulted files on SSDs (solid state drives), and file the rest on less expensive traditional hard drives.

SiliconANGLE and Wikibon have been closely watching the storage wars unfold since 2011. And as far as market players go, HP, EMC, IBM and NetApp continued to push the ball down the field. Converged storage is turning into a market that they all “converging” on in a race to smarter, more efficient infrastructure. #rimshot