Hewlett Packard is jumping into the software-defined storage fray with a new scale-out StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) that offers data tiering and tight integration with VMware and Microsoft.

The beefed-up appliance features auto tiering at the sub-LUN (logical unit number) level, a capability HP brands as Adaptive Optimisation. VSA utilizes this function to automatically migrate hot data to flash and cold data to lower-cost HDDs.

Other features of the platform include support for VMware ParaVirtualized SCSI Controllers, Hyper-V integration, and rapid installation and provisioning. HP claims that the system deploys three times faster and scales capacity at 11 times the speed of competing solutions.

VSA will be available starting September 30 in 4, 10 and 50-terabyte configurations.

“To reduce data center investment and operational costs, budget-conscious organizations are transitioning from dedicated physical hardware to software-defined storage embedded on existing industry standard servers,” stated David Scott, the senior vice president and general manager of HP Storage. “Having pioneered software-defined storage with an installed base of over 170,000 StoreVirtual VSA licenses, HP is now extending its leadership in this area with auto-tiering capability to further optimize cost and performance for small or medium-sized businesses as well as remote enterprise branches.”

Hewlett Packard is one of several big name enterprise vendors that are working to establish a foothold in the software-defined data center. IBM is in a similar position: the company perceives software-defined storage as a stepping stone to the democratization of data.

Clod Barrera, the chief technical strategic for Big Blue’s storage business, told us in an interview at Edge 2013 that abstracting the underlying hardware is only the first phase in the evolution of SDS. The second step will be applying the cloud operating model to abstracted storage environments.