To support flexible, enterprise-class clouds, HP has announced that it has made multiple contributions to the OpenStack Kilo release, including new converged storage management automation and new flash storage technologies.

Drivers such as data growth, software-defined data center technologies, and the Internet of Things continue to fuel cloud adoption. Enterprises are deploying OpenStack technology to overcome private and public cloud challenges, including costly vendor lock-in, lack of control or customizability, and inability to scale applications for the cloud.

“Enterprises today struggle with the ‘all-in-one’ cloud model because they don’t use a single operating system or database software or management tool. HP’s approach is to support a flexible hybrid cloud infrastructure with open-source technologies as its core DNA, and this includes a commitment to supporting OpenStack technology at the storage layer,”

said Narayanan Chellappan, Country Director, Cloud Division, HP India.

HP’s storage contributions to the OpenStack Kilo release focus on two strategic goals: supporting application-centric, automated, converged storage management; and, helping make environments that use Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) server virtualization technology truly enterprise-ready.

These contributions are designed to increase storage and management efficiency in order to reduce acquisition and operational costs in cloud and hybrid environments via the following new capabilities:

Evaluator Scheduler – Improves management productivity and increases resource efficiency by automatically assigning storage resources to meet incoming requests based on workload requirements.

Adaptive Flash Cache – Reduces the overall cost of delivering I/O-intensive workloads in cloud environments by allowing “flash caching” – the use of flash capacity as a virtual extension to storage system DRAM cache.

Thin Deduplication with Express Indexing – Drives up capacity utilization and increases the life of flash drives used for virtualized workloads by 75 per cent via data compaction using inline, block-level deduplication.

Manila Files Services – Allows HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage to serve both block and file workloads in open cloud and hybrid environments using a single, cost-optimized pool of storage that occupies one-third less space.