3PAR Looks to Slash Administration Time For Provisioning Storage

Storage is one of the areas people seem to get almost instantly when it comes to the benefits of cloud computing. 3PAR recently announced improvements to its on-demand storage service that are aimed at drastically reducing the time and effort required to provision storage servers, especially those in clustered and virtual server environments.

The new software enhancements are delivered as "three platform enhancements" with 3PAR Autonomic Groups, 3PAR Scheduler and 3PAR Host Explorer. 3PAR Autonomic Groups handles the provisioning process, which accrording to the company can be slashed from days to minutes. Another big benefit is greater agility in clustered environments because things are handled "autonomically" without the need for an administrator to touch the system. 3PAR Scheduler has been added to automate storage management by putting more control in the hands of the end-user over virtual copy snapshots. 3PAR Host Explorer runs as an agent and automates host discovery and configuration, thereby further improving the time it takes to provision storage.

3PAR Utility Storage has seen strong growth in the on-demand storage market with a customer list to match. These enhancements would seem to bolster their cloud computing storage services by focusing on one of the more frustrating and time-consuming parts of getting storage systems quickly up and running.

Check out our 3PAR profile for additional information.