HP Announces HP AutoRAID Technology; High-availability Storage Technology Automates RAID Level Selection, Provides Substantial Performance Improvement.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 1995-- Hewlett-Packard Company today announced a new storage technology, HP AutoRAID, that automates RAID level selection, optimizes disk storage capacity and performance, and makes fault-tolerant subsystems easier to configure and manage.

HP AutoRAID offers dynamic data migration, on-line capacity expansion and an active hot-spare disk. Working together, these technology components automate many of the RAID procedures that up until now had to be administered manually. The new technology also provides substantially improved performance over traditional RAID architecture.

"The HP AutoRAID technology makes it possible to manufacture better-performing and easier-to-use RAID subsystems than ever before," said Tex Schenkkan, marketing manager of HP's Storage Systems Division. "From years of experience in developing disk subsystems, HP engineers have learned that administrators sometimes misunderstand the technology and that sometimes the workload of a system is responsible for many of the performance and configuration problems in existing RAID subsystems. In developing the HP AutoRAID technology, our goal was to eliminate the complex processes that are most likely to introduce these errors."

HP is investigating options to implement the HP AutoRAID technology in various ways, including manufacturing the HP AutoRAID technology under the HP label, manufacturing subsystems for other vendors or selling the technology at a component level to companies that would incorporate it into their systems.

RAID-LEVEL TRADEOFFS

With traditional fault-tolerant subsystems, the performance varies with the configured RAID level and system workload. Selecting the appropriate RAID level usually involves cost, performance and availability tradeoffs. As an example, RAID 0/1 offers the best overall performance but is a more expensive format than RAID 5 or RAID 3. The system workload also has an effect on RAID level selection. Write operations may be more efficient in one RAID level vs. another, or random reads may be more efficient than random writes within the same RAID level. HP AutoRAID "understands" these differences in RAID level performance and dynamically adapts its algorithms to best meet the demands of the host system.

DYNAMIC DATA MIGRATION

The key component of the HP AutoRAID technology is dynamic data migration, the ability to automatically convert data between RAID levels, based on data usage, for the best combination of performance and cost of storage. Write data, which is normally the most active, is stored in high-performance RAID 0/1. As data ages, it is automatically migrated to cost-effective RAID 5. This dynamic use of RAID 0/1 and RAID 5 across all disks optimizes the balance of performance, availability and cost.

A new set of algorithms manage data block-address translations. These translation algorithms are part of the fundamental definition of RAID levels. With this new technology, HP introduces the ability to intelligently translate, or map, any host block address to any disk address with a dynamic algorithm and to change the translation while the system is operating. This makes it possible to move data stored within a subsystem to any location on any disk without affecting the data or how the host addresses the data.

ON-LINE CAPACITY EXPANSION AND ACTIVE HOT SPARE

HP AutoRAID technology also offers the ability to add capacity on-line without data reload or additional redundancy groups. Capacity expansion can be done in seconds, without the parity format required by traditional disk arrays.

Another special feature set of the HP AutoRAID technology is active hot spare. By reserving rebuild space across all disks, the hot-spare disk can be used to improve subsystem performance. Configuration is simple and changes can be made on-line.

Hewlett-Packard Company entered the information-storage business 24 years ago when it began manufacturing and selling magnetic-disk drives. Today, HP's Information Storage Group (ISG) has grown to more than $1.5 billion in revenue (FY 1994) with a complete line of information-storage products for computers and local area networks. ISG solutions include disk drives and disk arrays, magneto-optical drives and jukeboxes, digital audio tape drives and libraries, and quarter-inch-cartridge tape drives. Products are sold through a variety of distribution channels under the HP SureStore brand name as well as to OEM customers.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 98,200 employees and had revenue of $25 billion in its 1994 fiscal year.

CONTACT: Hewlett-Packard Company

Deanna Dilling, 208/396-5596

The Hoffman Agency for HP

Ray Schuster, 408/286-2611