HP last week added a behemoth to its storage portfolio with the introduction of the HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System, ExDS9100 for short.

The ExDS9100 is the result of HP’s acquisition of PolyServe last year - it is one of the first massively scalable storage arrays for digital media, Web 2.0 and content-rich applications. It can also be used in enterprise environments for oil and gas, genetic research and video surveillance. HP points out Snapfish.com as an example of the perfect customer for the ExDS9100. Snapfish, for example, has about 6 petabytes of storage and is growing at a petabyte of storage each month - dramatic amounts of growth. (Compare Storage Array products)

The system consists of controllers that have as many as 12.8 cores per 1U rack density. It starts at four blades with 800Mbps throughput and can expand to as many as 16 HP BL460 blades in a c7000 Enclosure for up to 12TB per 1U. By capacity the system starts at 246TB and can be expanded to well over 820TB. Scalability is achieved by adding 82TB storage blocks. The storage devices are 1TB serial attached SCSI drives. The ExDS9100 scales performance independent of capacity and does it non-disruptively.

In addition, the system handles Unix/Linux Network File System, HTTP and DirectIO. It also has integrated system management. The management interface uses the PolyServe file system to congregate storage resources into a single pool.

The ExDS9100 is a file-based repository that will be available in the Fall. It costs about $2 per gigabyte or $500,000 for an entry-level system.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW and host of both the Masters of Storage and Masters of Servers Solution Centers.