HP has placed a major bid on solid-state-drive (SSD) storage technology, announcing an all-SSD 3Par storage array and new seamless integration between the array and the company’s latest Gen8 ProLiant servers.

The all-SSD HP 3Par P10000 array is an alternative to multi-tier storage cabinets, where an array will have a mix of SSD and spinning-disk capacity, sending data to either medium according to its criticality or speed-of-access requirements.

The all-SSD configuration is a single tier of high-performance storage, with up to 512 SSDs per array. Compared to the same array stuffed with spinning disk, the SSD configuration reduces the cost of input/output per second for clients and cost per kilowatt-hour for the operator, HP said.

Starting list price for the all-SSD configuration is US$350,000.

One customer using HP’s 3Par storage systems in a multi-tier storage network is Priceline, an online aggregator of travel deals. Priceline’s director of Unix Systems and Storage Ken Kirchoff said the move to 3Par SSD storage and its automated-tiering technology cut the time spent on moving data between tiers and increased service levels.

“Now that data is automatically tiered, our total cost of ownership has dramatically improved, and our staff has more freedom to concentrate on strategic growth opportunities,” he said.

Priceline is using 3Par’s Adaptive Optimization software, which distributes data among storage tiers automatically.

HP has also integrated 3Par Storage arrays with local SSD storage on its latest ProLiant Gen8 servers, seamlessly connecting SSD storage across servers and stand-alone storage networks. Through the HP technology called Smart Cache, data will be automatically copied in real time from the storage array to the SSD cache on the server.

Smart Cache automatically assigns frequently accessed data to SSD drives to accelerate performance. With this integration, it will use both local and network SSD storage.

HP closed its $2.35bn acquisition of 3Par in September 2010 after a protracted bidding war for the storage vendor with Dell.