HP today announced new storage offerings to help enterprise customers consolidate, virtualize and secure their storage environments. Introduced at the HP Asia Pacific StorageWorks Conference, the offerings include enhancements to the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array, the first embedded switch from Cisco for HP BladeSystem, a new network-attached storage (NAS) gateway and advanced encryption for HP Data Protector Software. Each product helps address the increased need for unifying and managing direct-attach, NAS and storage-area network (SAN) resources that accompany the significant growth in corporate data servers. “In the past 10 years, businesses have experienced an exponential growth of data and the trend is expected to continue for years to come,” said Phillip Sargeant, managing vice president, Storage Research, Gartner Dataquest. “To deal with this data proliferation, end users are increasingly relying on consolidation and virtualization to maintain the most cost-effective and manageable storage environments.” “HP storage consolidation and virtualization products and services enable customers to remain flexible, reduce complexity and lower the total cost of ownership in their IT environments,” said Duncan Campbell, vice president of marketing, StorageWorks Division, HP. “We’re helping customers build easy-to-manage next-generation data centers with our broad portfolio of Adaptive Infrastructure hardware, software and services.” Supporting data growth with online consolidation and virtualization HP StorageWorks EVA File Services allow customers to consolidate their storage with an integrated, virtualized solution that serves both application (block) and file data concurrently. The new solution adds file services to any new EVA4000, EVA6000 or EVA8000 in Microsoft Windows or Linux environments. For customers that require high availability and scalable performance, EVA-File Services provides a single, shared pool of storage with no single point of failure and aggregate performance far in excess of traditional NAS appliances or file servers. It also offers a single point of control that can be centrally managed and backed up. Designed for mission-critical network storage environments, the HP ProLiant DL585 G2 Storage Server is a plug-and-play NAS gateway that provides high-performance, multi-protocol file and print serving and iSCSI connectivity for both enterprise and workgroup SAN environments. By leveraging the Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 operating system, the storage server offers customers the ability to consolidate resources and create a flexible, unified solution that combines file and print serving with application storage. HP also is delivering embedded 4-gigabit Fibre Channel performance with the new Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch for HP c-Class BladeSystem. The integrated design frees up rack space, reduces components and uses shared power and cooling within the enclosure. This offering, the first Cisco embedded fabric switch for HP BladeSystem, allows customers to consolidate SAN environments with a Fibre Channel switch that delivers superior performance, lowers the cost of management and improves utilization of existing storage and BladeSystem assets. Sodexho, Inc., a leading provider of food and facilities management services, was a beta customer for the Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch. “At Sodexho we are implementing a plan to consolidate using HP BladeSystem c-Class and virtualization to cut data center costs while streamlining our operation,” said Christopher Riccio, lead network analyst, Sodexho, Inc. “Since all 32 blade servers will be connected to the SAN, the Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch for HP c-Class BladeSystem is key to savings in cables as well as space.” Securing backup consolidation Secure backup plays a key role in meeting the business continuity needs of consolidated storage environments and HP is enhancing its HP Data Protector Software 6.0 to provide 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption. AES helps to protect data from unauthorized access and allows backups to meet all compliance and regulatory requirements for government agencies and financial institutions. Ideal for businesses where network backup is not secure or the cost of a dedicated encryption appliance is too high, HP Data Protector Software reduces complexity and completes backup encryption on the client level, so data is secure during transmission and at rest. Key management is simple to use, secure and flexible. More information about the enhanced HP StorageWorks portfolio is available at its Web site. More information about HP StorageWorks Consolidation is available at its Web site.