STORAGE

HP today introduced hardware, software and services enhancements to its HP StorageWorks portfolio that help customers consolidate their storage environments. Announced at the HP Asia-Pacific StorageWorks Conference, the offerings provide customers with simpler, streamlined management solutions for online, backup, email and remote office consolidation, both for HP and multi-vendor IT environments. Simplifying information technology infrastructures is a key part of HP's Adaptive Enterprise strategy to synchronize business and IT to capitalize on change. As part of this strategy, HP's IT consolidation solutions help customers reduce costs and improve business agility, making it easier to leverage information for competitive advantage. "HP is helping customers move into a new era of information-centric consolidation in a way that tactical, storage-only vendors simply cannot match," said Bob Schultz, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP. "HP's broad portfolio and vertical industry services expertise have allowed our IT consolidation business to grow at nearly twice the industry rate." Enhancements to the flagship HP StorageWorks EVA and XP disk arrays include: -- Concurrent iSCSI and Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity for EVA arrays, which offers broader storage consolidation by using IP networks to centralize the 70 percent of servers not attached to FC storage area networks (SANs); supports dual iSCSI connectivity for redundancy; -- EVA array support for 4-gigabit (Gb) SAN environments, enabling a seamless transition to a 4-Gb infrastructure; -- Support for attaching EVA arrays to XP arrays, offering increased virtualization capabilities and allowing data management from a single pane of glass for HP and multi-vendor arrays; -- Doubling the existing cache size of XP arrays for enhanced cache partitioning capabilities in consolidated environments; adding more efficient, cost-effective front-end interfaces for medium-size consolidation projects. Storage technology and services For customers seeking to consolidate their backup operations, increase the availability of application and file servers, and improve recovery times, HP extended the maximum capacity of the HP StorageWorks 6000 Virtual Library System to 70 terabytes (TB) by adding support for new 500-GB drives. The new HP StorageWorks MSL2024 tape library offers improved backup consolidation for small and mid-size businesses. Boasting advanced features, such as web-based remote management, an integral barcode reader and removable magazines for bulk loading and offsite storage, the MSL2024 stores up to 9.6 TB in a 2U design that is half the size of competitive offerings. HP also advanced its branch office consolidation offering by upgrading its family of HP StorageWorks Enterprise File Services (EFS) WAN Accelerators with new software features and multiple fail-through network interface card options. EFS WAN Accelerators dramatically improve WAN application performance to deliver LAN-like application performance over the WAN, enabling consolidation of remote site IT infrastructure to the data center. In addition, HP refreshed the HP Storage Essentials suite of multi-vendor storage resource management and SAN management software. HP Storage Essentials Backup Manager extends its backup reporting capabilities to HP-UX and Linux environments, while HP Storage Essentials Provisioning Manager offers new provisioning capabilities for third-party disk arrays and switches from IBM, Sun, Xiotech, Cisco and QLogic. HP also expanded its services offerings to assist customers at virtually every stage of heterogeneous storage consolidation, including a Rapid Opportunity Analysis service -- a fast way to identify the best opportunities for highest impact in storage consolidation. HP offers services throughout the decision-making and deployment process, including a workshop to help business and IT executives identify objectives, constraints and measures of success; an architectural blueprint to match technology with business goals and set a strategy for using information throughout the entire enterprise; the creation of a business case to justify investment in consolidation; and a step-by-step implementation plan based on the objectives in the architectural blueprint. More information about the HP StorageWorks portfolio is available at its Web site.