Johannesburg, 19 Oct 2012
HP recently announced new virtualisation software solutions that simplify, automate and secure the movement of virtual machines (VMs) and data in cloud environments, providing clients with increased agility for addressing dynamic market opportunities.
In legacy infrastructures, moving VMs, such as a Microsoft Exchange application workload, between data centres, requires hundreds of complex, manual device-level configuration steps. Data mobility is similarly challenging because storage requires a physical deployment that consumes floor space, power, cooling and infrastructure investment, which locks clients into a proprietary environment.
New HP Converged Infrastructure solutions help to eliminate these issues, delivering increased agility and simplicity:
* HP Ethernet Virtual Interconnect (EVI) is the industry's first solution(1) to simplify and speed the interconnectivity of up to eight geographically dispersed data centres in minutes, eliminating manual configuration tasks.
* HP Multitenant Device Context (MDC) software delivers increased security for multitenant cloud applications, eliminating the comingling of data from different applications or departments. This reduces costs and equipment, and ultimately simplifies network operations.
* HP StoreVirtual virtual storage appliance (VSA) increases flexibility by allowing clients to easily build storage pools on any x86 server using VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. As a result, clients can move data across heterogeneous servers, hypervisors and data centre locations to better meet organisation needs, while reducing overall cost and complexity.
"Clients are seeking a more flexible virtualised environment that enables mobility of virtual machines and data services across the enterprise," said Graham Vorster, Country Manager, Networking, HP, South Africa. "HP's unique virtualisation technologies meet that need, helping clients to significantly increase their agility and innovate at a pace their organisations demand."
Industry's only multitenant Data Centre Interconnect for cloud networks
Connecting geographically dispersed data centres optimises workload mobility and disaster recovery. Typically, this connectivity requires months of error-prone and costly manual network redesign and reconfiguration.
HP EVI is the industry's only(1) Data Centre Interconnect (DCI) overlay technology that enables "single touch" connection of up to eight data centres around the world from one location. Clients can optimise server and storage resources to perform workload mobility or disaster recovery by linking the software in HP EVI from one data centre to another.
With HP MDC software, clients can create multiple, secure and isolated functions for organisational departments such as finance, human resources and engineering, while reducing the number of networking devices in the data centre by 75%.(1)
Combining HP EVI with HP MDC simplifies and speeds data centre interconnectivity over any existing network. Additionally, total cost of ownership is reduced by implementing a single architecture and management platform that supports the broadest set of Data Centre Interconnect platforms in the industry.(1)
"We needed a centralised, consolidated data centre infrastructure that delivered long-term operational efficiencies to accommodate our network of more than 100 agencies," said Jason Cohen, global chief information officer at Diversified Agency Services, a global marketing services and specialty communication company. "HP delivered exactly that, and the new Data Centre Interconnect additions will ensure business continuity by distributing applications and compute resources for our enterprise private cloud and the delivery of disaster-recovery services."
Industry's only hypervisor-independent virtual storage appliance
To address flexibility and cost, many organisations have moved from physical storage deployments to VSAs and VM-based data services to support new application workloads and rapid data growth. However, most VSA software is proprietary, supporting only a single vendor's hardware and hypervisor.
HP StoreVirtual VSA is the first software-based virtual storage appliance to operate on any x86 server, while connecting to a range of third-party external storage solutions and supporting a mix of VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors simultaneously.(2) As a result, HP StoreVirtual VSA creates a highly efficient environment with the flexibility to move data across heterogeneous servers, hypervisors and data centre sites, as well as between virtual and physical storage platforms.
HP StoreVirtual VSA enables customers to:
* Lower infrastructure costs and cut power consumption by up to 60%(1) with software-based shared storage that is open and extensible.
* Rapidly respond to new customer demands with seamless data mobility between different devices, hypervisor technologies and physical locations.
* Reduce business risk by ensuring data availability with built-in resiliency features and integration with information-protection solutions.
"The ability to reduce distance limitation in networking and to simplify storage infrastructure is important for organisations using VMware vMotion in VMware vSphere," said Gary Green, vice-president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "We are pleased to continue to partner with HP to enable our customers to address IT challenges with better resource utilisation and optimisation for workload mobility across data centres."
Pricing and availability:
* HP Ethernet Virtual Interconnect and HP Multitenant Device Context will be available this autumn as software upgrades for the HP FlexFabric core switches.
* HP StoreVirtual VSA are available with a starting US list price of R7 200 per licence when purchased in multilicence packs.(4)
More information about the new networking and storage solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/VirtualAppNetworks.
HP's premier Europe, Middle East and Africa client event, HP Discover, takes place 4-6 December in Frankfurt, Germany.