HP advances data centre fabrics, server scalability and application automation

HP recently introduced new capabilities to its HP BladeSystem portfolio, enabling clients to reduce network sprawl and shift millions of dollars in resources from IT operations to organisational innovation.

With innovations across the portfolio, today's announcement marks the most significant HP BladeSystem advancement in four years. It includes major enhancements to HP Virtual Connect and HP BladeSystem Matrix, as well as seven high-performance HP ProLiant G7 server blades.

“IT sprawl causes infrastructure complexity and inefficiencies,” said David McMurdo, Industry Standard Servers (ISS) Sales and Business Unit Manager , HP Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking (ESSN), South Africa. “HP is introducing significant advancements across the data centre to fundamentally change the ratio between IT operations and IT innovation.”

“We continue the path of innovation beyond industry standards with our next generation servers,” said McMurdo. “HP has a complete Converged Infrastructure portfolio that integrates the customer's existing silos of servers, storage, network, management and facility resources into a common converged environment. HP technology and innovation enables customers to rapidly respond to business demands.”

The explosive growth of virtual machines has increased the complexity and cost of connecting servers to networks and storage. With more than 3 million ports delivered, HP Virtual Connect sales in HP's fiscal 2010 have doubled over the same period last year. It is proven, wire-once technology that lets clients easily add, move and change servers connected to local area networks (LANs) and storage area networks (SANs)without rewiring.^(1).

The new HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10Gb/24-Port module connects servers to any Fibre Channel, Ethernet and iSCSI network with a single device. It reduces up to 95 percent of network equipment by eliminating the need for multiple interconnects.⁽¹⁾ It connects HP BladeSystem server blades to data and storage networks using industry standard protocols including 1Gb or 10Gb Ethernet; 2, 4 or 8Gb Fibre Channel; and iSCSI. The new modules leverage Flex-10 technology so clients can consolidate four interconnect modules into one and optimise application bandwidth.

HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric technology is also built into new HP ProLiant G7 server blades, further simplifying connectivity. HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric can save clients costs on switches, networking cards and cables, while reducing power and cooling costs up to 40 percent per year.⁽²⁾ HP Virtual Connect, when combined with products and technologies from HP Networking, comprise the next-generation, highly scalable data centre fabric of HP's Converged Infrastructure architecture.

The industry's first "all inclusive" converged infrastructure offering, HP BladeSystem Matrix enables clients to easily deploy complex IT environments in minutes instead of months. (3) HP BladeSystem Matrix simplifies the creation of a private cloud with one-touch, self-service provisioning of infrastructure. It now extends this automated provisioning to applications through integration with HP Server Automation. As a result, clients can deploy services faster and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) up to 56% compared to traditional IT infrastructures. (3)

The new version of HP BladeSystem Matrix also features automated storage tiering, which assigns storage based on application performance and availability requirements and lowers costs by up to 50%.(3)

Additionally, the HP BladeSystem Matrix ecosystem features an expanding portfolio of reference templates, including Microsoft Sharepoint and Exchange, Citrix XenApp and SAS. HP BladeSystem Matrix reference templates in development include SAP Business Objects, Siemens PTC Teamcenter, Novell and Symantec Net Backup.

The latest version of HP BladeSystem Matrix will be available in mid-July.