HP unveiled industry-first storage capabilities over a massive, 1 000-port heterogeneous storage area network (SAN) at its HP ENSA @ Work event held recently in Amsterdam.
Comprising 10 different operating systems on 15 server hardware platforms, HP`s open SAN is a showcase for numerous new and soon-to-be-announced technologies that will enable tomorrow`s adaptive storage infrastructures.
"An ambitious SAN of this extreme size and complexity enables us to show advanced management and functionality beyond what any company must deal with today," says Kim Howlett, Storage Manager at HP South Africa.
"HP has tackled some of the most difficult technical challenges to demonstrate to our customers and the world that heterogeneous storage is controllable, resilient and extensible with ENSAextended."
With this showcase, HP becomes the first vendor to demonstrate application integration with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Volume Shadow-Copy Service (VSS) in a NAS/SAN fusion environment.
VSS allows programs, such as HP OpenView Storage Data Protector, to get point-in-time copies (snapshots) of disk volumes. Additionally, HP is the industry`s first storage vendor to demonstrate VSS on an Intel Itanium platform using the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003.
The massive, HP-funded showcase is designed to rival the data centre environments of the most demanding and progressive enterprises in the world.
The SAN`s infrastructure consists of 66 servers, 23 disk arrays, eight tape libraries, 36 Brocade Silkworm fabric switches and more than 100 host bus adapters. A dozen products from the HP OpenView storage software suite, including HP OpenView Storage Area Manager, enable heterogeneous storage management and functions.
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HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company`s offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP completed its acquisition of Compaq Computer Corporation on 3 May 2002. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com
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