VMworld 2009 - HP announced innovative management and service solutions that extend the benefits of virtualisation beyond servers to the entire infrastructure. As a result, customers can maximise resource utilisation, improve administrator productivity and drive business growth.
HP also announced the first virtual desktop infrastructure solution for under R8 000 per user seat. (1) The solution was demonstrated during VMware Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz's keynote presentation.
Virtual desktop infrastructure is a server-based computing model that gives users a PC desktop experience, while securing all applications, management and processing in the data centre. The HP Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View specifically addresses the performance bottlenecks and management complexities of other offerings. Customers can test the solution in select HP solution centres worldwide.
Industry analyst firm IDC predicts that companies will spend nearly R800 billion by 2012 on the management and administration of virtual servers, and expects that new virtual server installations will outnumber physical server shipments, starting as early as the end of this year. (2) HP is the first provider to address these challenges by delivering a converged infrastructure that brings together all data centre resources, including server, storage, network, I/O, application and desktop.
“Chief information officers need solutions that increase the cost-saving benefits of virtualisation while cutting through the complexity and administrative issues caused by virtual sprawl,” said Andrew McNiven, Industry Standard Server Product Manager, HP South Africa. “For more than half a decade, HP and VMware have jointly invested in technologies that enable customers to maximise the value of their virtualisation efforts. By extending virtualisation beyond servers through HP's converged infrastructure solutions, customers can fully realise the potential of their people, applications and technology infrastructure.”
Start virtualising your infrastructure
Only HP can deliver a complete, end-to-end virtualisation solution that combines hardware and software to:
* Cost-effectively deliver a virtual desktop infrastructure that provides increased data protection and uptime. HP's Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View also lowers support costs versus traditional PC environments. (3)
* Lower costs up to 50% and improve capacity utilisation up to 33% by virtualising storage capacity with HP LeftHand P4000 and other StorageWorks virtualisation solutions. (3)
Information pertaining to other new solutions for virtualising infrastructure is available at http://www.hp.com/go/virtualisation.
Increase administrator productivity
To help simplify data centre management of a virtual and physical infrastructure, and maximise VMware investments, customers need common tools. HP, teamed with VMware, is delivering new capabilities that bridge the physical and virtual data centre silos through unified management and automation.
Key customer benefits include:
* Direct administrator access, through VMware vCenter, to the physical infrastructure to manage server health, power use and remote control for the first time with the new HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter.
* Increased administrator effectiveness with HP Operations Manager for virtualisation by monitoring the availability and performance of all virtual and physical assets through a single common dashboard.
* Reduced risk of downtime with HP Network Automation, which for the first time gives network administrators control of the VMware vSwitch in addition to the physical network environments.
* Simplified storage management by monitoring and configuring HP Enterprise Virtual Arrays within a virtual machine using the new HP StorageWorks Command View Enterprise Virtual Array management suite.
* Simplified and reduced risk of migration to client virtualisation with the HP Virtual Client Essentials software portfolio, which includes easy-to-use set-up, configuration and management tools for thin clients. This solution also offers a repurposed PC deployment solution and will support VMware's software implementation of PC over IP (PCOIP) protocol.
Accelerate time to value
HP provides the experience, breadth of technology, partner ecosystem and services needed to simplify complex virtualisation projects, delivering:
* Improved management of virtualised environments in the data centre as a result of a recently signed alliance agreement between EDS, an HP company, and VMware. The agreement brings together EDS data centre expertise and VMware virtualisation leadership to provide clients with a robust, well-managed virtualised environment.
* Reduced total cost of ownership and risk by leveraging virtualisation best practices with the new HP SAN Readiness Assessment for Server Virtualisation and the newly packaged HP Migration Services for VMware vSphere.
* More optimised partner virtualisation solutions for HP BladeSystem hardware with the HP Solution Builder programme for BladeSystem than any other systems provider. This programme provides testing, technology, marketing and integration services from HP for 334 partners to ensure their solutions maximise the value of HP server platforms.
* Enhanced network efficiency and lower costs. Together with VMware, HP is leveraging open industry standards such as Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) to provide a process for virtualising switches, network interface cards and access points. These can be managed universally to increase visibility, improve traffic control and simplify manageability.
Global leader in VMware technologies
Leading in virtualisation performance, the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 has achieved the highest VMware VMmark benchmark score in the industry - 53.73 at 35 tiles. This is 58% better than the previous highest eight-socket (48 cores) result. HP also garnered the highest scores for four processors and 24 cores, as well as two processors and eight cores. (4)
HP has the most VMware-certified server and storage systems and the largest number of VMware-certified professionals supporting heterogeneous environments. HP also offers customers the largest global VMware Authorised Training Centre network, with more than 100 training centres in more than 30 countries. More information on today's news is available in an online press kit at http://www.hp.com/go/HPatVMworld2009.
HP South Africa is a Gold Sponsor at the VMWare VSE Forum - 21-22 September, at Vodaworld. Please visit our stand to find out more.
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