HP enhances network-attached storage family, broadens storage services

HP has announced across-the-board enhancements to the HP StorageWorks network-attached storage (NAS) solutions portfolio, furthering the company`s fusion of NAS and storage area network (SAN) environments. HP also expanded the capabilities of its storage services and solutions offerings to provide a more seamless customer experience and increase business productivity.

HP StorageWorks NAS solutions and storage services are key enablers of the company`s ENSAextended strategy to deliver an adaptive infrastructure for storage, based on business requirements, that is controllable, resilient and extensible.

"Customers desire to extend their SAN investment for broader uses in their enterprise. HP StorageWorks solutions are the foundations of scalable, flexible infrastructures that let our customers leverage their storage investments for new and dynamic business needs," said Kim Howlett, storage manager at HP. "In particular, enhancements to our NAS solutions and services help customers fuse their NAS and SAN environments into a singularly managed pool of storage resources while maximising return on their IT investments."

HP has enhanced the entire HP StorageWorks NAS portfolio by providing increased performance, improved connectivity with SAN infrastructure and significant price reductions on many solutions. The HP StorageWorks NAS b2000, b3000 and e7000 now utilise the latest technology from the industry-leading HP ProLiant family of servers, providing performance increases of up to 20%.

At the same time, by leveraging industry-standard components, HP is able to offer these enhancements with prices that are up to 42% lower than the previous generation of products. Essentially, these updates continue HP`s leadership in the overall storage industry and establish a new benchmark for NAS price/performance.

HP also is delivering improved SAN connectivity and NAS manageability to extend customer value with the HP NAS Data Path Manager -- new multi-pathing software for the HP StorageWorks NAS 8000. The software improves connectivity into SAN environments by allowing path fail-over between host bus adaptors and also by providing load-balancing and performance-monitoring support. Combined with newly supported connectivity with the HP Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), the HP StorageWorks NAS integrates with virtually any HP SAN environment.

The HP StorageWorks SR2122 iSCSI storage router provides customers with a cost-efficient method of integrating Internet protocol storage into their existing Fibre Channel environments to maximise SAN investments.

HP storage services help customers design, build, integrate, manage and evolve their infrastructures to become more adaptive to business needs. HP is delivering the following new and enhanced storage services:

* Critical services for SANs: Enables customers to increase business productivity by maximising SAN uptime and stability, while minimising interoperability issues, and provides the industry`s first standard 100% SAN interconnectivity guarantee. A 24x7 SAN-certified expert support team is provided to keep SANs up and running and collaborates with customers to provide the right level of proactive and reactive SAN support services, in addition to real-time, secure remote SAN support tools.

* Data migration service: Allows customers to safely transport their critical business information across open systems, mainframe and mixed computing environments without the concern of interrupting day-to-day operations. This capability not only reduces risk but also accelerates time to production through a variety of quickly deployable and highly available migration methods.

* Enhanced SAN solution service: Provides a flexible, scalable, fully installed and configured SAN, enabling customers to easily integrate SAN solutions into their business operations and maximise their technology investments.

* Enhanced backup and recovery solution service: Provides scalable, comprehensive management of the entire backup integration process promoting business continuity, risk avoidance and improved return on IT investment.

HP StorageWorks Mezzanine Backup-Restore Solutions: HP`s low-cost, two-stage backup offerings provide online backup and quick recovery/data restore. They use industry-standard components, as well as ISV and HP backup and restore software, to integrate easily with customers` current tape backup strategies. In a full data protection environment, the mezzanine backup-restore solution functions as the first-stage backup device and sits between primary online and secondary tape library storage.

HP`s solutions utilise the HP StorageWorks Modular SAN Array 1000 as the mezzanine backup device. The MSA 1000`s industry-standard SCSI drives deliver greater reliability and two to three times the performance of Parallel ATA drives at a competitive cost per MB compared to ATA disk-based solutions on the market.

HP StorageWorks XP Disk Array Family: HP`s XP systems now provide greater flexibility and the highest scalability in the industry -- up to150TB in a single system with new 146GB, 10K RPM drives. The ability to manage up to 150TB through a "single pane of glass" substantially lowers management costs. The enhanced system also simplifies the configuration and setup of the array by providing the industry`s only automatic LUN-size configuration capability, which can save management time.

HP StorageWorks EVA: In addition to the StorageWorks XP family, HP`s modular EVA systems now support 146GB, 10K RPM drives for increased flexibility and greater scalability. With this new capacity, HP EVAs will support up to 34TB behind a single pair of controllers and up to 24TB per cabinet.

More information on all the HP StorageWorks products listed above is available at http://www.hp.com/storage/infrastructure.

More information on HP storage services is available at http://www.hp.com/go/services.