HP Advances Flexibility, Efficiency of Blades Across the Data Center
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PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 12, 2007- HP today announced virtualization and power
management technologies that help customers streamline IT operations to realize
dramatic cost savings, increased flexibility and improved energy efficiency.
Based on the market-leading HP BladeSystem c-Class infrastructure- a self-contained unit of servers, storage, network, management software and power and cooling technology-the new offerings mark the next major phase of HP's strategy to build modular,integrated, automated data centers that reduce administrative time and free resources to focus on the needs of the business.
Highlighting the announcement is the HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager, which
improves IT processes by extending the capability of HP BladeSystem Virtual Connect
technology to all blade enclosures in a data center.
Virtual Connect technology allows customers to pre-assign network and storage
connections once and then add, move, replace or upgrade servers in minutes. The new
Enterprise Manager enables IT administrators to manage and control these connections
across 100 c-Class enclosures, or up to 1,600 blade servers, from a single console.
By dynamically moving server connections across a data center, or to remote sites,
customers can more effectively and efficiently meet changing application workload and
performance needs. In addition, the new software can be operated by a single
administrator, which helps eliminate process steps and administration time, while
providing an audit trail and limiting configuration conflicts.
"Enterprises need to dramatically simplify management on a large scale," said Jonathan
Eunice, principal IT advisor at Illuminata Inc., a research and advisory services
company."HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager is important because it lays the
foundation for coordinating IT infrastructure across the data center."
HP's advancements in virtualization, management, power and cooling have helped it
secure the No. 1 position in blade server market revenue and units worldwide,
according to IDC.(1)
The company shipped more than 150,000 virtual connect-enabled
servers in the past year; these systems can now be enhanced by the capabilities of HP
Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager.
"HP Virtual Connect gave us amazing flexibility to add and recover servers very quickly, speeding up our processes and eliminating wait time in response to our organization," said Scott Hemmerlein, systems administrator, Information Systems and Technology Management, Indiana University School of Management."We hope to expand those
same time savings beyond one blade enclosure to the rest of our data center with HP
Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager."
Managing physical and virtual environments
HP also is delivering new and enhanced offerings based on HP Insight Control that help
manage physical and virtual environments:
o HP Server Migration Pack Universal Edition now combines virtual and physical
migrations into a single tool to speed migration time of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem
servers. A new"queued migration feature" helps to automate, plan and execute
multiple migrations at once, with expected support to include Citrix XenServer(TM),
Microsoft® virtual machines, Oracle® VM and VMware.
o HP Virtual Machine Management Pack 3.0, another key offering within the Insight
Control management portfolio, provides central management of Citrix XenServer,
Microsoft virtual machines, Oracle VM and VMware. It helps reduce downtime
interruptions with a new predictive failure alert capacity that can relocate virtual
machines before hardware failures occur.
o HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server consolidates large SQL environments
onto a single cluster so customers can manage all instances at once, freely add and
recover multiple instances, and roll out business applications more quickly while
improving reliability.
"Infrastructure issues of cost, time, change and energy continue to challenge our
customers, even as great technologies like virtualization help lower costs and speed the pace of making changes," said Mark Linesch, vice president of marketing, Infrastructure Software, HP."With these offerings, our recently acquired assets from Opsware and more products on the horizon, HP continues to drive toward an Adaptive Infrastructure inclusive of both physical and virtual resources."
HP's Opsware technology identifies dependencies, automates the management of IT
infrastructure and assesses the impact of changes while providing a unified view that
spans all infrastructure tiers of an application. HP plans to integrate the Opsware
Automation Platform with its existing management solutions, bringing together hardware
and software for future data center automation capabilities across the full stack.
Providing IT and facilities with energy-aware control across the data center
The cost to cool a data center can be more than the cost of powering the IT equipment.
In fact, a recent study suggests that in a majority of the world's data centers, 60-70
percent of a data center's power is associated with cooling the IT equipment.(2)
The new HP Power Distribution Rack controls three-phase power distribution across a row
of server racks to more efficiently deliver power where and when it is needed most for
significant cost and environmental benefits. The offering allows IT managers to:
o Connect to power once across a row of server racks and adapt power distribution as
needs change;
o Prevent overloads and resolve problems fast with energy-aware, HP Thermal Logic
technology; and,
o Reduce cabling which lowers complexity and the chance for error with one set of input
cables to the end of a row and short power drops to each rack.
The new HP Rackmountable Parallel 3 Phase UPS provides the highest level of power
protection from HP and dissipates less than half as much heat into a data center
compared to the nearest competitor offering.(3)
It enables attached servers to save all work in progress and initiate a shutdown in the event of power loss, and restores it with Thermal Logic power policies to ensure business picks up where it left off.
When compared to competing, less efficient offerings, HP's new 3 Phase UPS can save
more than $1,000 a year in power and cooling costs in the 12-kilowatt rack-mount
model and more than $6,000 for the 60-kilowatt row-level configuration.(3)
More information about HP's solutions for the Adaptive Infrastructure is available at
www.hp.com/go/adaptiveinfrastructure.
About HP
HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers- from
individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing,
personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world's
largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $100.5 billion for the four fiscal quarters
ended July 31, 2007. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at
www.hp.com.
News release
Editorial contacts:
Dayna Fried, HP
+1 949 240 2119
dayna.fried@hp.com
Eric Krueger, HP
+1 281 518 6083
eric.krueger@hp.com
Ali Kops
Burson-Marsteller for HP
+1 312 596 3428
ali.kops@bm.com
HP Media Hotline
+1 866 266 7272
pr@hp.com
www.hp.com/go/newsroom
Hewlett-Packard Company
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304
www.hp.com
