HP today announced new storage offerings to help enterprise customers consolidate, virtualize and secure their storage environments.
Introduced at the HP Asia Pacific StorageWorks Conference, the offerings include enhancements to the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array, the first embedded switch from Cisco for HP BladeSystem, a new network-attached storage (NAS) gateway and advanced encryption for HP Data Protector Software.
Each product helps address the increased need for unifying and managing direct-attach, NAS and storage-area network (SAN) resources that accompany the significant growth in corporate data servers.
“In the past 10 years, businesses have experienced an exponential growth of data and the trend is expected to continue for years to come,” said Phillip Sargeant, managing vice president, Storage Research, Gartner Dataquest. “To deal with this data proliferation, end users are increasingly relying on consolidation and virtualization to maintain the most cost-effective and manageable storage environments.”
“HP storage consolidation and virtualization products and services enable customers to remain flexible, reduce complexity and lower the total cost of ownership in their IT environments,” said Ashraf Helmy, Marketing Manager, StorageWorks, HP Middle East. “We’re helping customers build easy-to-manage next-generation data centers with our broad portfolio of Adaptive Infrastructure hardware, software and services.”
Supporting data growth with online consolidation and virtualization
HP StorageWorks EVA File Services allow customers to consolidate their storage with an integrated, virtualized solution that serves both application (block) and file data concurrently. The new solution adds file services to any new EVA4000, EVA6000 or EVA8000 in Microsoft Windows® or Linux environments.
For customers that require high availability and scalable performance, EVA-File Services provides a single, shared pool of storage with no single point of failure and aggregate performance far in excess of traditional NAS appliances or file servers. It also offers a single point of control that can be centrally managed and backed up.
Designed for mission-critical network storage environments, the HP ProLiant DL585 G2 Storage Server is a plug-and-play NAS gateway that provides high-performance, multi-protocol file and print serving and iSCSI connectivity for both enterprise and workgroup SAN environments. By leveraging the Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 operating system, the storage server offers customers the ability to consolidate resources and create a flexible, unified solution that combines file and print serving with application storage.
HP also is delivering embedded 4-gigabit Fibre Channel performance with the new Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch for HP c-Class BladeSystem. The integrated design frees up rack space, reduces components and uses shared power and cooling within the enclosure. This offering, the first Cisco embedded fabric switch for HP BladeSystem, allows customers to consolidate SAN environments with a Fibre Channel switch that delivers superior performance, lowers the cost of management and improves utilization of existing storage and BladeSystem assets.
Securing backup consolidation
Secure backup plays a key role in meeting the business continuity needs of consolidated storage environments and HP is enhancing its HP Data Protector Software 6.0 to provide 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption. AES helps to protect data from unauthorized access and allows backups to meet all compliance and regulatory requirements for government agencies and financial institutions.
Ideal for businesses where network backup is not secure or the cost of a dedicated encryption appliance is too high, HP Data Protector Software reduces complexity and completes backup encryption on the client level, so data is secure during transmission and at rest. Key management is simple to use, secure and flexible.
More information about the enhanced HP StorageWorks portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/storageworks. More information about HP StorageWorks Consolidation is available at www.hp.com/go/storageconsolidation.
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 $91.7 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended Oct. 31, 2006. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.
About HP Middle East
HP is the largest technology and solutions provider in the Middle East with 670 employees and subsidiaries in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Khobar, Cairo, Ramallah, Oman and 2 service Joint Ventures in Kuwait and Bahrain servicing the GCC, Egypt and the Levant. HP has been present in the Middle East since 1968 and opened its first regional office in 1994. HP Middle East is the market leader for enterprise, small and medium business and consumer technology products and offers a large portfolio of solutions and services in various business domains.
