New HP Converged Storage Infrastructure

HP announced several Converged Infrastructure solutions that improve enterprise agility by simplifying deployment and speeding IT delivery.

                   HP’s Converged Storage design center

HP Converged Infrastructure solutions are a key element in a client’s Instant-On Enterprise journey. These offerings break through IT sprawl and turn technology assets into interoperable, shared pools of resources with a common management platform.

These new offerings include:

• Converged Systems, a new portfolio of turnkey, optimized and converged hardware, software, tailored consulting and HP Solution Support services that enable clients to be up and running with new applications in hours vs. months.(1) The solutions address top application areas including real-time data analytics, database consolidation and data warehouse.
• Converged Storage architecture and portfolio, which integrates HP Store360 scale-out software with HP BladeSystem and HP ProLiant hardware to reduce storage administration, speed time to service delivery, increase energy efficiency and improve access for any data type or application workload. The offerings are complemented by new Storage Consulting services.
• Converged Data Center, a new class of HP Performance Optimized Data Centers (PODs) that can be deployed faster – just 12 weeks – and at a quarter of the cost when compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar data center.(2) Extending HP’s leadership in modular data centers, the HP POD 240a, also referred to as the HP ‘EcoPOD,’ uses 95 percent less facilities energy.(3)
• HP Server Automation 9.1 software provisions physical and virtual application instances across the entire life cycle.

UPS relies upon HP Converged Infrastructure solutions to help deliver more than 15 million packages daily and keep its website available at all times for tracking. HP Converged Infrastructure allows UPS to scale technology resources to meet changing demands and support the organization’s distributed environment.

Delivering enterprise agility
with Converged Infrastructure
Cloud computing and mobility are redefining how people live, how organizations operate and how the world interacts. Enterprises must adjust to meet the changing needs of users, customers and citizens by driving innovation and agility through technology. Yet IT sprawl is causing enterprise complexity and crippling the ability of organizations to keep pace with enterprise demands.

Research conducted on behalf of HP found that 95 percent of private and public sector executives consider agility important to the success of their organizations. Plus, more than two-thirds of C-suite executives believe that enterprise agility is driven by technology solutions.(4)

"In a world where enterprises must instantly react to changing markets, clients are turning to HP Converged Infrastructure to dramatically improve their agility," said Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. "The new solutions announced today extend the benefits of convergence to deliver new levels of speed, simplicity and efficiency that enable clients to capitalize and anticipate change."

Converged Systems accelerate time to application value
HP Converged Systems speed solution deployment by providing a common architecture, management and security model across virtualization, cloud and dedicated application environments.

They include:

• HP VirtualSystem increases performance and reduces complexity with an architecture optimized for virtual server and virtual desktop environments. It integrates server, storage, networking, virtualization software and services, dramatically simplifying deployment and management. It also provides advanced security and single-pane-of-glass management across hybrid environments, and it supports Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen and VMware. HP VirtualSystem provides a path to cloud computing with an upgrade to HP CloudSystem.
• HP CloudSystem, originally announced January 2011, provides a platform for building and managing cloud services across private, public and hybrid environments. Universal security, governance and multitenant management enable clients to ensure quality of service and reduce risk.
• HP AppSystem maximizes performance while simplifying deployment and application management. These systems offer best practice operations with a standard architecture that lowers total cost of ownership. Among the new systems are HP Vertica Analytics System, as well as HP Database Consolidation Solution and HP Business Data Warehouse Appliance, which are both optimized for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.
• HP Technology Services provides a life cycle of consulting services including strategy, assessment, design, test, implementation and training. HP Solution Support provides single-point-of-contact services for the entire turnkey solution, including third-party software.

HP Converged Storage drives rapid response
Legacy monolithic and unified storage architectures were designed to address predictable workloads, structured data and dedicated access – before the explosive growth of web browsers and smartphones. Today’s requirements, however, are exactly opposite, with unpredictable application workloads, such as cloud, virtualization and big data applications. These IT challenges change the relationship between storage, servers, networks and applications, requiring a new level of integration across the enterprise.

To address this gap in storage, HP’s Converged Storage architecture changes how data is accessed by integrating scale-out storage software with converged server and storage hardware platforms. Advanced management tools that span the architecture help speed IT service delivery. As a result, clients can deploy and grow storage 41 percent faster(5) while reducing administration time by up to 90 percent.(6)

HP Converged Storage solutions enable clients to independently increase performance and capacity without downtime for any data type or application workload.

New solutions include:

• HP X5000 G2 Network Storage Systems increase availability for file serving in small enterprise environments. Built on HP BladeSystem technology, they can be deployed in minutes and reduce power requirements up to 58 percent, cooling needs up to 63 percent and storage footprint up to 50 percent.(7)
• HP X9000 IBRIX Network Storage Systems optimize retention of unstructured data with new compliance features and the capacity for more than 1 million snapshots. The solution provides insight to the enterprise on trends, market dynamics and other pertinent facts by simplifying management of massive data sets. Policy management capabilities automate the movement of data to optimize resources. It is ideal as a content archiving solution for email, SharePoint files, multimedia, medical image archival (Picture Archive Communications Systems) and other file-based data.

Enhanced HP storage systems and new services
HP’s fifth-generation Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family includes the new HP P6000 EVA, offering thin provisioning and Dynamic LUN Migration software along with 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10Gb iSCSI and FCoE support. This solution enables clients to consolidate application data to speed administration and reduce total cost of ownership.

HP Enterprise Services has integrated HP 3PAR Storage into the HP Data Center Storage Package, which offers storage management services that allow clients to ‘flex’ their storage needs up and down with changes in demand. Offering thin provisioning and autonomic data tiering, this service provides 3PAR in a utility storage model.

HP also announced a new Storage Consulting Services offering that helps clients to design and deploy a Converged Storage environment, optimize the storage infrastructure, reduce costs, and protect and align data while preparing storage for cloud computing.

Converged Data Center sets standard for the future
Demands for data center capacity continue to rise, however, traditional brick-and-mortar construction methods can take up to two years or longer to build, are costly and can consume more energy than the technology they support.

The HP POD 240a, an efficient data center, can be deployed in weeks vs. years, as well as save upfront capital costs by up to 75 percent when compared to a brick-and-mortar facility.(8) Annual facilities energy savings can be reduced by up to 95 percent with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as low as 1.05, compared to a PUE of 2.0 for traditional data centers.(9)

Automation helps drive agility
HP Server Automation 9.1 provides heterogeneous, automated server life cycle management for enterprise servers and applications for both converged and traditional environments. With new integrated database automation, it offers a single tool that enables IT to significantly reduce the time it takes to achieve full application life cycle automation.

(1) Based on internal HP testing.
(2) The HP POD 240a offers a reduction in deployment time and annual energy savings when compared with traditional data centers built from the ground up, based on HP internal engineering analyses. HP Pod-Works allows for the build of multiple PODs simultaneously and features seven staging bays with 3 megawatts of power and network connections to perform customized assembly, testing and shipping, speeding time to value over the industry average, according to HP internal testing.
(3) New POD technology from HP offers 95 percent greater energy efficiency compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar data center, based on internal HP testing.
(4) The State of Agility, research by Burson-Marsteller on behalf of HP, March 2011.
(5) 2010 Scale-Out Storage Survey, ESG Research.
(6) Based on documented client results that are subject to unique business conditions, client IT environment, HP products deployed and other factors. These results may not be typical; results may vary.
(7) As compared to HP’s previous product offering, the X3820 2-Node Network Storage System.
(8) The HP POD 240a offers a reduction in capital investment costs, saving clients as much as $24.7 million over building a traditional 1.2 megawatt data center.
(9) Based on HP estimates and analysis of energy savings comparisons between an HP POD 240a and traditional data center.