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HP Introduces Industry’s First Business-ready Infrastructure for Automated Service Delivery in Data Centers

Tuesday 21. April 2009 - HP today unveiled new solutions within its Adaptive Infrastructure (AI) portfolio that fundamentally change the way technology is used to deliver business services, while also reducing overall infrastructure costs and data center complexity.

HP BladeSystem Matrix (Matrix) is the industry’s first converged software, server, storage and networking platform that automates service delivery for the data center. HP Matrix Orchestration Environment provides a unified management interface to rapidly design, deploy and optimize the application infrastructure.

Together, these offerings create an integrated pool of resources that operate in both physical and virtual environments, creating the first truly business-ready infrastructure.

This powerful combination dramatically simplifies complex infrastructure tasks such as disaster recovery, capacity planning, consolidation and provisioning. As a result, companies can save nearly 80 percent in operational costs and realize payback in as little as eight months, with a potential return on investment in three years of over 300 percent.(2)

Through a self-service portal, Matrix provides chief information officers with a push button approach to accelerating the provisioning of the infrastructure for applications. It also dynamically assigns resources to meet the needs of the business in minutes versus weeks or months. Resources are assigned to requests as needed, and then returned to the pool once the service requirements are completed, optimizing utilization of the infrastructure.

HP has introduced several additional offerings that expand the flexibility of a business-ready infrastructure including: HP LeftHand P4000 SAN solutions, HP StorageWorks SB40c with P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance Software bundle, HP StorageWorks 600 Modular Disk System and HP Insight Capacity Advisor Virtualization Services.

“Increasingly, customers are looking for data center solutions with Adaptive Infrastructure properties such as superior economics, application-based cost tracking, and true dynamic capacity management,” said Mark Potter, senior vice president, Infrastructure Software and Blades, HP. “Matrix is a game-changing, all-in-one technology that allows the infrastructure to run at the pace of the business.”

Changing the economics, simplicity and flexibility of IT

HP BladeSystem Matrix is the industry’s first all-in-one software, server, storage and networking platform that allows customers to get the benefits of a converged system without a “rip and replace” strategy for all their existing data center investments.

Benefits such as four-to-one network equipment consolidation and a 45 percent reduction in server hardware and software costs provide early return on investment.(1)

Based on the HP BladeSystem portfolio, Matrix offers customers the benefit of the platform’s sophisticated power management. IT can use one-third less energy through HP Thermal Logic Technology and accurately capture historical power usage.(3) Customers can reclaim up to 50 percent of previously over-provisioned data center circuit capacity.(3)

In addition, the automated workflow engine with template-based provisioning increases productivity and decreases errors by removing manual steps and facilitating coordination between technology teams, lowering service delivery time from days to minutes.

Matrix is available through HP Factory Express, the company’s customization and integration service, with on-site implementation services and project management for a seamless deployment. As business needs grow, a single Matrix environment can easily be expanded to accommodate up to 1,000 systems.

Converge everything

Matrix comes with HP’s new Virtual Connect 8Gb Fibre Channel and Flex-10 Ethernet modules. Virtual Connect Flex-10 is the industry’s first interconnect technology that can allocate the bandwidth of a 10-Gb Ethernet network port across four network interface card (NIC) connections, eliminating additional network equipment and costs. Customers deploying virtual machines and using HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 can realize savings of up to 55 percent in network equipment costs.(4)

HP is extending the Virtual Connect offering with several updates:

The Virtual Connect multi-enclosure stacking feature connects four enclosures into one VC domain, reducing the number of Ethernet cables to two per rack.
HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager v1.30, part of the HP Matrix Orchestration Environment, simplifies LAN and SAN connectivity management across hundreds of HP BladeSystem enclosures. The software provides a central console, enabling group-based configuration management, plus rapid assignment, movement and failover of server-to-network connections for up to 200 virtual connect domains.
HP defines the future of storage: industry standard storage

With its latest storage offerings, HP is enabling customers to harness excess capacity from any vendor, anywhere in the network, and turn it into a single pool of shared storage. Additionally, HP is delivering multiple tiers of storage on a standard platform.

The new HP LeftHand P4000 SAN solutions offer a scale-out architecture that provides data replication and automatically balances data volumes across all storage resources. Administrators can cost-effectively deploy shared storage within virtual environments while using existing infrastructures.
The HP StorageWorks SB40c with P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance Software bundle is the industry’s first highly available shared storage solution within a virtualized blade server infrastructure.(5) The solution delivers a scalable storage SAN that can be deployed within the HP BladeSystem. It can be expanded across multiple blade enclosures to meet high-growth storage needs.
The HP StorageWorks 600 Modular Disk System (MDS600) provides direct-attach storage (DAS) for HP BladeSystem. MDS600 enables customers to allocate any number of drives to any server at 70 percent lower cost and 230 percent more density than traditional DAS.(1) Storage can be allocated as needed to each blade server, with the flexibility to reconfigure quickly and easily without moving cables.
Virtualization enhanced with leading combination of services and software

HP Insight Capacity Advisor Virtualization Services help customers assess, plan and design their ideal virtual environment. This service combines years of HP virtualization expertise with HP Insight Capacity Advisor consolidation software to identify the best approach for reducing the risk of downtime, increasing responsiveness and helping maximize the return on investment of a virtualized deployment.