New virtualization solutions increase client agility through automated, secure, virtual machine and data mobility services

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 14 — HP today announced new virtualization software solutions that simplify, automate and secure the movement of virtual machines (VMs) and data in cloud environments, providing clients with increased agility for addressing dynamic market opportunities.

In legacy infrastructures, moving a VM workload such as a Microsoft Exchange application between data centers requires hundreds of complex, manual device-level configuration steps. Data mobility is similarly challenging because storage requires a physical deployment that consumes floor space, power, cooling and infrastructure investment, which locks clients into a proprietary environment.

New HP Converged Infrastructure solutions help to eliminate these issues, delivering increased agility and simplicity:

• HP Ethernet Virtual Interconnect (EVI) is the industry's first solution⁽¹⁾ to simplify and speed the interconnectivity of up to eight geographically dispersed data centers in minutes, eliminating manual configuration tasks.
• HP Multitenant Device Context (MDC) software delivers increased security for multitenant cloud applications, eliminating the comingling of data from different applications or departments.
• HP StoreVirtual virtual storage appliance (VSA) increases flexibility by allowing clients to easily build storage pools on any x86 server using VMware vSphere or Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisors. As a result, clients can move data across heterogeneous servers, hypervisors and data center locations to better meet organization needs, while reducing overall cost and complexity.

"Clients are seeking a more flexible virtualized environment that enables mobility of virtual machines and data services across the enterprise," said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president and general manager, Networking, HP. "HP's unique virtualization technologies meet that need, helping clients to significantly increase their agility and innovate at a pace their organizations demand."

Industry's only multitenant Data Center Interconnect for cloud networks

Connecting geographically dispersed data centers optimizes workload mobility and disaster recovery. Typically, this connectivity requires months of error-prone and costly manual network redesign and reconfiguration.

HP EVI is the industry's only⁽¹⁾ Data Center Interconnect overlay technology that enables "single touch" connection of up to eight data centers around the world from one location. Clients can optimize server and storage resources to perform workload mobility or disaster recovery by linking the software in HP EVI from one data center to another.

With HP MDC software, clients can create multiple, secure and isolated functions for organizational departments such as finance, human resources and engineering, while reducing the number of networking devices in the data center by 75 percent.⁽¹⁾ Combining HP EVI with HP MDC simplifies data-center interconnectivity while reducing total cost of ownership by 56 percent⁽¹⁾ with a single management platform.

"We needed a centralized, consolidated data-center infrastructure that delivered long-term operational efficiencies to accommodate our network of more than 100 agencies," said Jason Cohen, global chief information officer at Diversified Agency Services, a global marketing services and specialty communication company. "HP delivered exactly that, and the new Data Center Interconnect additions will ensure business continuity by distributing applications and compute resources for our enterprise private cloud."

Industry's only hypervisor-independent virtual storage appliance

To address flexibility and cost, many organizations have moved from physical storage deployments to VSAs and VM-based data services to support new application workloads and rapid data growth. However, most VSA software is proprietary, supporting only a single vendor's hardware and hypervisor.

HP StoreVirtual VSA is the first software-based virtual storage appliance to operate on any x86 server, while connecting to a range of third-party external storage solutions and supporting a mix of VMware vSphere and Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisors simultaneously.⁽²⁾ This heterogeneous, hardware-agnostic solution for delivering shared storage in virtualized environments eliminates vendor lock-in, reduces infrastructure cost by up to 60 percent⁽¹⁾ and increases utilization without additional investment.

"The ability to reduce distance limitation in networking and to simplify storage infrastructure is important for organizations using VMware vMotion® in VMware vSphere," said Gary Green, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "We are pleased to continue to partner with HP to enable our customers to address IT challenges with better resource utilization and optimization for workload mobility across data centers."

Pricing and availability

• HP Ethernet Virtual Interconnect and HP Multitenant Device Context will be available worldwide this fall as software upgrades for the HP FlexFabric core switches.
• HP StoreVirtual VSA will be available worldwide in September with a starting U.S. list price of $700 per license when purchased in multilicense packs.⁽³⁾

Additional information about the new networking and storage solutions is available at www.hp.com/go/VirtualAppNetworks and www.hp.com/go/StoreVirtualVSA.

HP's premier Europe, Middle East and Africa client event, HP Discover, takes place Dec. 4-6 in Frankfurt, Germany.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world's largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ Based on HP internal comparative analysis of publicly available data from major competitors.

⁽²⁾ Based on HP comparisons of publicly available data and expert observations as cited by the Taneja Group that HP LeftHand Virtual SAN Appliance software was the first virtual storage product on the VMware HCL and later on the Microsoft Windows Server Catalog.

⁽³⁾ Estimated U.S. list prices. Actual prices may vary.

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Source: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.