HP announced a software and hardware storage virtualisation solution that enables enterprises to improve productivity, simplify operations and achieve lower total cost of ownership for their storage-area network (SAN) environments.

Part of HP's growing portfolio of storage virtualisation solutions, the new HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualisation Services Platform (SVSP) improves the efficiency and simplifies the management of heterogeneous midrange storage arrays.

HP SVSP is a network-based storage platform that pools capacity across HP and non-HP storage hardware. It works together with the HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) and the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) as well as a number of third-party arrays to centralise the management of a virtualised SAN environment.

As a result, enterprise customers deploying Fibre Channel SANs are able to significantly simplify operations and improve overall productivity.

HP SVSP features data services that enable customers to quickly adapt to changing business needs while reducing total cost of ownership and enhancing disaster recovery capabilities.

• Online data migration allows storage administrators to easily redistribute application data to improve performance and move data to lower-cost storage without disrupting business operations.

• Thin provisioning allows customers to purchase less storage hardware up front and easily add capacity as their businesses grow.

• Data replication – including clones, snapshots, synchronous local mirroring as well as asynchronous remote mirroring – significantly improves disaster recovery and facilitates data backup capabilities.

The HP SVSP separates data flow from management processes.

This innovative architecture means that the processing power needed to handle the data path workloads can scale independently from the resources used for management.

As a result, the HP SVSP delivers superior performance and greater scalability than traditional architectures.