HP announced breakthrough networking, storage and server technologies that reduce costs, increase bandwidth flexibility and improve overall performance of virtual server environments.
The HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet module, a direct connect storage bundle for HP BladeSystem, and the HP ProLiant DL385 G5p server are among HP’s offerings that are helping customers efficiently deploy their virtualised infrastructures.
HP’s new Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet module is the industry’s first interconnect technology that can allocate the bandwidth of a 10Gb Ethernet network port across four network interface card (NIC) connections. This increase in bandwidth flexibility eliminates the need for additional network hardware equipment. As a result, customers deploying virtual machines and utilising Virtual Connect Flex-10 can realise savings of up to 55 per cent in network equipment costs. Virtual Connect Flex-10 can save 240 watts of power per HP BladeSystem enclosure – or 3,150 kilowatt hours per year – compared to existing networking technologies.
The recently announced HP ProLiant BL495c virtualisation blade includes built-in Virtual Connect Flex-10 functionality that enables it to support up to 24 NIC connections.
Existing HP ProLiant c-Class blade customers can upgrade to Virtual Connect Flex-10 with the new HP NC532m Flex-10 expansion card. HP’s new direct connect storage bundle for HP BladeSystem includes two HP StorageWorks 3Gb serial attached SCSI (SAS) BL switches and an MSA2000sa storage array.
HP has enhanced its Virtual Connect 4Gb Fibre Channel module to allocate storage resources on a per virtual machine basis. This further simplifies storage and virtualisation deployments for Fibre Channel storage customers. Customers can assign up to 128 separate SAN volumes per server blade for greater performance and flexibility.
The new HP ProLiant DL385 G5p is a rack-based server optimised for virtualisation. It offers up to 6 terabytes of internal storage as well as double the memory and a 67-per cent improvement in energy efficiency when compared to previous generations.