HP removes cost barriers to virtualization

HP says that HP StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) software is now available at no additional cost with the purchase of eligible virtualization-ready HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) servers.

With this program, small and midsize business (SMB) customers no longer need to suffer from “enterprise envy” as it relates to their storage infrastructure. HP is the only major server vendor to deliver software-defined storage as a free component with a server purchase. The company anticipates providing SMB customers access to more than an Exabyte of VSA storage during the next 12 months.

Organizations worldwide rely on the compute performance, efficiency and resiliency of HP Proliant Gen8 servers to address infrastructure economics in today’s data centers, and recognize the IT management and cost benefits associated with server virtualization. Unfortunately, budget, staff and space limitations inhibit SMBs from purchasing and managing the storage hardware required to take full advantage of those benefits. In fact, the cost of the underlying storage infrastructure is the most commonly cited challenge related to server virtualization implementations.

“To unlock the full benefits of server virtualization in the most space- or budget-constrained environments, organizations need a converged approach to resilient, shared storage that supports their data-intensive virtualized workloads,” said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager, Storage, HP. “HP is the only storage provider that delivers powerful, efficient servers combined with free software-defined storage to help our customers maximize server virtualization ROI, even with a limited budget.”

HP StoreVirtual VSA transforms HP ProLiant servers into powerful solutions for software-defined data center deployments that maximize server virtualization benefits right out of the box. By combining these two technologies, HP enables customers to:
· Reduce costs of deploying resilient shared storage by up to 80 percent compared with traditional storage arrays.
· Simplify deployment and improve flexibility with either VMware or Microsoft hypervisor environments without the need for dedicated storage expertise.
· Enhance agility by scaling compute and storage in parallel as business needs change and application workloads grow.

· Reduce risk by keeping data highly available through clustering and built-in disaster recovery including VMware Metro Storage Cluster support.
“We were looking to refine and extend our remote capabilities without sacrificing performance, and at the same time address our growing need for expanded storage capacity and horsepower in our satellite offices and onboard our vessels,” said Jason Cohn, director, Global IT Infrastructure, Silversea Cruises. “Partnering with HP, we migrated to HP StoreVirtual VSA environments running on HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 Servers, and as a result have been able to re-provision our virtual environment, significantly expand our processing capacity and memory, increase our usable storage, and reduce our physical footprint by 50 percent.”