Hewlett Packard
Business benefits of consolidating storage
By consolidating storage capacity, customers can realise numerous benefits.
- Reduced TCO-The primary benefit of storage consolidation is lower total cost of ownership, achieved by reducing management overhead, decreasing the cost per gigabyte, and gaining the ability to share resources.
- Optimised resource use - storage investments are maximised by consolidating spare capacity from distributed systems onto centralised arrays where it can be allocated dynamically as needed.
- Greater business agility - Pooling storage centrally facilitates faster and better business decisions by allowing data to be shared easily among applications and users.
- Reduced business risk - With centralised storage, security administration is more robust and easier to implement.
- Improved service levels - Higher service levels can be achieved through full component redundancy and continuous online operation, even during upgrade and backup procedures.
- More predictable performance - Advanced performance management and resource-allocation tools contribute to more responsive and predictable performance.
Solution overview
Hewlett-Packard has invested significant resources to develop innovative, world-class solutions in the following areas:
- storage arrays, including the Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), and XP Disk Array which offer powerful management capabilities and superior levels of performance and data protection
- Enterprise storage management software that provides both physical and virtual management capabilities; including HP's Adaptive storage Infrastructure
- Comprehensive storage support programs that offer a range of services to meet diverse customer needs while helping to ensure the highest possible levels of storage availability
HP's Enterprise storage Arrays incorporate advanced data-protection technologies that offer key advantages over competitive designs. For example, HP's full fibre channel architecture features two cache banks and dual connected fibre disks that deliver high performance and outstanding reliability. HP was the first company to offer an enterprise array with these capabilities.
HP's Enterprise storage Arrays also facilitate ease of use and management self sufficiency through a variety of innovative features such as:
- A web-based console that provides central management and control of the array through an intuitive user interface
- Non-disruptive micro-code upgrades and expansion capabilities that allow customers to purchase an appropriately sized array today and expand it in the future, without incurring any system downtime
- An Instant Capacity on Demand (iCOD) program featuring pre-installed storage capacity that can be activated immediately for maximum business agility and responsiveness
In addition to enhanced management capabilities, HP offers such leading-edge capabilities as true storage virtualisation and robust enterprise service-level management. Key features include
- storage accounting and end-user charge backs based on storage-utilisation rates
- Auto-discovery and graphing of storage devices within a storage Area Network (SAN), enabling customers to optimise storage resource use and monitor key performance metrics
- Central, single-pane management of all storage devices with HP storage Essentials Enterprise Edition and storage virtualisation tools
- HP's remote monitoring of your storage products and networks offers a high value improvement in proactive and reactive support.
Consolidation solutions need to be effectively maintained and operated to achieve targeted savings and desired benefits. HP Services' leadership and experience in storage deployment and support can help customers increase efficiency, manageability, and availability of the storage environment.
In Addition, HP Services can also extend these benefits to multi-vendor environments, taking care of interoperability questions and saving the time you spend talking to several storage device providers.
