HP made a breakthrough in networking, storage and server technologies to reduce costs, increase bandwidth flexibility, and improve overall performance of virtual server environments. The Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet module, a direct connect storage bundle for BladeSystem, and the ProLiant DL385 G5p server are among HP’s offerings that are helping customers efficiently deploy their virtualized infrastructures.
While a growing number of companies deploy server virtualization to gain operational savings within their technology infrastructures, the cost of networking virtual servers continues to climb – for example, a typical server that hosts virtual machines requires six network connections.
To reap the benefits of their virtualized environment, companies are finding it necessary to invest in additional networking equipment, including network expansion cards, switches and cables. As an example, customers must purchase expensive network switches in either one Gigabit (Gb) or 10Gb increments to meet the increased bandwidth required for additional virtual server workloads.
HP’s 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 utilizing Virtual Connect Flex-10 can realize savings of up to 55 percent in network equipment costs.
Virtual Connect Flex-10 can save 240W of power per BladeSystem enclosure – or 3,150 kilowatt hours per year – compared to existing networking technologies.
The Virtual Connect Flex-10 distributes the capacity of a 10Gb Ethernet port into four connections, and enables customers to assign different bandwidth requirements to each connection. Optimizing bandwidth based on application workload requirements enables customers to leverage their 10Gb investments across multiple connections, supporting virtual machine environments and other network intensive applications. This reduces overall network costs and power usage by provisioning network bandwidth more efficiently.
The ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade includes built-in Virtual Connect Flex-10 functionality that enables it to support up to 24 NIC connections. With increased network bandwidth and memory capacity, the BL495c can accommodate more virtual servers than other competitive blade server offerings on the market. Existing ProLiant c-Class blade customers can upgrade to Virtual Connect Flex-10 with the NC532m Flex-10 expansion card.
The direct connect storage bundle for HP BladeSystem includes two StorageWorks 3Gb serial attached SCSI (SAS) BL switches and an MSA2000sa storage array. Traditionally, BladeSystem server administrators have had limited direct-attach or shared storage options and have had to rely on personnel with specialized knowledge to build a storage area network (SAN) based solution. This new low-cost, reliable storage option allows server administrators to easily deploy scalable shared SAS storage without the costs and complexity SANs require. By simply purchasing additional MSA2000sa arrays, customers can deploy up to 192TB of external shared storage directly connected to a BladeSystem enclosure.
The combination of the ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade server, Virtual Connect Flex-10 modules and the shared SAS storage bundle reduces the cost per virtual machine by more than 50 percent when compared to competitive solutions.
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 virtualization deployments for Fibre Channel storage customers. Customers can assign up to 128 separate SAN volumes per server blade for greater performance and flexibility.
The ProLiant DL385 G5p is a rack-based server optimized for virtualization. It offers up to 6TB of internal storage as well as double the memory and a 67 percent improvement in energy efficiency when compared to previous generations. Based on the AMD Opteron 2300 Series Quad-Core processor, the DL385 G5p improves application performance and expands support for virtual machines.
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