HP and the next generation data center
Today HP is announcing its salvo in the battle for the next generation datacenter (NGDC). HP wants to be the winner in the battle for the universal hardware platform for virtualized applications, the battle for management and orchestration software for that datacenter and the battle to provide key global services to help organizations move from where they are today to fully deploying the NGDC. What's a NGDC? My post What would a next generation datacenter look like? layed out the foundation for understanding what this really means.
What did HP announce?
Here's a snippet from HP's announcement:
- HP Critical Facilities services – As a result of its February acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, HP is expanding its Data Center Services offering with three new critical facilities services focused on consulting, design and assurance. The services help customers create scalable facilities that reduce the cost of data center operations through energy-efficient power and cooling technologies contained in space-efficient facilities.(2)
- HP Data Center Consolidation services – These include design, transition and support services to help customers reduce the number of their facilities. As a result, customers reduce energy and operating costs while maintaining the ability to support business growth with a robust, flexible infrastructure.
- HP Data Center Virtualization services – The HP virtualization portfolio has been enhanced with new design, support and education services that help customers create a virtual infrastructure from their physical technology assets. This includes virtualization across servers, storage, networks and applications.
- HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server – The HP ProLiant DL785 G5 is a powerful and scalable eight-socket x86 server based on Quad-Core AMD® Opteron™ processor technology. The server is an ideal platform for virtualization due to its processing power, large memory footprint, storage capacity and expandable input/output. The DL785 improves server utilization by consolidating multiple servers and reduces the management, energy and space issues associated with server sprawl.
New software provides single view of physical and virtual world, enhanced automation:
- HP Insight Dynamics - VSE – This is the industry’s first software to analyze and optimize physical and virtual resources in the same way. The software helps customers extend the life of their data centers with advanced energy-aware capacity planning. HP Insight Dynamics - VSE will support multi-vendor hypervisor technologies and can reduce costs of common data center tasks by as much as 40 percent. Previewed today and expected to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2008, HP Insight Dynamics - VSE seamlessly plugs into HP Systems Insight Manager, the world’s most popular platform management tool.
- HP Operations Orchestration enhancements – New integrations extend comprehensive automation across all physical and virtual infrastructures. By automating manual and error-prone processes across clients, applications, servers, networks, and storage, these integrations help customers better manage and automate business services. Additionally, these enhancements help customers reduce labor costs, increase service availability and meet compliance requirements by providing auditable, standardized processes.
New approach speeds delivery of next-generation infrastructure benefits:
- HP Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS) – HP AIaaS offers customers access to HP owned and managed data centers that deliver an optimized platform for Microsoft® Exchange, SAP® applications and other critical business applications. Within a matter of hours, customers can rapidly access additional computing power to meet their fluctuating needs. With HP AIaaS, customers can realize improved service levels and convert traditional capital investment into an ongoing operating expense because all assets are owned and managed by HP.
Snapshot Analysis
HP (and its predecessors, DEC and Tandem) have been at the forefront of virtualization technology at every layer of the Kusnetzky Group Model of virtualization technology for decades (see Sorting out the different layers of virtualization to learn more about that model). This announcement clearly builds upon that history.The capabilities of HP's Insight Dynamics VSE and HP Operations Orchestration enhancements make it clear that HP isn't going to take a back seat to anyone in the industry in the areas of virtualization technology or the optimization of physical and virtual resources. It's new system, the HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server, appears to be a very powerful platform for virtualized workloads, regardless of whether that virtualization is being accomplished using virtual processing software from HP or from one of its many partners.
If your organization is contemplating a move from today's patchwork quilt datacenter to a more uniform architecture complemented with powerful management and orchestation software, HP's offerings are worth a good look. HP's service offerings are likely to make the transition from today to the future much easier than they might otherwise be.