HP ‘vapourises’ Virtual Infrastructure silos

Virtualization continues to be a driver for infrastructure investment, however the complexity of building virtual infrastructure from individual components is fueling a 33 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for integrated systems. IDC estimates the integrated systems market will grow from $5.4 billion in 2013 to $14.3 billion by 2017. Hyper-converged systems are the next evolution of converged infrastructure, helping midsize locations simplify IT operations.

To address this need, HP is introducing the HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual, which combines all required hardware and management into a single scale-out system. Architected for simplicity and built on proven and open data services, the system includes HP OneView InstantOn, HP OneView for VMware vCenter, and HP StoreVirtual VSA technology for simple self-installation and management of fully clustered, highly available servers and storage. This flexible solution is aimed to help midsize businesses, remote offices and branch office locations that want a building block approach to infrastructure in order to simplify IT operations, accelerate service delivery, and enable enhanced disaster recovery for virtualized as well as physical servers.

This integrated appliance is sized for server virtualization and virtual desktop workloads based on VMware best practices, providing faster response times to business demands, simplified administration and improved application availability. The solution provides operational efficiencies through unified management across HP StoreVirtual, HP ProLiant Servers and HP OneView’s converged management with robust VMware vSphere®integration and wizard-driven startup designed for IT generalists without specialized storage expertise.

“Small and midsize enterprises are looking to simplify IT operations and deliver applications and services faster with absolute simplicity” said Nariman Teymourian, senior vice president and general manager, Converged Systems, HP. “The HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system enables the business to accelerate time to value and respond to business opportunities faster.”

Today’s announcement demonstrates the longstanding partnership between HP and VMware. The new ConvergedSystem 200 line of hyper-converged solutions starting with the HP StoreVirtual version and then the EVO:RAIL version, offer customers greater choice and flexibility.

“Hyper-convergence is the next phase of infrastructure evolution and builds on the adoption of virtualization technologies,” said Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware. “The HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system promises to accelerate operational efficiency outcomes for our mutual customers.”

With more customers running VMware software on HP ProLiant Servers than any other platform, more than 50,000 HP OneView for VMware vCenter downloads,(3) and over one million HP StoreVirtual software-defined storage license distributions, customers can be confident that this solution builds on proven expertise.
“The mobile-cloud era has increased enterprise IT’s standard of speed and efficiency, and software-defined data centers deliver on those expectations,” said Dan Molina, CTO, Nth Generation Computing. “The HP 200-HC StoreVirtual system provides the hyper-converged, warp-speed solution that midsize customers need to easily deploy an environment that handles any workload and responds quickly to changing business demands.”

Deep hypervisor integration and best practice design accelerates deployment
The knowledge and time required to manage separate servers, hypervisors, networking and storage can prevent organizations from realizing the benefits of server virtualization. The HP CS 200-HC StoreVirtual system is designed to simplify virtual infrastructure management, from ordering and deployment to support of applications and virtual desktops.

Designed for speed of deployment, the system includes HP OneView InstantOn – a utility that provides simple self-installation and enables customers to be ready with loaded virtual machines in minutes and built on resilient server and storage infrastructure to provide application high availability. The HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system arrives pre-configured with all software pre-installed and only requires the entry of IP addresses, credentials and VMware vSphere license information to get up and running.

To simplify ongoing management, customers can take advantage of HP OneView for VMware vCenter for centralized management of compute, storage and virtual machines from inside VMware vCenter™ Server™. This ensures an IT generalist can manage the entire virtual infrastructure from a single interface without any specialized server, storage, networking or virtualization expertise. Once the cluster-aware startup completes, administrators can:
· Provision virtual machines directly from VMware vCenter Server
· Manage all hyper-converged systems and traditional virtual server systems across all sites from a single console using HP OneView for VMware vCenter
· Replicate from one hyper-converged system to another, or to a low-cost server/VSA combination for flexible disaster recovery
· Use optional vRealize Operations (formerly VMware vCenter™ Operations Manager™) for comprehensive monitoring of health and performance across VMs and critical physical components

To help streamline and automate management of both physical and virtualized infrastructure, the intuitive HP OneView converged management platform will be extended over time to include even more functionality for the ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual.

Hyper-convergence with advanced data services for performance and resiliency
The HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system fits alongside the software-defined HP StoreVirtual Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) and the HP StoreVirtual 4000 Storage appliance. All three HP StoreVirtual-based product families offer 100 percent shared data services, including replication, federation and transparent site failover.

The HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system provides scale-out flexibility to handle changing workloads and is available in both performance and capacity optimized configurations. Systems can be clustered together up to 32 nodes to pool capacity and performance capabilities. Multiple clusters can then be managed from the same console, and adding systems to the cluster is quick and easy. Each additional system seamlessly adds the power of four servers and associated storage, maximizing the speed, agility and efficiency of customers’ core infrastructure and operations.

Unlike storage in less mature hyper-converged offerings, the HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system includes a rich set of standard data services, including:
· Automated, sub-volume auto-tiering, thin provisioning and space reclamation provide capacity efficiency and lower storage costs without sacrificing performance.
· Stretch cluster capabilities that keep applications online during appliance, rack-level or site-wide outages to address the need for business continuity.
· Transparent multi-site high availability and workload mobility built on HP StoreVirtual technology certified by VMware as a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster solution and integrated with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.
· Data volumes that can be non-disruptively replicated or migrated from one HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual system to another—or to any x86-based server running any major hypervisor and HP StoreVirtual VSA—using built-in HP Peer Motion to provide flexibility to meet changing business needs.