HP unveils blade for quick, efficient storage

HP announced its first dedicated storage blade, which provides customers with quick, efficient storage expansion to enable greater flexibility within IT infrastructures.

The company also introduced two offerings within the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) family to accelerate backup and recovery, reduce costs and make storage area networks (SANs) simpler to manage.

The HP StorageWorks SB40c storage blade can add up to 876 gigabytes (GB) of direct attached RAID storage capacity to each blade within an HP BladeSystem c-Class enclosure. A key enabler of HP's Adaptive Infrastructure portfolio, storage blades help companies improve their IT organisations by speeding change and delivering improved cost efficiencies and quality of service.

Based on industry-standard components, including small form factor Serial Attached SCSI drives and an embedded SmartArray P400 controller, the SB40c's density and power efficiency accommodate the space and power constraints of data centres.

In addition, the storage blade offers simplified and automated storage and server management via HP Systems Insight Manager and Integrated Lights-Out tools.

"HP's continued innovation and investment in its StorageWorks portfolio are providing customers with greater choice and more affordable options to meet their storage needs," Bob Schultz, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP, said.

"New offerings like the SB40c are helping HP lead the way for customers that want to simplify their IT infrastructures."

The HP StorageWorks VLS300 EVA Gateway changes the game of virtual tape by scaling beyond 500 terabytes (TB) of capacity and providing throughput in excess of eight TB per hour, dramatically accelerating SAN backup and recovery in even the largest IT environments.

The HP StorageWorks EVA4000 SAN Starter Kit delivers a robust, cost-effective, easy-to-use SAN storage solution for small and medium businesses. Based on the powerfully simple EVA, this starter kit is a complete out-of-the box solution for customers who are ready for a SAN but had been concerned about SAN complexities.

More information about the latest offerings in the HP StorageWorks portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/storageworks More information about the HP BladeSystem is available at www.hp.com/go/bladesystem