HP Unveils Manager

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP today announced virtualization and power management technologies that help customers streamline IT operations to realize dramatic cost savings, increased flexibility and improved energy efficiency.

Based on the market-leading HP BladeSystem c-Class infrastructure a self-contained unit of servers, storage, network, management software and power and cooling technology – the new offerings mark the next major phase of HP’s strategy to build modular, integrated, automated data centers that reduce administrative time and free resources to focus on the needs of the business.

Highlighting the announcement is the HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager, which improves IT processes by extending the capability of HP BladeSystem Virtual Connect technology to all blade enclosures in a data center.

Virtual Connect technology allows customers to pre-assign network and storage connections once and then add, move, replace or upgrade servers in minutes. The new Enterprise Manager enables IT administrators to manage and control these connections across 100 c-Class enclosures, or up to 1,600 blade servers, from a single console.

By dynamically moving server connections across a data center, or to remote sites, customers can more effectively and efficiently meet changing application workload and performance needs. In addition, the new software can be operated by a single administrator, which helps eliminate process steps and administration time, while providing an audit trail and limiting configuration conflicts.“Enterprises need to dramatically simplify management on a large scale,” said Jonathan Eunice, principal IT advisor at Illuminata Inc., a research and advisory services company. ”HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager is important because it lays the foundation for coordinating IT infrastructure across the data center.”

Hewlett-Packard Co.