Hewlett-Packard bolsters storage management

Hewlett-Packard Co. launched a barrage of storage hardware and software last week for large enterprises that need to be able to quickly expand and manage their storage.

The HP storage area management products include several software modules for OpenView Storage Area Manager, an HP Network Storage Appliance and the SureStore Virtual Array 7100.

The HP OpenView Storage Area Manager is a set of Windows-based management software and includes HP OpenView Storage Node Manager, Storage Allocater, Storage Optimizer and Storage Builder. It is built into the Network Storage Appliance and works with server-attached, network-attached or direct-attached storage.

The software allows capacity management and utilization monitoring across multiple operating systems, performance management, security management and resource pooling, as well as serverless and LAN-free backup. It works by discovering storage devices on the network and monitoring their health. HP's OmniBack II backup and recovery software and its Open File management package can be integrated into the Storage Area Manager.

"Not only can we manage the more complex disk requirements of our HP XP512 environment, we can use the same software to look at the legacy disk arrangements in each of our [400-plus] remote stores," says Hagen Finley, senior Unix administrator for Long's Drugs in Walnut Creek, California. "We are more likely to have an issue in one of the stores where we don't have IT people."

Future releases of OpenView Storage Area Manager will include policy and fault management as well as billing and file sharing.

The Network Storage Appliance -- a focal point for accessing different storage arrays, tape libraries and Windows NT, Solaris and HP-UX servers -- lets net managers implement storage area networks (SAN) faster. It contains an integrated Fibre Channel switch for connection to SCSI- or Fibre Channel-based hosts or storage, and it will support the IP storage protocols that allow data to be transported over Ethernet when standards are available. It connects servers to storage or tape libraries via the Fibre Channel switch.

The appliance uses an embedded copy of Windows 2000 and is compatible with Microsoft's Active Directory. The appliance contains the HP OpenView Storage Area Manager and multiple SCSI and Fibre Channel connections for attachment to storage and servers. Net managers can set volume partitioning with the network appliance.

The HP Surestore Virtual Array 7100 is an expandable device for Windows NT/2000, Solaris, NetWare and Unix networks that contains up to 14 terabytes of data capacity per 7-foot rack. It supports snapshot backups and RAID 0, 1, and 5. The array has hot-swappable power supplies, fans and drives and connects to SCSI-based hosts. HP will add Fibre Channel support for direct attachment to SANs in the future.

The HP Network Storage Appliance will ship next quarter; the 7100 Array and OpenView Storage Area Manager will ship in April. Pricing is not yet available.

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