Storage Toolkit

HP bullish on storage

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 21 Feb 2006 17:15 GMT

HP launched new storage hardware, software and services on Tuesday and claimed that it had "turned the corner in the storage market" after a period of flat growth.

"HP has turned its business around since our major releases in May and we are driving revolution in the market," said Andrew Manners, head of storage for HP UK.

According to Manners, HP's storage business has performed strongly in the last two quarters, running at an annual growth rate of 25 percent.

"Our approach is completely different from EMC," he said. "They are R&D driven — the guys in the backroom develop it and they try and sell it. We have much more to offer than a boutique supplier like that."

Bob Schultz, senior vice-president and general manager for HP's StorageWorks division, also took a swing at rival vendors. "HP is helping customers move into a new era of information-centric consolidation in a way that tactical, storage-only vendors simply cannot match," Schultz claimed in a statement.

HP is now focused on consolidation, said Manners, with the new enhancements intended to provide "simpler, streamlined management solutions for online, backup, email and remote office consolidation, both for HP and multi-vendor IT environments."

New enhancements to the HP StorageWorks EVA and XP disk arrays include concurrent iSCSI and fibre channel connections for EVA arrays, which will be available in a single unit for companies who want to consolidate their IP networks. A new EVA array will now support 4Gbps SAN environments and there is now support for attaching EVA arrays to XP arrays.

HP is also doubling the existing cache size of XP arrays so that users can create more cache partitions.

Other additions include the extension of the maximum capacity of the HP StorageWorks 6000 Virtual Library System to 70TB with the addition of new 500GB drives.

There is also a new HP StorageWorks MSL2024 tape library that is intended to help with the consolidation of small and mid-size businesses. This has new features, including a Web-based remote management system, an integral barcode reader and removable magazines for bulk loading and offsite storage. It stores up to 9.6TB of data in a 2U design.