HP is smoothing out SAN storage management for VMware shops with new Left Hand P4000 SAN hardware, Virtual SAN Appliance Software and the new StorageWorks SB40c Storage Blade.

When deployed in conjunction with the new P4000 hardware and PSA software provide the following benefits for VMware setups:

The HP LeftHand P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance Software creates a shared storage node using resources that already exist inside the physical server running VMware ESX. These nodes can be clustered together to transform existing server storage into a clustered storage system that is managed as a single SAN. This allows you to use all VMware ESX advanced features that need shared storage such as VMware HA, VMotion, DRS, and SRM. You can use the P4000 VSA to cluster disks from multiple servers without disruption and add more as needed. The P4000 VSA is a VMware certified compatible SAN/Storage device customers can count on. Installed easily on any VMware ESX server, the P4000 VSA combines server virtualization and SAN on the same server platform and is fully integrated with HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions.

Among the perks of P4000 series SAN hardware is centralized management and data protection in the form of Remote Copy Asynchronous Replication with Bandwidth Throttling, Multi-Site/DR Solution Pack with Synchronous replication, SAN/iQ Snapshot, RAID 5/6/10, network RAID and an integrated storage controller w/ battery-backed DDR2 cache.

VSA software also expands functionality on the SB40c Storage Blade, it adds shared storage by turning the storage module “into an iSCSI SAN inside the BladeSystem enclosure.”

Expect to see more storage offerings along these lines as virtualization gains ground in the data center.

Source: Press Release