InfoWorld

HP launches product blitz for virtualization

<div class="rxbodyfield"><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">Hewlett-Packard has announced a broad sweep of new virtualization products along with survey results claiming that most businesses aren't making the most of what the technology has to offer.</p><p align="right"><a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"/></a></p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">The products include a ProLiant blade server "built from the ground up" for virtualization, four thin-client computers for virtualizing desktops, new equipment for virtualizing storage and some consulting services.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody"><b>[ Stay up to date on the latest virtualization developments with InfoWorld's <a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/?source=fssr">Virtualization Report blog</a> and <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/newsletter/subscribe.html?source=fssr">newsletter</a>. ]</b></p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">Virtualization is most widely used today for consolidating servers in data centers, which can help cut costs and reduce energy use. HP is trying to sell the technology as a way to make businesses more competitive, by freeing up IT resources that can be repurposed quickly to create new services.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">"Today, many companies are focused only on how virtualization reduces cost; we believe it enables much more," said Ann Livermore, head of HP's Technology Solutions Group, in a <a href="http://h30423.www3.hp.com/index.jsp?fr_story=bd85777eb831a1993577bf387e34d1be99833520&rf=bm">video</a> on HP's Web site.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">On the desktop, HP is trying to push virtualization beyond call centers and into offices, for use by business analysts, engineers and even financial traders. It announced four thin-client PCs that will ship in October, two with its ThinConnect operating system, one with Windows CE and one with Windows XP Embedded.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">It also announced that its VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) software and blade PCs now support Citrix Systems' XenDesktop software, which was announced in May. VDI lets a company run multiple desktop OS environments on a server and is geared toward "basic productivity workers." HP also offers blade PCs, which use a dedicated server blade for each desktop environment, for workers who need more compute power.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">The thin clients cost about $199 each when bought in volume, and each blade PC works out to about $1,000, said Tad Bodeman, director of product marketing for HP's client virtualization business.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">"All of these cost the same or a bit more to buy than a desktop PC, but very quickly you'll have a return on the investment," Bodeman said. The savings come from lower management costs for centrally managed virtual desktops, a longer lifecycle for the thin-client hardware -- up to seven years compared to five years for a standard desktop -- and fewer incidents of lost or stolen data because the data is stored on a central server. Thin clients also consume less energy -- around 25 watts compared to 100 watts or more for a desktop PC.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">For the data center, HP said its new BL495c blade server is built for virtualization because it has 16 DIMM slots for a possible 128GB of memory, up to eight network connections per blade and two solid-state disk drives.</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">"When you're consolidating underutilized servers into a single platform, which is what many customers are doing with virtualization, that platform has to be very expandable," said Mark Potter, general manager of HP's BladeSystem Group. "Memory and I/O are the things that tend to get bottlenecked first."</p><p page="1" class="ArticleBody">The server comes with one or two quad-core Opteron processors from AMD and hypervisor software from VMware, Citrix or Microsoft. Pricing starts at $2,449 for a single processor, 4GB of memory and the hypervisor.</p><p page="2" class="ArticleBody">Also new is StorageWorks 4400 Scaleable NAS File Services, which can be combined with HP's 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array to create a virtual storage pool that can be shared among servers connected to the system, according to HP.</p><p page="2" class="ArticleBody">"All the servers will have read/write access to all the storage, so an administrator can create pools of storage resources that can be mapped more easily to where they need to be," Potter said.</p><p page="2" class="ArticleBody">The system comes with 4.8TB of storage, expandable to 96TB. It is priced from $94,270 for the Windows File Services version and $97,630 for the Linux File Services version.</p><p page="2" class="ArticleBody">HP also announced enhancements to its HP-UX operating system, some "fixed-price" consulting services and software updates for managing virtual environments. More information about the new consulting services as well as the other announcements are available on <a href="http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/virtualization/index.html">HP's Web site</a>.</p><p page="2" class="ArticleBody">Almost nine out of 10 companies are doing some sort of virtualization today, but most are in the early stages, according to an HP-commissioned survey of 150 decision makers at mostly large companies. Only about one-third of them see virtualization as a way to accelerate growth or to become more competitive, HP said.</p><p page="2" class="ArticleBody">HP is among a glut of companies that will make virtualization announcements ahead of VMware's annual VMworld conference in Las Vegas, which starts Sept. 15. BMC Software also <a href="http://www.bmc.com/BMC/News/CDA/hou_PressRelease_detail/0,3519,8573740_0_116669274,00.html">announced</a> new management software Tuesday, and Microsoft, Surgient and Neterion are among the other companies expected to announce products before VMworld hogs the spotlight two weeks from now.</p></div>