ESG Lab Review


HP P4000 SAN: Affordable, Scalable, Reliable Storage Date:March 2010 Author: Brian Garrett, Vice President, ESG Lab


Abstract: This ESG Lab Review documents the pay as you grow scalability and availability of the HP P4000 SAN. Topics explored include getting started with a Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA), online upgrades to physical appliances, proven support for more than 150,000 Microsoft Exchange users, and hyper-redundant fault tolerance.


The Challenges


Faced with exploding data growth thanks to accelerated server virtualization adoption and a desire to better protect and manage shared information assets, IT managers in organizations of all sizes are deploying shared storage solutions to meet growing storage requirements. In the enterprise, IT managers have traditionally turned to Fibre Channel (FC) attached storage arrays—while iSCSI offers a similar fit for many business needs, it is often thought of as an inexpensive alternative to FC. In fact, when ESG asked IT professionals to name the factors that are most important when justifying IT investments over the next 12-18 month, the top two responses were cost reduction (54%) and business process improvements (42%). Clearly, IT managers are looking for ways to reduce cost and increase efficiency. This report examines a cost effective, highly available shared storage solution that is ideally suited to meet the needs of small to medium-sized businesses and increasingly larger enterprises —especially those that have embraced server virtualization.


The Solution: HP P4000 SAN


With a clustered storage architecture leveraging industry standard server and Ethernet technologies, the HP P4000 SAN is a shared storage solution that delivers cost effective scalability, performance, and high availability. Figure 1. Pay as You Grow Scalability


The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about emerging technologies and products in the storage, data management and information security industries. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was commissioned by Hewlett Packard.


© 2010 Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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