Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 @ 08:56 AM
If you rely on HP BladeSystem servers in your enterprise, you need to consider HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager. HP Virtual connect helps to increase the productivity of your entire organization, respond in a quicker fashion to changes in workload or infrastructure and even whittle away at your operating costs. Whether you use Virtual Connect across a LAN or a SAN, the centralized connectivity and workload mobility that come as a result are valuable assets.
HP Virtual Connect is an architect
ure that you’ll find in each BladeSystem c-Class enclosure. The Enterprise Manager component gives you a single, central console from which you can do a number of tasks. You can administer LAN or SAN addresses, do group-based configuration management and more. You can initiate deployments, movements or even failover of server-to-network connections. Virtual Connect is scalable in that you can do these things for 200 Virtual Connect domains. That’s 800 BladeSystem enclosures or more than 12,000 blade servers.
This makes your infrastructure change-ready. Virtual Connect means that you can add, recover, replace or remove servers across your datacenter environment in just minutes without affecting the availability of your network. Virtual connect is idea for a datacenter that has multiple BladeSystem enclosures.
HP Virtual connect also helps your infrastructure in a number of other ways. It helps to provide increased consistency. It helps to centralize and to simplify both connectivity and workload management. It reduces the amount of time you need to invest in deploying and maintaining your server infrastructure, and it reduces the risks involved in deployment, too. HP Virtual Connect lets you respond in a much quicker way to the changing demands of your business.
The HP Virtual Connect software also works to provide you with the kind of dynamic infrastructure your business needs. You can rapidly repurpose servers using HP Virtual Connect. You can also migrate servers from a test to a production environment with a few simple and quick clicks.
All of this means that your management processes are simplified. Because a single console can be used to manage so vast a server farm, you save time and optimize the use if IT personnel. You’ll be able to increase productivity of your IT resources, as well. HP Virtual Connect will even increase your server-to-administrator ratio.
Reduced operating costs are another benefit to HP Virtual connect. You can deploy configurations to groups of servers across Virtual Connect domains. This, in turn, reduces the time costs involved in deployment, maintenance and recovery.
Finally, HP Virtual Connect lets you respond quickly to changing needs. In just a few minutes, you can make server infrastructure changes. You can assign failover server connection profiles between your servers and between BladeSystem enclosures.
In the end, HP Virtual Connect is a must-have for any company with an HP Server infrastructure. Its scalability, versatility and raw power put control – real control – of your servers in the hands of your administrators, and will reduce the overall TCO of your server infrastructure.
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Sep 21, 2009 @ 05:00 AM
Blade Servers are one of the hottest trends in IT today, and no one does it better than HP. The HP BladeSystem is an excellent server solution, not just for large corporations, but for the enterprise and even for small businesses. Today’s blade server solutions are more capable and affordable than ever before.
What exactly is a blade server? A blade server system relies on blades. Blades are self-contained servers. They fit into an enclosure, like the HP BladeSystem. The enclosure provides all of the ancillary functions to the server, including power, cooling, management and even connectivity.
This leaves the blades to do the core tasks. A given blade will usually contain hot-pluggable hard drives, memory, I/O cards and remote management.
Your BladeSystem might include blades for a number of tasks. Some of the most common uses for blades in this kind of system are:
• Database hosts
• Virtual servers
• Remote desktops
• File sharing
• Application hosts
• Web serving
• SSL encryption
• Streaming audio and video
• E-mail hosting
While that list is by no means exhaustive, it tells you one thing: a BladeSystem can do just about anything that a rack-and-stack server configuration can do, only better.
Here are some ways that a BladeSystem can help your business:
• The HP BladeSystem reduces energy cost significantly. There are fewer fans and fewer server components sucking electricity. By consolidating multiple servers into a single enclosure, you can more effectively maintain your server temperatures, as well.
• Cabling nightmares are a think of the past. You simply cable to the enclosure once and you’re done. You will save on cabling costs and frustrations. One study at SearchWinSystems.com suggests that you’ll actually reduce cabling by as much as 85%.
• You will also save on network port space with BladeSystem. Whether you’re connecting to your LAN or a SAN, BladeSystem just requires fewer ports.
• HP’s Virtual Connect lets you move applications and functions from one blade to another within your enclosure. This is helpful for doing things like troubleshooting, or for adding a new application.
• The GUI interface for the HP BladeSystem eliminates KVM requirements. You can manage all of your servers through a browser-based GUI.
• HP’s Insight software gives you management capabilities for all of your blade servers through a single management interface, increasing the efficiency of your IT staff. HP Insight extends your management capabilities, and lets you make group-based changes, saving time and resources.
• You can configure the blades in an HP BladeSystem to support multiple applications, as well. Again, those application can be moved around at will. This lets you optimize your server resources based on business demands.
• A blade-based solution requires a smaller footprint. This means less data center floor space, greater density, and much easier access when it comes to servicing and upgrading your servers.
If you want power, versatility, and an overall lower TCO, check into an HP BladeSystem solution today.