Reduce costs with an all inclusive software management feature set that simplifies management in a virtual environment. Eliminate risk and increase business agility with non-disruptive scalability.
Why would I choose HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions instead of another SAN?
A1.
Everything is included. A pay-as-you-grow, all inclusive pricing model and intuitive storage management software built into every system make HP P4000 SAN Solutions perfect for small to mid-sized companies wrestling with sophisticated storage requirements, but limited by tight budgets and little storage management expertise.
In traditional storage architectures, a controller manages arrays of disk drives. Any data that flows into and out of the traditional storage system passes through the controller. As more disk drives are added, the controller requires more processing resources and bandwidth to keep up with the data flow, eventually reaching its limit. Faced with this bottleneck, customers are forced to either upgrade their controller, which is expensive and requires application downtime, or purchase a new system, which is also expensive and increases management complexity.
HP P4000 SAN Solutions are composed of storage systems that can be added to the system without bringing applications down. Each storage system increases IOPs, aggregate bandwidth, processing power, RAM, cache, capacity and redundancy of a HP P4000 SAN Solutions.
Q2.
How do you scale the capacity of the HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions?
A2.
You scale capacity by adding nodes to the SAN. With HP P4000 SAN performance scales along with capacity. By clustering all of the resources, not just capacity, the overall performance of the SAN increases each time a storage system is added.
Q3.
What is Storage Clustering and what are its benefits?
A3.
Storage Clustering allows a customer to create pools of storage by consolidating storage nodes on the network into clusters. Storage Clustering provides online scalability, both within a volume and across the entire storage pool. All available physical capacity is aggregated and available to the volumes created on the SAN.
In order to scale capacity and/or performance, the IT administrator simply adds nodes to the storage cluster.
All the capacity, processing power, and bandwidth included in each node are aggregated into the entire SAN, ensuring an increase in performance as the SAN grows. To make the process even easier, HP P4000 SAN Solutions let IT administrators expand volumes and add storage nodes online, without taking the volumes offline or causing application downtime.
Q4.
What is Network RAID and how does it work?
A4.
Network RAID stripes and mirrors multiple copies of data across a cluster of storage nodes, eliminating any single point of failure in the SAN. Applications have continuous data availability in the event of a power, network, disk, controller, or entire storage node failure.
SAN administrators can manage redundancy on a per-volume basis to optimize storage utilization and match the data protection of the volume to the application data on that volume. Customers choose one, two, three or four copies of data across the storage nodes, only allocating additional storage space for data that warrants additional protection. For increased protection, Network RAID can also be integrated into environments where application servers are clustered, enabling true, seamless, geo-cluster solutions that provide both application and Storage Clustering across geographies.
Built-in self-healing technology allows Network RAID to proactively repair bad blocks on the SAN before applications encounter them. Network RAID automatically optimizes the data layout of a volume over time insuring that performance remains optimal no matter how old or full the volume becomes.
Q5.
What advantage does the HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions bring to customers who are implementing virtualization?
A5.
Most customers implementing virtualization require shared storage to take full advantage of advanced capabilities of hypervisors. HP P4000 SAN Solutions offer efficient storage utilization, optimized performance, simple management, and cost-effective disaster recovery.
Q6.
What are Snapshots and what are its benefits?
A6.
Snapshots create instant point-in-time copies of data on a per-volume basis. Snapshots can be created in a variety of ways to meet business or application requirements. Administrators can create them manually ad-hoc, on a scheduled or scripted basis, or via the Microsoft VSS framework, and can then access these point-in-time snapshots to recover individual files or folders from the volume, or rollback an entire volume. Unlike most SAN vendors that require a snapshot reserve, HP P4000 SAN Solutions Snapshots are always thin provisioned for efficiency, only consuming storage space on the SAN for the data written to the Snapshot, eliminating any upfront space reservation or guesswork that could lead to Snapshot and backup job failures.
Q7.
What is Remote Copy and what are its benefits?
A7.
Remote Copy lets customers replicate thin provisioned snapshots between primary and remote locations. Because HP P4000 SAN Solutions Remote Copies are thin provisioned no space reservation at the remote location is required. Remote Copy is used for centralized backup and disaster recovery and can be set up on a per-volume basis. Remote copies placed on a recurring schedule allow customers to achieve point-in-time asynchronous replication of the data between locations, sites, or data centers.
Integrated into the Remote Copy software is intelligent bandwidth management ensuring that the data traffic can be sent across shared WAN links without adversely impacting other network traffic. Administrators simply set the bandwidth limit for remote copies between the two sites and the SAN/iQ software holds that limit.
A failover/failback wizard is also included with Remote Copy for step-by-step, easy to execute disaster recovery procedures when needed most.
Q8.
What is Thin Provisioning and what are its benefits?
A8.
The Thin Provisioning feature of the SAN/iQ Software allocates space only as data is actually written to that volume. SAN/iQ Thin Provisioning allows customers to purchase only the storage needed today and then add more storage to the clusters as application data grows. This raises the overall utilization and efficiency of the SAN and ultimately increases the ROI associated with the SAN.
Q9.
What is an application integrated snapshot?
A9.
Application integrated snapshots use Microsoft VSS to automatically quiesce applications for VSS snapshots. Application integrated snapshots are built into the Centralized Management Console and require no additional software or hardware. Because the application is quiesced at the time of the snapshot, the data in the snapshot is consistent with the application's "view" of the data and is easier to recover.
Reviews dated from 9/1/09 – 10/15/09 may have been part of a sweepstakes submission.
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