Hewlett-Packard is looking to brings its converged data center technologies to computing environments running Microsoft offerings, including the newly launched Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
HP on Nov. 30 unveiled a host of reference architectures and services under its Converged Infrastructure umbrella designed to make it easier for businesses to bring their Microsoft environments into converged data centers.
HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco Systems and others are pushing computing strategies that more tightly integrated servers, storage, networking and management software into data center-wide solutions.
Converged data centers are designed to help businesses increase the efficiency and performance of their IT infrastructures while driving down capital, operating, and power and cooling costs.
“Customers are looking for solutions to transform unmanageable infrastructures so they can better address changing business demands,” Paul Miller, vice president of marketing for enterprise storage, servers and networking at HP. “HP’s Converged Infrastructure provides a blueprint for unifying servers, storage, networks, power and cooling with facilities into a single environment, optimized for both physical and virtual workloads and perfectly suited for Microsoft applications.”
HP’s newest offerings come a few weeks after Dell unveiled similar solutions that coincided with Microsoft’s Nov. 9 general release of Exchange Server 2010. Dell’s solutions included new consulting services-including workshops and readiness assessments-two architecture models easier deployment and a new point of contact for deploying Exchange Server 2010, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
HP is offering new BladeSystem Matrix templates, reference architectures and services for Microsoft environments that will help with bringing the Windows portfolio into converged data centers, according to HP officials.
HP introduced Matrix-an all-in-one offering that includes compute, storage, networking and software resources-earlier this year. It came out soon after Cisco unveiled its own Unified Computing System, another all-in-one solution.
The templates for Matrix enable users to rapidly allocate the server, storage, networking and software resources they need and monitor service levels within their Microsoft environment. HP and Microsoft also created solutions that enable businesses to reduce their provisioning times for Microsoft applications within a converged environment from months to minutes.
The new reference architectures give businesses more guidance in configuring Microsoft products, and include sizing tools, recommended configurations and automated provisioning of a converged infrastructure.
New services cover both Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2.