HP Starts New Support Service for ProLiant Servers

HP on Dec. 14 launched a new support package for virtualized ProLiant servers aimed at improving performance and availability of key business applications.
The HP Critical Advantage service provides clients with an assigned account team to deliver support and maintain uptime of business-critical, virtualized environments. These teams specialize in problem resolution and process improvement, enabling IT managers to steer staff resources away from server maintenance and toward business projects, HP said.
HP claimed that Critical Advantage is the first such service offering from a major technology vendor that delivers support for business-critical applications in virtualized x86 environments.
Key features of the service include: reduction of frequency and duration of outages by providing rapid reactive support and incident resolution for complex business-critical environments; a defined set of proactive services based on industry best practices for change management and process improvement, which helps prevent unplanned downtime by anticipating potential issues; and flexible credits — depending up the amount of service coverage purchased — that provide a range of other services.
Other services include a performance and capacity analysis for virtual environments that guides clients on virtualization capacity planning; a Virtualization Readiness Workshop for Critical Applications, which provides infrastructure planning and assessment; and an availability analysis, which improves efficiency and maintains uptime by optimizing virtualized environments.