HP unleashes virtualisation products

HP on Tuesday launched a wide-range of virtualisation products, including new hardware, such as a blade server, and software.

The company said it sees virtualisation as a wide-open territory, and pointed to its global research conducted in August by Penn, Schoen & Berland. The survey showed that while 86 per cent of 'technology decision makers' have implemented virtualisation projects, the vast majority of respondents expected to have virtualised just 25 per cent of their technology environments by 2010.

The software launch includes a new HP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure with Citrix XenDesktop, which is "designed to enable everything from smaller, entry-level implementations to enterprise-wide desktop delivery", the company said. Citrix XenDesktop allows businesses to create virtual desktops centrally and then distribute them wherever they are needed.

HP is leaning heavily on its partnership with Citrix in its new virtualisation push. Asked to comment on this emphasis, HP's business-development manager for virtualisation, Peter Mansell, said: "Citrix is one of the many products that we are supporting with this announcement."

The ProLiant BL495c was described by HP as the "world's first server blade designed specifically to host virtual machines". Asked to justify that billing, Mansell said that as memory is absolutely crucial to the efficient running of blades, there are now 16 memory slots on the blade where there used to be eight. In addition, the blade can run on 10 Gigabit Ethernet for speed, he said.

HP's blades also can now support 32GB or 64GB solid-state drives to help with efficient running, Mansell said.

Ann Livermore, executive vice president at HP, said in a statement: "Virtualisation is a powerful step in transforming IT. To do it right means successfully managing and automating mixed physical and virtual environments."

In addition, HP's Network Node Manager i-series has been updated to monitor the performance and availability of networks supporting dynamic, virtualised environments. HP Asset Manager has been extended to allow managers to identify and manage virtual machine assets as well as physical assets.

Also updated is HP StorageWorks 4400 Scalable NAS File Services, which now integrates HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array, file servers, management software and Microsoft Windows or Linux support to virtualise the connection between servers and storage, HP said.

HP has a new development agreement with Linux provider Red Hat aimed at simplifying the monitoring and management of virtualised environments, the company said.

The company has not yet launched the new products officially, Mansell explained. The full announcement will be on 15 September and details of the new products should emerge after that, he said.

Original article: HP chooses thin-client key for virtualisation from ZDNet UK