* HP focuses on virtualizing technologies that connect blades to the net
HP continues to focus on blade servers as a key part of its Adaptive Infrastructure, an approach to computing in which resources are pooled and then allocated on the fly according to application demands. This week, the systems vendor is announcing the next step in its efforts to streamline management costs and reduce headaches when it comes to provisioning and managing blades.
While HP has long been promoting virtualization on its blade servers, this week it is focusing on virtualizing the technologies that connect the blades to the network. The HP Virtual Connect Ethernet and Fibre Channel modules for the HP BladeSystem c-Class are designed to reduce the wiring and rewiring that administrators do today by virtualizing blade connectivity, HP says.
Just as server virtualization separates applications from hardware, enabling workloads to be moved on the fly, network virtualization separates server management from LAN and storage-area network (SAN) management, enabling network connectivity to be shifted on the fly. By using the virtual modules, administrators don’t need to hardwire servers each time a change is required. Instead, LAN or SAN connectivity can be added and removed quickly and easily by shifting the virtual resources.
HP claims that its Virtual Connect modules will reduce LAN and SAN connectivity costs by up to 38% as compared to traditional pass-through modules and consolidate cables and switch ports by up to 94%, while also reducing administrator time demands by a factor of 3-to-1.
It makes good sense to move the benefits of virtualization beyond the server and into networking, especially when it comes to blade servers, which are slimmed down systems that are packed tightly into a chassis like books in a bookshelf. When you have dozens of blades handling hundreds of virtual workloads, traditional hardwiring can leave you with a mess of cables. That makes network virtualization a nice addition to any blade server environment.
Are you in the process of virtualizing some of the connectivity of your blade servers? Let me know.
