HP drives down cost of storage area networking

HP has announced innovative storage solutions designed to help customers drive down storage area network cost and simplify SAN integration and management based on industry standards.

Among the new offerings are lower-cost-per-gigabyte, high-capacity Fibre Channel disk drives for the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array family designed to reduce SAN cost while increasing flexibility and investment protection.

By combining higher capacity, lower cost disk drive mechanisms with a Fibre Channel interface, the industry-first drives address the growing need for businesses to cost-effectively store less critical or infrequently accessed information in a more economical fashion.

'HP is broadening the appeal of storage area networks by eliminating some of the barriers to entry,' said Bob Schultz, senior vice president and general manager, Network Storage Solutions, HP.

'For instance, the ability to offer tiered storage within a single storage system and enable simplified integration through support of industry standards lowers the price for SAN implementations - making them more attractive to a broader range of customers.'

Lower cost, high capacity drives plug and play with existing systems. HP's drives are designed to offer virtually seamless integration with customers' existing Fibre Channel infrastructure, thus eliminating the need for a costly conversion to integrate traditional lower cost drives such as Serial Advanced Technology Attachment.

The HP StorageWorks EVA family with Fibre Attached Technology Adapted drives is expected to be available in July.