HP Unveils Virtual Storage For Easier ReplicationHP Unveils Virtual Storage For Easier Replication

Many companies need to implement business-continuity processes that got held up last year, but they're not going to get much money to make it happen. A storage offering unveiled Thursday by Hewlett-Packard should help many customers cut down on the costs of putting those processes in place.

Using new high-speed capabilities from networking and switch partners, HP will ship its HP OpenView continual-access storage appliance (CASA) with its VersaStor storage-management software to customers who can deploy it for entire storage-area-network architecture. That includes heterogeneous SANs over long distances.

The CASA appliance is dedicated to apps such as VersaStor, which masks storage hardware complexity and acts as a launchpad for important applications such as replication, pooling, and provisioning. The pooling and provisioning let customers remove and install storage capacity as needed, while replication is the cornerstone for mirroring data for business-continuity processes.

Enterprise Storage Group analyst Nancy Marrone says HP uniquely combines VersaStor and replication for customers. "As data goes through a Fibre Channel switch, customers can tag only certain data to go through VersaStor and the replication, instead of the whole load," she says. "This could improve replication performance and make it easier for companies to enforce service-level agreements."