-by Ian Selway
Isn't it amazing, it seems the IT industry couldn't survive without the use of TLAs (AKA: three letter acronyms). Here at HP, we're renowned for our liberal use of TLAs and I often heard the myth that there's some compendium of them handed out as part of the orientation program to help new employees understand what everyone's discussing in the meetings they attend. Well now not only do we have all those TLAs to contend with, but we also now have to understand the differences the same three letters carry when used by different companies. In HP, and across storage generally, for a long time SRM meant Storage Resource Management. Now those of us working in the area of virtualization are coming to grips with a new meaning.... VMware's SRM or Site Recovery Manager.
I've just returned from VMworld Europe, where there was quite a bit of interest in Site Recovery Manager. Everyone wanted to understand what HP was doing with SRM. When would we support it, would they need new software, new firmware and perhaps most interestingly, would HP's adaptor for SRM be free? Well I spent many hours discussing SRM so I though for those of you not at VMworld you may be interested in understanding what HP is doing with VMware to partner around SRM and what it'll mean for your current StorageWorks deployments.
In calendar Q2 2008, VMware will release their much anticipated SRM product. This is sure to generate a huge amount of interest since for the first time, it will bring a level of automated disaster recovery capability that has so far been absent in a VMware environment. Judging by the level of interest from HP customers at VMworld, IT organizations are going to be spending a lot of time evaluating SRM and working out how to deploy within their businesses. That's a great opportunity for storage . One of the reasons the EVA4400 was receiving such attention at VMworld, was the thinking that existing EVA customers could create a low cost disaster recovery site by installing an EVA4400 and using HP Continuous Access software and SRM to link back to their production site.
So why was there so much interest? Partly because to date HP has been fairly quiet about our plans for SRM. Typically we don't tend to pre-announce product until it's actually available to ship. But with so much confusion around about HP's plans for SRM support, it's time to set the record straight. HP will fully support VMware's SRM technology and in fact we'll have the HP Continuous Access adaptor available soon or very soon after the official VMware launch of Site Recovery Manager. Why not immediately, well there's the small task of making sure the complete solution actually functions as it should. We take certification and solution validation very seriously at HP and recognising that data is the lifeblood of the business, we'd rather take a few weeks more to fully test the solution, than release a solution that could put customers data at risk. The good news is that when we introduce our solution you'll be able to have our new EVA4400 replicate data with existing EVA models, a great investment protection story, you'll also be able to use all the functionality of the HP Continuous Access software coupled with the benefits of VMware's SRM solution. Together a great value proposition.
So is there any bad news? Well I guess only for everyone who asked me if the product would be free of charge. My answer is, like everything else in life, nothing comes for free. Pricing for this new functionality is yet to be finalized but when you consider you'll soon have the ability to protect your VMware infrastructure against potential data loss in the event of a disaster, then the combination of HP StorageWorks, HP Continuous Access software and VMware's SRM software will deliver what we believe will be a compelling return for the business. Well worth the investment required.
Kind regards,
Ian Selway
WW Solutions Marketing Manager
Hewlett-Packard StorageWorks |
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