According to HP, the consolidated storage console is the solution. HP offers a choice between a SAN with a management platform and the XPs, centralized storage disk arrays, into which data from smaller devices is migrated. The SAN will reduce the cost of labor by 82 percent, which cuts back the labor portion of the budget to 10 percent. The overwhelming majority that choose SAN for consolidation, do so in the NT space where there are so many servers and connects to deal with, that they really need SAN management infrastructure. There is a caveat in choosing SAN, however.
SANs are evolutionary.
Heterogeneous ones are beginning to be deployed but the heterogeneity our customers have is still driving incremental requirements from all of us. Through the tools we have developed for the XP, we can provide truly unique performance. Most of our customers, however, use a blending of systems. According to Nacey, the major innovation of the XP 512 is its move to cross bar technology. We are going from 16 ports into the array to 32 ports.