HP puts final storage slabs in place

Hewlett Packard will today announce support for storage area networking in the NT arena, along with a number of other initiatives designed to bolster its storage portfolio. Hugh Jenkins, head of product marketing at HP UK, said that the introduction of NT storage area network (SAN) support, filled a gap in its portfolio. He said that HP's support for NT had been somewhat patchy and support and products weren't in place. "As of today," he said, "all of those issues are sorted." Products HP will launch include cluster configuration for the XP 256 storage unit, and also support for products from IBM, Compaq, Dell and other vendors. HP will also announce an NT high availability product called Marathon, as well as SAN management software, and fail over software. The introduction of the set of products completed its portfolio and would allow HP to compete against high end products from EMC as well as against Compaq and IBM at the lower end, Jenkins said. ®