HP and Hitachi will continue scratching each others' backs through 2008 in the high end storage market.

The two companies have extended their reselling pact that sees HP sell the Hitachi Lighting array under the StorageWorks XP brand. Their partnership began in 1999 and was due to expire in 2005, but now their shared love shall go on.

HP likes to differentiate itself from Sun, Hitachi and Hitachi Data Systems with various software and services packages for the StorageWorks XP box. Funny enough, HP prepped a new disaster recovery deal to go along with its Hitachi partnership announcement.

Should a hurricane, explosion or other disaster come along, HP says it can help customers make a full recovery in less than an hour for two sites less than 100km apart. HP mirrors data across the XP systems, allowing application processing to pick up right where it left off. HP offers third site back-up as well.

"HP software uses the underlying remote copy capabilities of the XP arrays for local, synchronous mirroring and long distance, asynchronous mirroring to create redundancy and failover capabilities," HP said. "The software allows administrators to coordinate and automate synchronizing data transfers across the three sites."

Sun's deal with Hitachi runs out next year, so expect another announcement in the near future. ®