HP's storage gets a case of the greens
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Technology Forum HP is going greener than a green thing from a green land with its latest storage boxes
HP has popped out three, new EVA boxes that contribute to its energy efficient computing agenda. Customers will find the EVA4100, 6100 and 8100 midrange boxes, which apparently chew threw 45 per cent less power than their predecessors while improving performance by 24 per cent. The EVA gear led a number of storage announcements made this week by HP.
The green storing EVA goodness apparently comes from HP's take on thin provisioning called Dynamic Capacity Management. The DCM technology will tap into Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 to grow and shrink host volumes on-the-fly to meet application needs. So, you don't have to keep a lot of spinning disk around on standby.
HP also reckons that its virtual snapshot technology helps out with the green thing as do FATA (Fibre Channel Attached Technology Adapted) drives – HP's SATA alternative.
The new EVA boxes replace the 4000, 6000 and 8000 systems launched by HP in May of 2005. The 8100 holds 240 drives, the 6100 holds 112 drives and the 4100 holds 56 drives. You'll find all the specs here.
Under the unfortunate "Tape is cool, too" headline, HP also claimed a green hue. Its new LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 tape drive consumes 50 per cent fewer watts per gigabyte than previous gear. The drive has 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and comes bundled with HP's Data Protector Express Single Server edition software. Mmmmm.
The new drives will soon ship as options with the StorageWorks MSL, EML and ESL E-Series tape libraries.
Now, we know that many of you can't get enough tape. So, please keep reading.
HP has pumped out the Ultrium 448c tape blade. This bewitching box ships as a half height blade server that adds tape know-how to HP's c-Class chassis.
In addition, HP is all about the StorageWorks DAT 160 tape drive aimed at SMBs. Apparently, this drive consumes fewer watts per gigabyte than previous gear, but HP won't say how many fewer. You're meant to slot the drive into ProLiant 100 and 300 servers via either SCSI or USB. Expect backup speeds of up to 50GB per hour and total capacity of 160GB.
HP has been telling attendees of the Technology Forum show here that its own use of power-friendly gear will result in an overall, internal energy savings equivalent to the amount of power needed to run Palo Alto for one year. Be impressed if you dare. ®
COMMENTS
Great marketing spin
I can't imagine that I am the only person to notice the obvious marketing spin in this statement from HP:
"HP also claimed a green hue. Its new LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 tape drive consumes 50 per cent fewer watts per gigabyte than previous gear"
For those that missed it (including the usally very sharp Reg staff) LTO-4 technology offers twice the capacity of LTO-3 so it's probably not all that suprising that new LTO-4 drives (from HP or anyone else) consume 50% fewer watts per gigabyte.
In essence this statement just says that HPs new LTO-4 drives use exactly the same amount of power as their old ones, which hardly represents a step towards greener computing but no doubt looks impressive on a press release.
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