HP Storageworks DC SAN Backbone Director Power Pack Switch

HP Storageworks DC SAN Backbone Director Power Pack Switch ... evolving Storage Area Networks (SANs) in mission critical environments. It supports an intelligent, scalable, and application-centric approach to enterprise data management. It enables the merging of diverse types of networks including client/server, virtual server cluster, extension, and SANs to improve server and storage utilization, simplify management, reduce costs, and support non-disruptive growth.

DC SAN Director is the highest performing director with a 6Tb backplane providing a new class of infrastructure for the data center. It improves energy efficiency by combining higher bandwidth with lower power consumption. It facilitates server and storage expansion for open and mainframe environments, delivering scalability with up to 768 ports in a dual chassis configuration. It provides investment protection for increased ROI by supporting existing and future emerging protocols, including 8 Gb/s Fiber Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, FCIP, FICON, and future support for Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI. The high-performance architecture also provides auto-speed negotiation to support legacy 1, 2, and 4 Gb/s server and storage devices for maximum flexibility.

DC SAN Backbone leverages B-series FOS to centralize data center management for greater efficiency. The Power Pack set of tools monitors the network's health and performance. Power Pack also provides the foundation for integration into HP storage management tools, enabling infrastructure management through a single-pane-of-glass. Adaptive Networking (AN) provides traffic management applications which deliver application aware management of fabric resources.

Adaptive Networking is a new feature of the Power Pack tools and provides a uniform, protocol agnostic way for application service levels to communicate with the SAN. For example, in virtual server environments, end-to-end communication ensures that fabric resource requirements follow the application when its virtual server moves to another physical server. Other adaptive networking services such as dynamic fabric profiles and traffic management can monitor resource use along the entire data path to detect and eliminate congestion.

The 8 Gbit/sec technology provides the ability to aggregate up to eight 8 Gb/s ports to create an Inter-Switch Link (ISL) trunk for up to an unprecedented 64 Gb/s of bandwidth. The 10Gb fiber channel blade also provides up to 6 Fiber Channel ports for high speed SAN extension for even higher performance requirements. Extended Fabric software distance support for extended applications has been increased to support distances up to 500 kilometers depending on speed. The new director also extends the distance for data transferred through ISL Trunking which enables new levels of performance between data centers.

The DC SAN Backbone Director Power Pack is designed for continuous operation and supports "five-nines" (I.e., 99.999%) availability. The director is engineered with built-in redundancy; all FRUs and components are capable of hot-swap install/de-install, and non-disruptive hardware and software upgrades concurrent with operation. Security capabilities built into the ASIC eliminate the threat of unauthorized SAN access and unauthorized SAN configuration changes which reduces the risk of downtime.

The unique industry-leading capabilities position the Backbone Director Switch and the B-series product family to be the standard solution for Corporate and Enterprise SANs. The HP StorageWorks DC SAN Backbone Director Power Pack is the most advanced B-series director-class switch and provides the backbone and network foundation for evolving Storage Area Networks (SANs) in mission critical environments. The advanced design, computer power, and bandwidth allow customers to expand their existing environments and provide on-going investment protection to meet their growth and changing IT environments.