Converged data centre infrastructure (CDI) including virtualized equipment, automation and workload optimisation will become more popular as organisations look to manage data centres more effectively according to HP.
HP South Pacific servers and converged systems general manager Raj Thakur said that customers are looking for solutions that will reduce workload cost and complexity.
Starting with convergence, this includes the rollout of virtualized servers, storage, and networking hardware.
“At the core of convergence is making sure the technology stack, server, storage and networking are optimised,” he said.
“As these IT projects hit our customers, the time to get this out quickly is high. Convergence helps the customer take the time out of deploying infrastructure. In the past, you would have to spend a lot of time building out these systems.”
Once the customer has put together servers, storage and networking, automating the delivery of data centre services is critical to save time, he said.
“If you don’t have automation and it is not workload optimised, your data centre is sitting in the old world,” he said.
“The [data centre] hardware underneath should be separated from the automation layer. Vendors will talk about the software defined data centre but it cannot be [software defined] if at the hardware layer, you haven’t got convergence and automation.”
HP also announced enhancements to its OneView 2.0 management platform which allows customers to automate server change management.
For example, IT managers can use server profile templates to define firmware and driver baselines as well as server, LAN and SAN settings.
"By expanding the reach of the OneView platform, we are giving our customers the choice they need to increase the agility and flexibility of their infrastructure in order to compete and grow in a fast paced business environment," said Thakur.
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