At the expense of legacy data centers focused on applications, many IT organizations are joining the recent bandwagon headed for virtualization and enticing cloud offerings like ITaaS (IT as a service) that have taken center stage in current technology infrastructures. As a result, these organizations are facing new storage-related challenges brought about by server virtualization, unpredictable heavy workloads, and large-scale consolidation of IT hardware inherent in the new technologies.

The trend toward explosive growth that has replaced stable growth patterns in former computing environments is itself another challenge, and it calls for corresponding update of IT infrastructure, including storage. The slower pace of change that used to characterize IT not too long ago is gone. The speed at which change is now taking place has made it difficult for IT leaders to forecast service levels, to make buy-versus-repurpose decisions, to anticipate the effects of new applications on the response times of older ones, and to determine the organization’s ability to migrate applications as rapidly as they grow.

When it comes to storage, legacy infrastructures have disconnected platforms resulting in interoperability issues and they are too complex. The storage environments of some companies are fragmented, resulting in numerous problems and inefficiencies. In addition, many existing storage systems are practically isolated into silos and are excessively rigid. To meet the exponential demands of new virtualization and cloud technologies, storage systems need to be modernized.

Hewlett-Packard has a solution package for this, HP Converged Storage, which can be ideal for the modern environments where virtualization and cloud services have dominance. This package includes a product called HP 3PAR StoreServ built on modern flash-optimized storage architecture. HP says that this solution “delivers sustainable performance for diverse and unpredictable workloads that scales even with extremely high levels of capacity utilization.”

Another product included in the package is HP StoreFabricStorage which is designed to meet the needs of networking infrastructure. Offering FC (Fibre Channel) connectivity between servers and storage, this product complements HP 3PAR StoreServ.

If you are planning to modernize your storage using the HP solution package described here or an alternative product, in preparation for migration into virtualization and the cloud, you can always seek the assistance of ICT Shift for charting your direction.