Today, many users want to buy a rack, fill it with HP BladeSystem enclosures, wire it up, and then add server blades as they need them. This sounds very efficient, but they still have to engage LAN and SAN administrators every time they install a new server blade in an enclosure or replace existing servers. That takes a lot of scheduling, and wastes time for all departments involved.

With HP Virtual Connect, you can connect and pre-assign all of the LANs and SANs that the server pool might ever need—at the same time that you wire the rack and enclosures.

And with Virtual Connect Flex-10 technology, you choose how many FlexNICs are on each server and set the bandwidth of each NIC in increments of 100 MB. Then, when each server blade is installed the server administrator can quickly use the HP Virtual Connect Manager software or Command Line Interface to assign whatever LAN and SAN connections are needed for that server. No more coordinating with LAN and SAN administrators or waiting for them to be available, which saves time, frees LAN/SAN resources, and gives your server administrator the ultimate flexibility to do what’s needed, when it’s needed.

Server sparing: Fast and affordable

Today you have two choices: Buy and operate two servers for every one you need; or keep one spare for as many servers as you need, and then spend everyone’s time to get LAN and SAN administrators to adjust their networks when you need to replace a failed server.

HP Virtual Connect gives you the best of both alternatives. The built-in Virtual Connect Manager console allows you to spare 16 server blades with just one server, allowing the server administrator to quickly and independently assign LAN and SAN connections to replace any failed server. Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager lets you spare up to 1600 server blades while managing a whole data center full of enclosures from a single console. Individual servers or whole enclosures can be migrated, repurposed, recovered or shifted between workloads quickly and reliably.

Spend less when you need more than 2 NICs on a server

As companies roll out server virtualization to gain operational savings in their data centers, costs for networking virtual servers are spiraling out of control. The typical server hosting a virtual machine today on average needs 6 NICs. These connections combined with the extra switches and cables required quickly escalate network costs as well as add strain to network operations.

HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 is the world’s first technology to eliminate these extra networking costs. Virtual Connect Flex-10 technology allocates a single network port into four individual network connections. Customers can deploy more virtual servers on a consolidated network without having to replace existing networking equipment, reducing costs up to 66 percent.

Today, there are two conventional ways to connect server blades to outside data and storage networks —switches and pass-through modules—each with their own advantages and compromises. Pass-through modules are simple, but require too many expensive cables and create complexity. In almost all cases, pass-through modules are the most expensive option because of the cables and cost of uplink switch ports. Embedded blade switches cut the cables, but add more management tasks for LAN and SAN administrators and blur the lines between server, network and storage administrators.

With both pass- through modules and switches, multiple people are needed to perform very simple server tasks. Each time a server is added or replaced, it requires coordination between the storage, network and server administrators to complete it successfully—over and over again.

On the other hand, Virtual Connect modules deliver extreme flexibility for the server administrator to manage servers independently. This revolutionary approach to server I/O provides a simple view of your HP BladeSystem environment to the Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks, while relieving the server, storage and network administrators of their constant interdependence and frequent need for coordination.

Now, server administrators can focus their efforts on their areas of expertise and be more productive.

Further, the new HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 technology quadruples the number of NIC connections per NIC port, reducing network hardware needed by 75%, without adding managed switches to the data center. So you save on network costs and improve flexibility, without complicating LAN or SAN management. Basically, if your server needs more than two NICs, Virtual Connect Flex-10 will cost you less.

To compliment the Virtual Connect hardware modules, HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM) provides a single console to discover and manage up to one hundred HP BladeSystem enclosures configured with Virtual Connect. A central database administers and controls all of your MAC addresses and World Wide Names which reduces the risk of address conflicts, and you can use group-based configurations to streamline enclosure administration and rapidly move network connections and their workloads across your organization for efficient deployment, systems maintenance, and failover to spare blade servers.