Maximize

Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Hyper-V ROI

HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions for

server and client virtualization with
Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V
Solution brief

Optimize, simplify, and save in Microsoft virtualized environments.

Optimize:
Improve application availability.

Eliminate planned and unplanned downtime

Network RAID
Snapshot and Remote Copy integration
Multi-site SAN
Nondisruptive scale capacity and performance
Peer Motion data mobility with Cluster Swap

Simplify:
Streamline solution deployment
and management.

Spend less time on system management

HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center
HP Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager
VSS provider and requestor functionality
P4000 Device-Specific Module (DSM) for multipath I/O (MPIO)
HP LeftHand Application Aware Snapshot Manager

Save:
Cut storage TCO.
$

Reduce storage deployment costs

Pay-as-you-grow: Scale capacity and performance as needed.
Space-efficient thin provisioning
Reservationless snapshots
All-inclusive SAN software suite

Storage designed and qualified to work with

Microsoft Hyper-V
Businesses are embracing server and end-user workload virtualization
to reduce costs and increase agility, efficiency, and availability. With
Microsoft Hyper-V included with Microsoft Windows Server 2008,
Microsoft puts the benefits of virtualization within reach of a broader
audience and offers a seamless solution for organizations looking to
virtualize their Microsoft Windows applications and infrastructure.
Getting the most from virtualized environments requires
highperformance integrated storage systems. Because virtualization
concentrates workloads onto a smaller hardware footprint, single
points of failure must be eliminated and high availability, disaster
recovery, and fault tolerance are required. The ease with which
virtual machines can be created and moved makes it more difficult
to track and manage them. This can add cost and complexity. To
get the most from Microsoft Hyper-V, organizations need a storage
system that is qualified and designed to work with it, and will support
key features today and in the future. At the same time, organizations
often want virtualization to reduce costs. Therefore, they require
storage systems that will provide a high value for their investment.

Boost Hyper-V ROI: Optimize, simplify, and save

with HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions
HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions deliver federated storage that
is highly optimized for application virtualization in general and
Hyper-V virtualization specifically. HP works closely with Microsoft
to ensure that LeftHand SANs support key Hyper-V features and
the Microsoft platform from management tools to applications.

TheHP LeftHand portfolio offers affordable enterprise functionality

with a comprehensive feature set and simplified central management
for all locations. Superior application availability and disaster
recovery features are integrated into LeftHand SAN Solutions to
provide comprehensive failover and failback protection for any
situation. With HP LeftHand, organizations can offer continuous
data availability to users and applications while meeting demand in
real time.

Leverage the power of HP and Microsoft partnership.

Going strong after more than 25 years, the HP and Microsoft
global strategic alliance is one of the industrys longest-standing
alliances. HP and Microsoft recently extended the long-term
partnership to deliver new solutions built on the next-generation
infrastructure-to-application modeldesigned to greatly simplify IT
and accelerate the move to cloud computing. As Global Strategic
Alliance Partners, HP Storage and Microsoft engineering and
technical marketing teams work together to:
Conduct regular roadmap reviews and joint solution definition
and planning sessions.
Certify and validate HP Storage solutions with Microsoft
Windows Server platforms.
Simplify end-to-end management.
Produce reference architectures, best practice deployment
guides, technical whitepapers, and technical webcasts to speed
deployment, reduce risk, and get predictable results.

Optimize: Improve application availability

Virtual environments are expected to be available to more users,
more of the time , as compared to a traditional infrastructure.
HP LeftHand SAN Solutions are designed to maximize application
availability in virtualized environments. They do this using built-in
protection against data faults and site failures, as well as providing
the ability to scale nondisruptively.
Network RAID stripes and protects multiple copies of data across
a cluster of storage nodes, eliminating any single point of failure.
Network RAID is configured on a per-volume basis, and dictates how
a logical volumes blocks are laid out across the cluster. This provides
reliability that can be configured to best meet the performance
and capacity requirements for specific applications and data. This
configuration can be done without taking the system offline.

Simplify: Streamline solution deployment and

management
Scalability requires a system to scale without increasing complexity,
especially management complexity. HP LeftHand SANs enable
organizations to deploy and scale virtualization solutions with
streamlined, centralized management with either the HP LeftHand
Centralized Management Console or Microsoft System Center.
HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center delivers in-depth
infrastructure monitoring and management directly from the
Microsoft System Center console. Included free as part of HP Insight
Control, these extensions deliver comprehensive system health and
alerting, driver and firmware updates, OS deployment, detailed
inventory, and proactive virtual machine management in a flexible,
easy-to-install package.

Snapshot and Remote Copy integration for Windows servers and

applications including Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL
Server, and Microsoft SharePoint make application backup and
recovery simple.

Tested Microsoft Exchange performance

HP LeftHand Storage Systems are tested to work with Microsoft
Exchange deployments under the Microsoft Exchange Solution
Reviewed Program (ESRP). ESRP provides a framework for Microsoft
Certified storage providers to test storage solutions targeted for
Exchange deployment. For example, one ESRP test demonstrated
that HP LeftHand SAN Solutions can deliver the performance and
capacity necessary to support 64,000 Exchange users with 750MB
mailboxes. To review the wide range of ESRP tests conducted on
various LeftHand SAN Solutions and system configurations, visit
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/ff182054.aspx.

Multi-site SAN, qualified for use with Hyper-V, provides the ability to
assign storage nodes in the cluster to different logical or physical sites
including racks, rooms, buildings, and cities. Based on this assignment,
the software automatically makes the appropriate configuration and
operational decisions to protect data from site failure. With LeftHand,
when the failed site comes back online, its storage nodes automatically
obtain any changed data blocks so that resynchronization is automatic
and transparent to the application servers.
Nondisruptively scale capacity and performance with a
growondemand model where nodes can be added to the cluster
as needed without disrupting application availability. Applications
remain online during maintenance events such as adding nodes
and updating software or firmware for continuous availability. Every
time a storage node is added to a cluster, it increases the clusters
capacity, input/output operations per second, network throughput,
cache CPU and RAM.
Peer Motion data mobility with Cluster Swap migrates data from
one cluster to another without disruption and without taking systems
offline. Using the Cluster Swap feature, users can replace or
upgrade entire storage clusters with no downtime or disruption to
applications. Peer Motion volume migration allows users to migrate
volumes online between tiers of storageMDL SAS for capacity,
SAS for performance, and SSD for ultra-high performance. These
capabilities increase the agility of virtualized IT to meet changing
resource demands in real time, update software, and optimize
resource utilizationall while maintaining appropriate service levels.

Simplify client virtualization with

HP Converged Solutions.
A typical client virtualization solution takes six to twelve months
to implement from conception to production. However, with
HP VirtualSystem CV2 for Citrix XenDesktop on Microsoft Hyper-V,
it is possible to shorten that time by 50 percent* or more without
compromising performance, operating costs, information security,
or user experience.
Optimized to a single rack solution for client virtualization, this
ready-to-run, best-in-class solution offers single vendor support,
delivering reliability plus flexibility for business agility. The
HP VirtualSystem CV2 includes everything required to support
desktop virtualization including BladeSystem servers, LeftHand
SAN, HP Networking, PDUs, and HP Insight Control.

HP Management Pack for Systems Center Operations Manager

provides seamless integration with Microsoft System Center
Operations Manager, System Center Virtual Machine Manager,
and System Center Essentials, allowing administrators to proactively
streamline IT operations and increase systems availability by
monitoring and managing Microsoft Windows environments and
HP Storage products through a common Microsoft System Center
Operations Manager console.
VSS provider and requestor functionality can request VSS-managed,
application consistent snapshots that are fully integrated with the
LeftHand snapshot feature set. Customized schedules and retention
policies can be created within the HP LeftHand Centralized
Management Console or CLI for both locally and remotely retained
application-consistent snapshots. Policies are set on a volume basis
and the framework is volume-set aware. The HP LeftHand VSS
snapshot solution supports SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, and Hyper-V.
HP LeftHand DSM for multipath I/O enhances performance and
redundancy using full support for native Microsoft MPIO including
multiple active/active or active/passive paths between a Windows
host and the LeftHand SAN. This increases the available throughput
for host access to storage and eliminates a single point of failure at
the host Network Interface Card. HP LeftHand users can leverage
additional multi-pathing capabilities with the HP LeftHand DSM
for Microsoft MPIO. This tool provides direct active paths from
a Windows host to each node of a LeftHand storage cluster for
optimized performance and data access policies. The HP LeftHand
DSM for Microsoft MPIO can be used independently or in
conjunction with the native Microsoft DSM.
*

Based on data collected from HP VirtualSystem CV2 for Citrix XenDesktop on Microsoft
Hyper-V FAQs. For more information, visit h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.
aspx/4AA3-8733ENW.pdf.

HP LeftHand Application Aware Snapshot Manager supports

VSS-consistent, application-managed snapshots of Hyper-V virtual
machines. VSS agents inside the guest operating system are triggered
by the Microsoft VSS writer for Hyper-V to quiesce the file system
when snapshots are taken. The HP LeftHand VSS provider then
captures the data in a quiesced state and preserves it in the hardware
snapshots on the SAN. These application consistent snapshots are
fully integrated with the HP LeftHand Remote Copy and SmartClone
features so protecting and recovering Hyper-V virtual machines with
LeftHand snapshot technology is fast, easy, and reliable.

Virtual SAN Appliance: Shared storage for Hyper-V

without external SAN hardware
The HP LeftHand VSA software provides complete SAN
functionality for Hyper-V without external SAN hardware. By
virtualizing the internal disk capacity of the server running Hyper-V,
the VSA eliminates the need for external shared storage required
to implement advanced hypervisor features. LeftHand VSA is
Microsoft qualified as an iSCSI SAN.
VSAs running on separate hosts create a clustered pool of
storage with the ability to replicate data across the hosts,
allowing volumes to stay online in the event of a server failure.
Small to medium businesses and remote office customers can
lower their IT infrastructure costs and better protect business
critical systems without purchasing additional hardware.
The same Centralized Management Console can be used to
manage both HP LeftHand physical SANs and virtual VSA SANs.
VSA for remote office/branch office scenarios
Branch offices often need the same IT services as found in
headquarters, but deploying physical SANs can be cost-prohibitive.
The LeftHand VSA enables the creation of a fully featured,
shared SAN inside a Hyper-V environment on existing servers
or direct-attached storage, supporting high availability, disaster
recovery, and remote management for branch offices without
requiring additional storage systems, onsite IT staff, or large
capital investments.

Save: Cut storage TCO

In todays competitive business environment, costs are usually a key
part of IT decision making. HP LeftHand SAN Solutions are designed
to be cost-effective from the outset, enable organizations to buy what
they need, and scale up seamlessly in the future.
Pay-as-you-grow: Scale capacity and performance as needed
Unlike traditional SAN storage architectures, LeftHand SANs scale
capacity and performance linearly to seamlessly grow with the
business. All P4000 storage nodes are pre-optimized to balance
performance and capacity resources within the node so that
customers can start with what they need today and easily grow by
adding storage nodes to their clusters without taking systems offline.
Thin provisioning efficiencies underlie every LeftHand SAN Solution
function including snapshots, remote copy, and volume migration,
providing excellent capacity utilization with the potential for
significant storage cost savings.
Reservationless snapshots create thinly provisioned, instant
pointintime copies of data on a per-volume basis, providing a highly
effective and space-efficient system for disaster recovery.
The all-inclusive SAN software suite included with HP LeftHand
SAN Solutions provides the latest SAN/iQ platform, the Centralized
Management Console, Application Aware Snapshot Manager, and
an array of value-added tools required to integrate a LeftHand SAN
solution with a Hyper-V environment. This eliminates the need to
purchase additional software and services to get a solution up and
running which helps drive down TCO.

Maximize ROI with a SAN optimized for Hyper-V

A growing number of organizations are taking advantage of
the virtualization power built into Windows Server 2008 R2
with Hyper-V. These organizations often find that cost-effective,
highperformance storage is the missing piece of the virtualization
value equation. HP LeftHand SAN Solutions enable them to get
the storage they need today with high availability and disaster
recovery built-in, and then scale it seamlessly in the future. With
the ability to centrally manage SAN storage using familiar System
Center tools, leverage application-aware SAN software to
optimize Windows workloads, and even implement SAN features
using internal or direct-attached storage through VSA, LeftHand
SANs help organizations of all sizes maximize the value of
Hyper-V virtualization.

HP P4000 LeftHand SAN Solutions support online frictionless scalability with simplified and consolidated
management for maximizing server and storage utilization. For more information, visit www.hp.com/go/p4000.

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Copyright 2012 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties
for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be
construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
4AA3-9294ENW, Created February 2012