HP Launches Carrier-Grade ProLiant Servers, StorageWorks Arrays

HP is offering upgraded carrier-grade servers and storage arrays designed to help telecommunications companies and service providers more easily manage the convergence of telephony and IT. The upgraded ProLiant systems are based on Intel’s “Nehalem EP” processors, and can support a variety of OSes, including Windows, Linux, HP-UX and Solaris. Another Integrity blade system is run on Intel’s Itanium chip. The two arrays come out of HP’s StorageWorks group.
Hewlett-Packard is looking to help telecommunications companies and service providers manage the ongoing convergence of IT and telephony.



HP June 24 rolled out several new versions of its carrier-grade hardware products that offer NEBS (Network Equipment-Building System) compliance in a flexible, cost-effective package, according to Chuck Smith, vice president of BladeSystem business development at HP.

The enhanced products including the BladeSystem Carrier-Grade platform, a ProLiant carrier-grade rack-mount server and a carrier-grade storage array, and can run in both telephony and IT networks, according to HP.

HP is offering carrier-grade versions of two of its ProLiant servers running on Intel’s quad-core Xeon 5500 Series “Nehalem EP” processors. The rack-mount ProLiant DL380 G6 server offers twice the performance of previous versions and improves energy efficiency. The carrier-grade version includes two 2.53-GHz Xeons.

The ProLiant BL460c G6 carrier-grade server blade also offers twice the performance of previous systems and enhanced energy efficiency. With two 2.53-GHz Intel quad-core processors, the blade system enables a single HP BladeSystem c7000-cg enclosure to support up to 16 blades—or 32 Intel quad-core processors—in a 10U (17.5-inch) enclosure.

The Integrity BL860c carrier-grade server blade, powered by Intel’s Itanium processor, is designed to offer high scalability and performance for such applications as text messaging. The server blade is designed for the HP c7000-cg enclosure.

The platforms support a number of operating environments, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, HP’s Unix variant, HP-UX, OpenVMS and Sun Microsystems’ Solaris. In addition, HP will distribute and support Sun’s Solaris 10 on the ProLiant and BladeSystem platforms.

HP’s StorageWorks MSA2000fc G2 and MSA2000sa G2 carrier-grade storage arrays support high availability and data protection through such features as snapshots for point-in-time copies of data. They also support up to 24 146 gigabyte SAS disks (3.5 terabytes) in a 2U (3.5-inch) enclosure. They also offer businesses a choice of Fibre Channel or SAS connectivity.



“With expertise in both telecom and IT, HP provides a family of servers that combines the best of both worlds,” Smith said in a statement.