Companies need to move away from running each application on a single server.

In the last decade there has been a signifi cant move from having standalone server machines to  encompassing a virtual environment, says , Sales Specialist at HP Storage Works Division, but this has created its own challenges.

Running multiple servers can become overwhelming and affect and performance, says Day.  “For example, if a company has 10 physical servers running 10 virtual machines each, there will be 100 servers that need managing and have a storage requirement.” The solution lies in creating groups of storage and pools of hosts which can enable the use of a single provisioning operation instead of hundreds.

“Companies need to optimise their infrastructure footprint by putting higher densities of virtual machines  on a single device,” he says. “There needs to be improved density when virtualising the server  environment for companies to maximise their return on investment (ROI).” Centralising the server base  has many benefits. “One challenge of virtualising storage has always been accurately predicting  workload and storage needs,” explains Day.

“With HP 3PAR Utility Storage, the administrator can get a complete view of the storage environment from a single platform. He can even implement data protection from the Virtual machine management  suite without having advanced storage knowledge or require professional services to be procured.” HP  3PAR Utility Storage allows the reduction of provisioning and administration time by up to 90%, he says. Leveraging 3PAR’s parallel architecture and thin-provisioning features can also assist in optimising  virtualised server environments. ”Relatively large volumes of storage can b deployed with thin-provisioning without having to actually dedicate the physical storage resources,” explains Day.

The benefits, according to Day include improved virtual machine density allowing the purchasing of 50%  fewer physical servers, simplification by spending 90% less time managing your storage, and  saving capital expenditure by cutting your storage capacity requirements by 50% or more.

“Integration with virtual server platforms such as VMware’s vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)  and Storage I/O Controls (SIOC) minimises the impact of I/O congestion, allowing you to increase the number of VMs per physical server and add higher-performing applications to your physical servers when attached to HP 3PAR arrays,” says Day.

Research company ’s European Disk Storage Systems Program Manager states  that the massively parallel nature of 3PAR’s InServ Server Storage arrays can help in the following two environments: “Indeed,  users deploying 3PAR’s InServ Server Storage arrays are likely to benefit from the company’s approach of striping data across a large number of spindles,” Sheppard says. “Since 3PAR’s arrays  deliver low latency performance to disk, they are able to maintain performance levels in environments with high levels of random I/O as well as in environments that cache some memory to disk, typical of  virtual server environments.”