Hewlett Packard updates its StorageWorks ILM product, boosting capacity usage, and data migration

HP has updated its StorageWorks information lifecycle management (ILM) product suite to make more efficient use of capacity, simplify data migration and speed up information recovery.

The key to HP’s approach is integration between data protection, hierarchical storage management and data movement in large enterprise environments, according to Frank Harbist, general manager for ILM and storage software at HP’s StorageWorks division.

“Sun and EMC are doing similar things to us, but I don’t see anybody doing everything,” Harbist said. “The systems competitors are [looking at each area separately], but HP has made great strides into the information domain.”

The vendor has added a raft of new products and services to its StorageWorks portfolio, including continuous information capture tools, a new virtualisation appliance and a recovery management application designed to instantly restore MS SQL and Exchange databases in the event of loss or corruption.

Perhaps most significant is its use of block-level single instancing in a number of applications. Single instancing removes duplication by stripping out repeated content in files, thereby shrinking the amount of data that needs to be stored.

HP estimates that the feature can deliver three to five times better data compression than traditional technologies. It has been integrated into the StorageWorks reference information manager continuous capture tool and into OpenView Storage Data Protector 6.0.