Hewlett Packard has been focusing on a Converged Infrastructure!
Where the industry is going plays very favorable to where HP is investing and what customers see us as, which is the open industry standard server, storage and network provider. We'll continue to build open industry standard platforms like we do today, they will be designed from the beginning to optimize around converged infrastructure. But what HP’s known for is open industry standards and giving customers the choice, and that’s what we’ll continue to do.
MXN Data Center Convergence
MXN being an HP partner for years has designed a set of servers, software and storage products with bundled implementation and support into our own theme of “Converged Infrastructure”. This is designed for the SMB and enterprise environments. Converged Infrastructure helps you overcome the inflexibility and high costs created by IT sprawl to shift more resources to innovation and strategic initiatives – creating the ideal foundation for an instant-on enterprise. This is achieved through an architectural blueprint that eliminates silos and integrates technologies (e.g. servers, storage and network) into shared pools of interoperable resources – all managed through a common management platform and all based on standards and customer choice.
The goal is to provide in a very short time a complete data center with all of the bells and whistles that any Fortune 500 data center would have:
- High-density computing with virtualization
- Redundant servers and processors, redundant storage and archiving, and very high speed, redundant networks tying it all together
- Redundant UPS
- Completely monitored and supported by a comprehensive, 24x7 onsite support program
-and all for a price that’s far less than doing it the old-fashioned way- Or, a price for the complete package that’s about what just a routine server replacement project would cost. And the implementation takes about a week of on-site work.
You get a complete design
This new data center is designed to have all of the reliability and lights-off operation of a big-time data center, so that you can build your own private ‘cloud’ with the advantages of a cloud, without the security and access drawbacks of a public one.
This new data center is small enough to take up a small amount of space in your existing data center (as little as 30 inches of rack space) and run in parallel with that existing data center while you move your data and applications over to this new one. This makes the transition pretty painless.
This is not really a set of new technologies. It’s an intelligent assemblage of existing, proven technology. Everything’s connected together, everything’s internally redundant and nonstop, and you get redundant high-capacity connections to your existing core switch. It just plugs in.
You get a set of rack-mounted or blade servers
This design can be custom fit for your needs – this can be blades, servers NAS, SAN or a combination of all. With one or two high-capacity RAID-protected and completely hardware redundant ISCSI SAN’s, a RAID-protected network attach storage appliance, and an optional high capacity tape drive.
Every piece of hardware is Hewlett-Packard, which conveys two advantages: first, its high-quality, well engineered reliable stuff with excellent performance and relatively low power draw. And the second advantage is that it’s supported by one manufacturer, and with a three year 24 x 7 plan that includes a not-to-exceed four hour onsite response.
The virtualization component is using VMware, which is the industry leader. Depending on your needs you get a design that has VMware licensing to cover all CPUs and VMware features to give you minimal downtime thru shared storage. There is even a feature where your critical applications can run redundant over multiple servers – if one server goes down the applications keep running (limited to VMs with 1 vCPU currently).
You can use your own data management software, or we’ll provide and integrate Symantec data management software that handles data backup, archiving, migration, and recovery. This software also comes with 24x7 support and one years manufacturer’s support that can be renewed.
That’s the lowdown on the hardware and software. We also wrap this acquisition into a formal process of evaluation, installation, training, and support with a pre-installation guide to get you ready for the installation, an installation guide to direct the installation, and a best practices guide to help you through the first year of operation. And as said we include manufacturer-direct support for the hardware and software.
You also get a one year MXN monitoring subscription
MXN monitoring - (can be extended) for all hardware and software, down to and including the VMware instances and processes running on them. We monitor the entire new data center and provide you with your own web portal to monitor your datacenter. We can also install environmental sensors so that you can monitor the heating and cooling in your data center and also monitor access to it, too. You get a private slice of our very expensive monitoring server for your private use!
After the installation you get 90 days of MXN dial-in or telephone consultation to help you along the way. In addition you get three years 24 x 7 VMware factory technical support. Everything that you need to run this successfully—hardware, software, services, guides, installation, support, monitoring—is included in one fixed price.
You immediately save significant money on power consumption and as said you immediately get a much higher-reliability, more adaptable and survivable data center. As said, your new data center has all of the features of a Fortune 500 data center. Depending on which design you pick, it can be split over two sites, so that you can lose an entire building and not take services out.
If you have applications that need to be firewalled from each other we can install firewall and application control and access control software on the virtual cluster, so that you can segregate applications from each other—inside the VMware cluster. Once again, this isn’t something that you can get anywhere else for any amount of money. If you select this additional protection you get three years of manufacturer support with it, too.
You also get a training pre and post installation and 24x7 manufacturer support
If you have been investigating virtualization on an ad-hoc basis and want to take it to the next level this is a perfect way to get there quickly. As said, the basic installation takes about a week.
We have done all of the up-front design and specification so that you don’t have to worry about designing a system to fit you. Just pick your correct size from one of four options that range in size from as little as 10 servers to well over 100+. We can adjust any of these options up or down by adding or subtracting components to exactly fit your requirements.
And if and when you have a need to expand we have a set of expansion options that will fit whatever expansion direction you need. We build enough spare capacity (for free) into the configuration you get to allow the new data center to grow inexpensively and without disruption.
The goal is to make computing, backup, data storage/migration/archiving, and communications automatic and trouble-free so that you can free yourself from keeping the plumbing running and spend time working on stuff that really matters. We expect that this new data center will just sit there in the background, working quietly and tell you when it needs attention.
If you have come to the point where you need to do a significant server upgrade or replacement, or where you really need to revamp your data storage and archiving system, or to a point where you have to relocate your data center or feel the need to establish a redundant capability in your data center, it pays to talk with us. We guarantee that we have something that you have never seen before. And it’s something that you cannot anywhere else. We have looked.
Other stuff:
MXN is a twelve-year old company that specializes in providing high-quality networking and computing to its 200 clients in a seven-state southeastern region. We can (and regularly do) design high capacity wired and wireless networks, voice over IP systems, video over IP systems, and network security. Our goal is to design systems that act like plumbing, which just sit there, year after year, and run. All of our offerings have very high value-to-cost ratios.
We can schedule an on-site visit to cover any of this stuff, or talk about what we do in general and show off what else we do. All it takes is a projector screen or a little bit of blank wall and a little of your time.