Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) has an interesting product available for their c-Class blade servers called Virtual Connect and it is used to virtualize BladeSystem connections to LAN and SAN environments. It defines a server connection profile for each server bay in an enclosure before the server is installed. This profile establishes the media access control (MAC) addresses for all network interface controllers (NICs) and the World Wide Names (WWNs) for all host bus adapters (HBAs).
Implementing Virtual Connect decouples servers and the network so that changes in the server infrastructure don’t require changes in the network. It does this by aggregating connectivity into a single resource pool that can be shared physically or virtually across c-Class blades. IDC wrote a great report about the value of Virtual Connect that explores how it works, how it can lower costs, simplify networks or streamline daily operations.
Until now this capability has been limited to the management of I/O for a single chassis and up to 16 blade servers, but the introduction of Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager extends this capability to 100 c-Class chassis or 1,600 blade servers. HP continues to be the leader in the blade server arena and their continuing innovation with technology like Virtual Connect will allow them to maintain that lead.
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