With the Storage Works SAN P4800 BladeSystem offers Hewlett-Packard first storage solution to one that the functions of a Storage Area Network (SAN with a blade chassis combined). Due to the blade technology, the system was up to 38 percent cheaper than traditional SANs and reduces management overhead by up to 66 percent, the manufacturer promises. Its advantages are there to play, where high availability, scalable performance and capacity, and in a transparent fail over functionality and replication possibilities counts.

Like all HP Storage Works solutions range P4000 P4800 is also based on a scale-out cluster architecture with industry-standard components. In this case, some cluster nodes can be flexibly combined to create a jointly-to-manage iSCSI SAN: Each additional node provides additional storage capacity, bandwidth and capacity available with SAS or SAS MDL drives.

Network RAID, snapshots and clones, synchronous and asynchronous replication, and transparent fail over to ensure high availability. Data are automatically distributed to all the available disk spindles. An integrated load balancing is used for load balancing. The BladeSystem offers 63 terabytes of storage capacity the base configuration, which is distributed to 140 of 450 GByte SAS drives at 15,000 rpm. It can be expanded to up to 504 TB.

Administrators can perform all administrative tasks for server, network and SAN preinstall deal with two tools. The Central Management Console (CMC) enables centralized management of SANs. For example, can be created so that logical unit numbers (LUN), snapshots and replication and fail over solutions or manage complex control and define. The tool Onboard Administrator provides data on electricity consumption and temperature and enables central management of individual hardware components of the blade system. Also central to firmware updates are performed.