HP Virtual Connect is a virtualization technology created by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

(HP) that de-couples fixed blade server adapter network addresses from the associated external networks so that changes in the blade server infrastructure and the LAN and SAN environments don’t require choreography among server, LAN, and SAN teams for every task. It brings

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

to the blade server edge as it extends virtual machine technology. Virtual machine technology moves workloads across virtual machines on a single server. It becomes a challenge when moving virtual machines from one physical machine to another or between

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...

locations because changes to the

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

and SAN environments require manual intervention by network and storage administrators. By pooling and sharing multiple network connections across multiple servers and virtual machines, Virtual Connect extends the capability of Data Center by allowing physical setup and movement of Virtual Machine workloads between servers and Virtual Machines, transparently from the LAN and SAN infrastructure. Another name for Virtual Connect is PowerConnect Switches (the old name of the series). Administrators can use the built-in HP Virtual Connect Manager for small configurations or the HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager for larger environments to define a server connection profile for each blade server bay before a server is installed. This profile establishes the Media Access Control (MAC) addresses for all network interface controllers (NICs), the

World Wide Name A World Wide Name (WWN) or World Wide Identifier (WWID) is a unique identifier used in storage technologies including Fibre Channel, Parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). A WWN may be employed in a variety of roles, such ...

s (WWNs) for all host bus adapters (HBAs), and the Fibre Channel SAN boot parameters along with their associated network uplink connections and then associates them to a blade server bay so that even if the server is changed, the configuration and connection profile stays constant. When a new server takes its place, the same profile is associated with and used by the new server. The technology behind Virtual Connect FlexFabric adapters and modules, part of the HP FlexNetwork Architecture, takes Virtual Connect further. Virtual Connect FlexFabric provides up to four physical functions for each blade server adapter network port, with the unique ability to fine-tune bandwidth to adapt to virtual server workload demands on the fly. All four connections can have their hardware personalities defined by the System Administrator as FlexNICs to support only

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

traffic as before with Virtual Connect. In addition, one of the physical functions can also be defined as a FlexHBA for Fibre Channel protocol support or an iSCSI initiator for iSCSI boot protocol support. Each function has 100 percent hardware-level performance and provides the I/O performance needed to take full advantage of multi-core processors and to support more virtual machines per physical server. Each server can support many connections—up to 24 per half-height blade—with less investment in expensive adapter cards on the server, fewer interconnect modules in the blade enclosure, and fewer expensive uplink switch ports in the corporate network. Virtual Connect as one of the technology foundations for HP CloudSystem and Converged Infrastructure allows the abstraction of the blade server infrastructure from the LAN and SAN infrastructure. This allows resources to be allocated to services in a dynamic Cloud Environment."HP unleashes barrage of offerings to add more 'oomph' to Converged Infrastructure benefits.", June 24, 2010
ZDNet.

References

{{reflist Virtualization software