News release

HP Puts More “Up” in Uptime

Company sets new standards for system availability with updated mission-critical computing software

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HP today unveiled enhancements to its HP Serviceguard Solutions software and HP-UX 11i operating environment designed to maximize server availability for customers with 24/7 demands.

Targeting the mission-critical computing market, HP Serviceguard A.11.19 features online reconfiguration, integrated workload balancing and predictable performance as a system scales, assuring customers that the system will be available whenever they need it.

The latest version of HP-UX 11i has been optimized for blade systems, the industry’s fastest growing server infrastructure.⁽¹⁾ This adds the automation and management benefits of HP-UX 11i to the cost reduction, management and performance features of HP BladeSystem infrastructure.

For the last three years, HP has been the highest-ranking systems vendor in the Availability and Clustering Software (ACS) market, based on IDC’s annual report on ACS revenue.⁽²⁾ HP Serviceguard high-availability software for HP-UX 11i Unix systems contributed strongly to HP’s ranking in the market, including sales of HP Serviceguard software licenses and support.

“We have significantly improved the performance of our data center while reducing costs by consolidating four standalone servers with a mixed operating environment to just two HP blades with a single operating environment,” said Jim Gross, director of IT Operations at AAR Corporation, a product and service provider to the aerospace and defense industries. “Standardizing on HP-UX 11i v3 across our environment has made system administration simple and cost-effective, while HP Integrity blades provide the form factor needed to consolidate.”

Continuous service-level availability

The HP Serviceguard Solutions portfolio, part of the HP Virtual Server Environment suite of software, is tightly integrated with HP-UX and Linux to protect mission-critical applications from downtime caused by maintenance, human error or infrastructure failures.

Additional updates to the HP Serviceguard Solutions portfolio offer the following benefits:

• Restores services 83 percent faster⁽³⁾ than the previous version. With Serviceguard, the performance level does not degrade even as the server cluster grows.
• Eliminates 100 percent of planned downtime associated with typical cluster maintenance and configuration. Customers can add or delete resources or change parameters of an application package online while the application continues to run.
• Minimizes recovery time from hours to as little as two minutes with the first production-proven solution for use with SAP® liveCache technology. The Serviceguard Extension for use with SAP applications improves supply chain availability.
• Integrates workload balancing to ensure servers do not become overloaded after a failover ¬– the only high-availability clustering solution to do so.
• Reduces administration costs by up to 25 percent⁽⁴⁾ through a time-saving graphical display of dependencies between applications for intuitive management.
• Improves the security of privacy data and allows for network growth with full compliance of IPv6 as well as mixed IPv4 and IPv6 environments. This is required by U.S. and Japanese government agencies.

“Twenty-five years of UNIX leadership, coupled with the longest publicly available UNIX roadmap in the industry, ensures that HP-UX is the operating environment of choice for customers,” said Brian Cox, director, Software Planning and Marketing, Business Critical Systems, HP. “This new version of HP-UX will enable customers to better handle orders for new business and reduce the costs of their technology infrastructures.”

More information about HP Serviceguard is available at www.hp.com/go/serviceguardnow.

Automation and management to improve uptime

The HP--UX 11i v3 Update 4 operating system offers new benefits through automation and simplified management, including:

• Reduces deployment times from days to hours for high-bandwidth replicated servers through e-delivery, which enables downloads of the HP-UX 11i system software.
• Up to 50 percent reduction of the planned downtime typically required to upgrade from older HP-UX 11i v3 releases through Online Operating System Update. New software versions can now be installed online.
• Reduces energy costs per processor through Green Active Processors. This is achieved by dynamically controlling the power required for active processors based on workload requirements.
• Protects sensitive data by overwriting and erasing disks with Disk Scrub.

In addition, the combination of HP-UX 11i and HP Integrity servers with Intel® Itanium® processors delivers the reliability, availability and scalability required by customers with mission-critical workloads.

“HP’s investment in UNIX-level data and application redundancy, online mobility and system failover with HP-UX 11i v3, combined with Intel’s investment in processor-level RAS features, make HP Integrity servers running HP-UX 11i extremely flexible and reliable for mission-critical workloads,” said Rory McInerney, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group, and director, Enterprise Microprocessor Group, Intel. “Our joint work pays real dividends for our customers.”

More information about HP-UX 11i is available at www.hp.com/go/hpux11inow.

Availability

HP Serviceguard A.11.19 solutions and HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4 are available worldwide. Additional pricing information is available from local HP representatives.

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, simplifies the technology experience for consumers and businesses with a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

⁽¹⁾ “Meeting Mission-Critical Computing Requirements with Blade Servers,” Jean S. Bozman and Matthew Eastwood, IDC, February 2009.

⁽²⁾ Based on revenue. “IDC Worldwide Availability and Clustering Software 2007 Vendor Shares,” IDC Doc. No. 215881, December 2008.

⁽³⁾ As shown in HP Labs testing.

⁽⁴⁾ As shown by HP Labs testing, system administrators now have greatly increased application reliability and predictability of cluster resources, while spending up to 25 percent less time administering those resources.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the achievement of expected operational and financial results; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2009 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2008. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.