
HP said that, in addition to its own storage arrays, the SVSP will run on a number of arrays from other SAN hardware vendors.
The company claimed that a virtualised SAN is easier to manage, and that adding and upgrading hardware is much simpler. The reliability of backup and recovery operations are also significantly improved.
"Storage virtualisation is a key component of a virtualised IT environment that is flexible, efficient and easy to manage," said HP storage platforms executive vice president Bob Wilson.
"With the addition of the SVSP solution, HP's virtualisation solutions span applications, operations management, infrastructure and client architectures."
HP plans to begin selling the SVSP next month as part of its StorageWorks line of enterprise storage products.