In 2005, it became evident to CEO Mark Hurd and his executive staff that IT would play a critical role in HP’s success. Hurd and his team determined that to become the world’s leading IT company they would need a leading IT organization. Delivering that also would demonstrate a world-class success model of data centers enhanced for business results.
“Getting IT right requires that we align our core infrastructure to the speed, agility and cost structures that HP’s business innovation requires,” Hurd said.
The result was a series of five major IT priorities designed to reduce costs, simplify processes, and improve service. At the foundation was HP’s Data Center Consolidation (DCC) project—a three-year plan that includes consolidating 85 data centers worldwide into just six locations in three U.S. cities. By the end of 2008, the program will:
An important component of the program was its network infrastructure, which would be a hybrid environment with Cisco core switches and HP ProCurve edge switches—all with 24x7 mission-critical service and support. In the end, the HP IT team decided that ProCurve was the best match for its goals.
HP ProCurve, the world’s number two networking vendor, is supplying more than 300,000 ports in the project—including 2,000 of its stackable ProCurve Switch 3500 Series and 800 of the chassis ProCurve Switch 5400 Series.
When Randy Mott took on the new HP IT priorities as executive vice president and chief information officer at HP, he knew the potential impact that the data center project could have on the company’s business.
“Consolidating our data operations into six state-of-the-art centers will provide HP with strengths that are unmatched in the industry,” said Mott. “The data centers will provide our business with more dependable, simplified operations. This effort will enable faster delivery of new technologies, services, and information and provide room for growth and improved business continuity while significantly reducing costs.”
The consolidation pulled the deployment of HP’s IT infrastructure into three U.S. cities— Atlanta, Houston, and Austin, Texas—with two centers in each, about 15 miles apart.
In addition to enabling HP’s IT organization to be more nimble and provide better information for the entire company, the consolidation will help HP to reduce its IT spending by approximately $1 billion (U.S.) in coming years. The facilities also will serve as a showcase for HP Adaptive Infrastructure products and services, represented by ProCurve’s Adaptive Network vision—which focuses on fortifying security, reducing complexity, and increasing productivity.
That fit the HP vision of designing six facilities to be “lights-out” data centers capable of being managed remotely, enabled through the company’s adaptive infrastructure solutions:HP also is implementing its Dynamic Smart Cooling technology, which actively manages a data center’s air-conditioned environment to deliver the right amount of cooling where it is needed most. The energy provisioning system uses advanced control software fed by continuous, real-time air-temperature measurements from a network of sensors throughout a data center. The system monitors and adjusts the air handlers to modulate cooling energy, leading to utility cost savings of up to 25 percent.
The three locations were selected based on availability and affordability of space, power and network bandwidth, as well as a lower probability of impact from natural disasters. Each location will host two separate physical sites, with more than 50,000 square feet of useable floor space within 15 miles of each other, enabling them to be serviced centrally.
The data centers are being designed as a series of modules that can be arranged in various configurations. The modular design will facilitate rapid build times and significant efficiencies in maintaining, managing, and upgrading the environment to better leverage the frequently changing technology landscape.
“HP operates a non-proprietary, standards-based network providing a best-of-breed, multivendor solution delivering a high-quality, cost-effective network service,” said John Craparo, senior vice president, HP Global Telecommunications & Global IT Security. “The ProCurve implementation for our DCC Project demonstrates that flexibility.”
Space, power, and cooling will be rapidly scalable and optimally balanced in the centers, with utilization targeted at 70- to 80- percent per module compared with average utilization of 50 percent in less sophisticated environments.
HP’s IT team decided that ProCurve switches were the most compelling complementary edge solutions—with the award-winning 5400 series and 3500 series switches distributing the network intelligence from Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series core switches.
“These facilities will serve as a model of the next-generation data center that HP believes represents the future of enterprise computing,” Hurd said.
The improved performance capabilities in the DCC project also put additional up-time pressure on the core facilities—in areas ranging from security and management to reliability and efficiency. That’s one reason network service and support requirements are crucial in the data centers.
“We had to ensure support for all mission critical infrastructure,” said John McHugh, ProCurve’s global vice president and general manager. “HP wanted one point of contact worldwide, using proactive services instead of reactive services.”
That led to a unique partnership between HP IT, HP Services and ProCurve’s support team. Through its Mission Critical Partnership (MCP), ProCurve equipment in the data center is covered by HP Services. The partnership’s custom support team will provide second- and third-level support for the network infrastructure. That includes high-level network support specialists who are available to respond to service requests on a 24x7 basis and provide a single point of contact into HP for technical support and escalation management. The team will work closely with HP IT’s network support team, ProCurve and the onsite staff to help ensure that network issues are addressed efficiently and effectively.
To improve the business value of its data centers, HP needed a choice among secure best-in-class networking solutions that met its unique and specific needs. ProCurve’s standards-based switches provided that flexibility.
Data centers are finding they can radically simplify and streamline operations by being able to choose the best available solution instead of a single-vendor model. With a proven track record in critical high-performance deployments, ProCurve’s unified wired and wireless solutions are built on its secure and trusted standards-based Adaptive EDGE Architecture. In addition, ProCurve products are engineered to HP quality standards— backed by the ProCurve Lifetime Warranty♦, next-day business replacement in most countries, service, and support.
By delivering secure, reliable information for business decisions, ProCurve improves the value of the data center network from core to distribution to server edge—enabling enterprise data centers to enhance business outcomes. How? As HP learned, a data center can significantly reduce IT costs, facilitate business innovation, and be a showcase for enterprise customers.
“The capabilities that we deliver will not only be the right solution to meet our own business requirements, but will also provide the best environment for our customers to see firsthand what HP technology and services can do for them,” Hurd said.
The ProCurve Switch 5400zl (shown here) and Switch 3500yl Series are among the most advanced intelligent edge switches in the HP ProCurve product line. The 5400zl chassis series includes 6-slot and 12-slot configurations, with associated zl modules and bundles. The 3500yl stackable series includes 24-port and 48-port models. The foundation for these switches is the ProVision ASIC, a product of ProCurve and HP Labs. The programmable ProVision ASIC allows the most demanding networking features, such as Quality of Service (QoS) and security, to be implemented in a scalable yet granular way. It supports a variety of Gigabit interfaces, integrated Power over Ethernet (PoE) on all 10/100/1000Base-T ports, 10-GbE capability, and choice of form factors.
