Storage virtualization has been around for several decades. While technologies have advanced and capabilities have become more sophisticated over time, the motivations for virtualizing resources and the anticipated benefits have remained relatively stable. Storage virtualization continues to be an important topic because it addresses a number of significant challenges. Storage vendors, the media, and other sources expound on virtualization's merits in ways that might lead one to conclude that the term has a single, agreed-upon meaning and value--that perhaps one size fits all. Indeed, the range of storage virtualization technologies and solutions has continued to evolve as storage hardware, the software that powers them, and external storage management applications have matured. This can often create confusion. Customers look to suppliers like HP for guidance and leadership. Thus, vendor virtualization approaches and strategy are important.

HP has been delivering a broad range of storage virtualization capabilities for many years, as shown by practical examples in this paper. HP has been an innovator in storage virtualization for several decades and has plans in place to continue as a leader. The ways in which HP implements virtualization and the capabilities it enables continue to advance. HP is evolving conventional storage and network-based virtualization and ways in which virtualization can be applied to storage management. HP is simultaneously pushing virtualization to new limits by extending Storage Essentials and seeking to manage storage as a service. In addition to broad and increasingly integrated storage virtualization capabilities, StorageWorks is actively working with the rest of HP toward virtualizing and automating the entire IT environment as part of the HP Adaptive Infrastructure strategy.