Where is your company when it comes to virtualization? Have you considered your storage infrastructure as you take on server virtualization projects? Maybe you’re assessing initial projects? Or ready to implement your virtualization strategy across a broader scale and scope? Perhaps you are looking for information on specific virtualization products and solutions?

No matter the size of your organization—or where you are in the virtualization journey, you’ll find food for thought in this special report that links numerous articles focused on:

• Storage for your virtual server infrastructure
• Data center transformation through advanced storage virtualization

In these articles, you’ll gain valuable insights into ways to build a master plan for your infrastructure that makes the most of your investments in virtualization.

You’ll also learn how and why the secret to success lies in the realization that virtualization is not simply a server or storage technology. It’s the convergence of servers, storage, networking and applications in a way that fundamentally changes how you use the resources in your entire IT infrastructure.

This in turn helps you not only cut costs and reduce management complexities but also enables you to respond more quickly to business challenges. And in today’s volatile economy, this kind of turn-on-a-dime agility is essential to maintaining competitive advantage.

If yours is like most companies, you started with a simple server virtualization project. Its success in lowering application and administrative costs may well lead to another virtualization project. And another. And another.

If that’s the case, now is a good time to step back and assess your overall virtualization strategy.

Read “Fresh thinking on virtualization” and get useful insights on rethinking virtualization as a business strategy—not just an IT tactic. The discussion focuses on three key levels of virtualization in a larger, enterprise environment: infrastructure barriers, applications and IT operations management and client architectures.

Server virtualization and consolidation are driving the need for more efficient storage platforms. That’s why it’s important to understand how the right storage choices can unlock server virtualization potential. Read “The secret to successful virtualization” for a checklist of what to watch for as you look to make the most of your virtualization investments. You’ll also learn when and how iSCSI SANs can give you a leg up in terms of scalability, high availability, disaster recovery and performance.

While utilization and consolidation are driving many virtualization projects, improved business continuity is another key benefit. With this article, “VMware and HP: Keys to simpler business continuity,” learn how HP’s ProLiant BladeSystem servers and StorageWorks solutions work hand-in-hand to solve some of the pressing problems that come with traditional business continuity plans.

Servers, storage, networking and management are all critical virtualization components. Learn more about how they should be designed to work together as you read “How to build the ultimate virtual infrastructure” article. Then dig deeper into the benefits of scale-out iSCSI SANs for every-sized company and branch offices in “A cure for storage headaches,” written by John Spiers, chief evangelist for HP LeftHand storage products and solutions.

Budgets are tighter than ever. No news there. But it does mean you need to more thoroughly analyze, prioritize and justify every storage purchase decision—including virtualization solutions.

Read “Spend smart with storage virtualization” to get a to-the-point run down of available storage virtualization solutions--all ideally suited for data center transformation projects driven by data growth and storage sprawl. The focus is on network virtualization solutions like the HP StorageWorks SAN virtualization Services Platform (SVSP), as well as the newest generation of HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array disk systems. The EVA family is designed to help you save up to 50 percent in common, everyday storage administrative tasks.

If you're looking for virtualization options designed for server virtualization projects, read “HP LeftHand SAN Solutions.” Here you’ll find links to white papers that drill down and trigger some new thinking on server virtualization and business continuity.

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