HP and Microsoft partner on Database Consolidation Appliance

Microsoft and HP have announced the HP Enterprise Database Consolidation Appliance, designed to help organisations consolidate all their database workloads into what is essentially a private cloud for SQL Server.

Available from November, the HP DBC Appliance includes all the hardware, software and support a customer needs to migrate all their database workloads from physical servers into a private cloud designed for optimal performance and energy efficiency, according to HP and Microsoft.

Announced at Microsoft's PASS Summit, the Enterprise DBC Appliance consists of pre-built and configured HP hardware running SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition, with management tools including HP Insight Control software.

The appliance will help customers consolidate thousands of databases, according to Microsoft, and was jointly engineered with HP in order to save customers the time and effort involved in building such a system themselves.

HP also said it can provide support to commission the appliance and integrate it into a customer's existing environment.

Microsoft claims the appliance will enable customers to deploy new databases in minutes and reduce operational costs by up to 75 per cent, thanks to cost savings in energy consumption and floor space. Customers will not need to make application or database changes when consolidating database workloads, the firm said.

The HP Enterprise DBC Appliance is delivered as a fully functional system, with the smallest configuration taking up half of a standard datacentre rack. A complete rack provides servers with a total of 192 logical processors, 2TB memory and 58TB of storage.

Pricing for the appliance has yet to be disclosed, but HP and Microsoft claimed the cost reductions will lead to it paying for itself within about two years.