HP has hitched it wagon to server management whiz Scalent Systems.

Come Dec. HP will offer Scalent's V/OE (Virtual Operating Environment) software as an option with the c-Class blade server systems. Basically, this means HP customers can tap V/OE to handle tasks such as adding, swapping and failing over between blades. As a result, you end up with blade systems that have some pretty high-end recovery and provisioning tools.

Scalent has primarily focused on aiding customers in the x86 market with so-called high availability and disaster recovery tasks. The company's software makes sure that the right hardware jumps in to take over jobs when a system fails. The Scalent code can manipulate Windows, Linux, Solaris and VMware/Xen servers.

In addition, Scalent presents itself as a useful tool for test and dev setups, since it can automate a lot of the application provisioning work typically done by admins.

The ins and outs of Scalent's tiered approach to server management can be found here.

HP likes to do a lot of this Scalent-type work on its own but obviously isn't afraid to give customers choice through its BladeSystem c-Class Solution Builder Program. ®

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