Using APA to Build a Screaming Fast Network Server Connection for HP-UX 11i v2 and v3

-- Page 18 -- Hewlett Packard
SUMMARY
The demand for network services is an ever-growing phenomenon and for the network
manager, it is an absolute fact of life. APA provides an immediate solution to not only
help solve these demands, but also ensure that the network services are reliable and
continuously available.
With APA more desktops can be served with fewer unique server IP addresses. This in
turn points to significantly fewer servers because APA can be used to create link
aggregates for a wide range of needs. This will reduce IT costs and also increases the
uptime for critical network applications.
In addition, when you combine APA with the superior performance and RAS capabilities
of the switch-like PCI architecture in the HP N and L class servers, you will be able to
provide your customers with a complete solution in terms of performance, and high
availability.
Advanced Feature additions to APA
Investment protection is very important not only for hardware, but also for software.
The APA product recognizes this importance and is continuously evaluating technology
improvements that will ensure your business is able to take advantage of new and more
sophisticated high availability and bandwidth options without moving to a completely
new solution.
HP is investing in each of the main areas of the APA product:
• Automatic Link Failure Detection and Recovery. In the future, APA will be
investigating the possibility of providing complete network redundancy with load
balancing. This will allow you to create Link Aggregates that span multiple switches
and load balance across all links simultaneously. Any Link or switch failures will
automatically be detected and the data will be re-routed through a different path with
no application interruptions.
• Increased bandwidth with fewer links. As new emerging IEEE standard ethernet
technologies evolve (such as 10Gigabit Ethernet), APA will be able to integrate these
with ease because of our standard implementation with IEEE 802.3ad.
• Scalable bandwidth. When HP’s Online Addition, Replacement, and Deletion (Hot
Plug) technology is released, APA will provide full support for this feature. This will
allow customers to add or remove additional bandwidth on the fly without bringing
down the server.
• Fault Management and Isolation. The APA product will also soon release more
advanced remote management and fault isolation support with HP’s Event
Monitoring Service (EMS). This will allow customers to create sophisticated
paging/notification events when individual links or entire Link Aggregates fail.
These are only a few of the areas we continue to invest in so that your investment in both
HP servers and the APA product extend into the future.