We saw the bullet pierce through the computer server and shatter the aquarium with fish in it. As if this was not enough, we further saw a data center blown up. However, the most impressive sight to see is the recovery of data in under two minutes.

The demonstration intended to bring home a point regarding the world’s fastest disk array from HP.
Continuous access to data despite disaster is the key, remarked Chris Powers, Director for Engineering for the StorageWorks XP product line of Hewlett-Packard after showing an explosive “disaster proof” demo on HP’s Security Portfolio that has been strengthened with new disk encryption and key management solutions.

The XP array’s redundant hardware platform with data replication capabilities ensures business continuity in case of disaster. The XP array also includes storage virtualization and thin provisioning capabilities that let customers improve the utilization of their storage capacity, the accessibility of their data, and the scalability of their storage environment.

The emphasis on storage security is largely a response to increased demands for decades-long access to archives. Tightening regulations and the increased use of content-rich applications are causing the volume of stored data to grow at an exponential rate.

He said this makes securing archived data much more challenging.

HP has enhanced its Secure Key Manager (SKM) hardware solution, which automates encryption key management for HP LTO-4 enterprise tape libraries. SKM 1.1 now supports up to 2 million keys to ensure that multiple tape library installatons and future encryption are protected.

The SKM also provides high availability features to reduce bottlenecks during periods of high transaction volume, as well as failover capabilities to safeguard keys in case of an outage. SKM aids in meeting regulatory compliance by providing identity-based access, administration and logging; lifetime key archival; and automatic multisite key replication.

Introduced at Storage Networks World, the new hardware encryption features, added to the HP StorageWorks XP24000 and XP20000 Disk Arrays, reduce the risk of security breaches by protecting the data stored on each disk drive in the array.