HP has unveiled the latest addition to its StorageWorks range, offering a virtual disk array for mid-sized customers looking to install a storage area network.

The HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array is aimed at organisations with between 100 and 999 employees which often have complex storage requirements but lack the IT resources to manage the environments.

The EVA4400's major selling point is a range of virtualisation features and advanced provisioning software to help simplify the management of large amounts of data in a storage area network.

HP said that the new features include the ability to allocate storage dynamically with little or no server downtime.

The EVA4400 takes physically attached disks and turns them into a single pool of available space, rather than an array of individual drives.

Managers need only to specify how much space they require and what Raid settings they wish to use and the system automatically provisions the necessary logical partition.

A recent survey of current and planned virtualisation users by Enterprise Strategy Group found that 28 per cent plan to implement server virtualisation in the next six months and 42 per cent within the next year.

HP claims to have seen increased demand for a richer set of features from its mid-sized customers, and has implemented virtualisation features in the new array previously available only on high-end arrays.

Such features include a dual-redundant hardware architecture that supports local and remote replication software.

The HP StorageWorks EVA4400 is available now with a European list price starting at €15,000.