The StorageWorks SB40c Storage Blade delivers direct attached storage for c-Class servers, with support for up to six hot plug small form factor (SFF) SAS or SATA hard disk drives. The enclosure backplane provides a PCI Express connection to the adjacent c-Class server blade and enables high performance storage access without any additional cables. The SB40c Storage Blade features an onboard Smart Array P400 controller with 256 MB battery-backed write cache, for increased performance and data protection.

Use HP LeftHand P4000 Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) software to turn the SB40c into an iSCSI SAN for use by all severs in the enclosure and any server on the network. HP LeftHand VSA software is installed in a virtual machine on a VMware ESX host server adjacent to the SB40c. HP LeftHand P4000 VSA turns the SB40c into a scalable and robust iSCSI SAN, featuring, storage clustering for scalability, Network RAID for storage failover, thin provisioning, snapshots, remote replication, and cloning. Expand capacity within the same enclosure or to other Bladesystem enclosures by adding additional SB40c Storage Blades and HP LeftHand VSA licenses. A cost effective bundle of the SB40c Storage Blade and a HP LeftHand P4000 VSA license makes purchasing convenient. If storage needs increase, add HP P4300 or P4500 systems externally and manage everything via a single pane of glass.