HP added disaster recovery features today to its server, storage, and virtualization offerings to try and breathe new life into its Integrity server product line and the HP-UX operating system.

The hardware giant unveiled several upgrades, including intercontinental failover for Oracle 10g, and support for Sonet technology on HP-UX 11i. The vendor has also added new Microsoft Windows failover, application stacking, and high-availability features to its Component Cluster Service and Cluster extension software.

On the virtualization side, HP unveiled new toolkits for its Virtual Server Environment (VSE) product, which it claims will let users slash the time spent on virtualization projects involving software from BEA, Oracle, SAP, and IBM. According to HP execs, a typical VSE implementation with BEA's WebLogic offering, that would have previously taken up to 34 weeks to complete, can now be deployed in seven weeks or less.

But HP's rivals are also hard at work improving their own disaster recovery stories. IBM, for example, recently enhanced features on its midrange SAN and teamed up with healthcare technology specialist i3 Archive to target the medical sector.

Sun, for its part, has joined forces with VMWare to boost the disaster recovery story on its SunFire servers and StorEdge storage systems.