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David-Wang

Re: “Give me more. . . hyperconverged please!”

 

Announced at HPE Discover: HPE Nimble Storage dHCI. It’s an intelligent platform with the flexibility of converged and the simplicity of HCI. Just like with jelly beans. . .you'll be saying "give me more. . . hyperconverged please!"

Recently, my three-year old has been catching me stealing jelly beans from the pantry, with me trying to be sneaky, but HPE dHCI - hyperconverged - blog.jpgofcourse she sees everything. She turns on the puppy eyes and then before I know it, my “just one, ok?” turns into a cry for “give me more. . . please!” Can I blame her? No way. They’re simply delicious. Honestly, who can just have one jelly bean?

Like jelly beans, we all want more of what’s good. And for IT, HCI is simply delicious. Instead of managing silos, provisioning LUNS, and dealing with disruptive upgrades, HCI gives IT a solution that turns infrastructure into automated VM vending machines. This experience has meant faster time-to-market and less time managing infrastructure. It’s the perfect architecture for workloads with predictable growth where compute and storage grow together. And HPE SimpliVity is an industry-leading HCI platform, driving a 91% increase in time available to focus on apps and new projects.

Having tasted the impact and time savings from HCI, our customers are asking “give me more. . . please!” And they’re asking to bring this same level of simplicity and automation to a platform that supports independent scaling of compute and storage for workloads with unpredictable growth.

Extending the hyperconverged experience

When it comes to unpredictable growth, where future apps and consolidation require different amounts of compute or storage, enterprises have always relied on converged platforms to give them the flexibility they need.

But despite pre-integrations and GUI wrappers, converged is still highly complex, especially compared to HCI. Vendors have tried to mask the complexity, but converged still requires expertise and management across silos, manuals to memorize, and ongoing tuning to make the system work optimally for every workload.

This gave us an idea, a challenge. . . to break convention and introduce a new platform that combines the hyperconverged experience with the flexibility to scale resources for workloads with unpredictable growth.

Bringing simplicity to a world of unpredictability

And so, we are really excited to announce HPE Nimble Storage dHCI at Discover 2019. It’s an intelligent platform with the flexibility of converged and the simplicity of HCI. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI disaggregates compute and storage and integrates hyperconverged control to give our customers an incredibly simple experience on a flexible architecture. Built upon the world’s best-selling server, HPE ProLiant, and the self-managing flash storage of HPE Nimble Storage, this new platform provides the flexibility to scale compute and storage independently for unpredictable growth and the data resiliency and performance needed for business-critical apps.

For any enterprise looking for the easy button on a platform built for the unpredictable future, this is the answer. A couple things to call out that makes HPE Nimble Storage dHCI so unique:

  • Hyperconverged control—The built-in automation software turns this 3-tier architecture into a software-defined, self-service platform for any VM admin. We’ve automated 100s of steps in the setup, configuration, provisioning, and discovery of all resources across the stack. In 5 clicks and less than 15 min from rack-to-apps, it’s easy to setup the entire stack, ready for vCenter management—with policy-based automation and native VVolvs completely abstracting storage. 
  • Global intelligence—HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is integrated with HPE InfoSight for full-stack visibility, predictive analytics and automated recommendations that make the whole stack out of sight and out of mind. We built on top of the VM analytics already available with HPE InfoSight, giving our customers predictive insights into host resource saturation with a unified view of wellness across servers and storage. And of course, backed with the intelligence of HPE InfoSight, customers get a simple support experience where issues across the stack are predicted and prevented with a direct call to a L3 support engineer if needed.
  • Powerful and resilient—Storage is the engine of every app and HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is the Tesla of infrastructure. It’s fast and efficient with HPE Nimble Storage, delivering sub-milliseconds data response times for latency-sensitive databases and up to 21X data reduction. And for those demanding apps that can’t go down, it delivers over 99.9999% data availability with predictive analytics that see ahead to prevent disruptions.

Watch this dHPCI ChalkTalk video to learn more:

Investment protection from the start

You’re going to love this too. Enterprises don’t actually need to go out and buy a new stack to get the simple, cloud experience of HPE Nimble Storage dHCI. This platform integrates with existing ProLiant servers and top-of-rack switches. Add a new Nimble Storage array, click through 5 steps, and less than 15 min later you have yourself a private cloud. Never thought you could turn existing servers into a private cloud, right? Pretty amazing.

Then, we add on top the HPE Timeless Storage program. This is a unique ownership experience where the dHCI automation software, advanced data services, and HPE InfoSight are all free. there’s no forklift upgrades. You get free storage controller upgrades; and data reduction and availability are guaranteed. This gives our customers assurance that their investment in HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is timeless.

Here’s to enjoying a whole bunch of jelly beans. . . 

With this new platform announcement, we’ve extended the hyperconverged experience that our customers love to new use cases. For those who want HCI for workloads with predictable growth, HPE SimpliVity is the answer for them. And for those looking for the same simplicity with disaggregated scaling for unpredictable growth, I invite you to come check out HPE Nimble Storage dHCI

Get the flexibility of converged with the simplicity of HCI today. More Information is available here: HPE Nimble Storage dHCI

About the Author

David-Wang

Director, Product Marketing, HPE Storage Creator, storyteller, showing the world how intelligence changes everything

Comments

How can you have something disaggregated and converged at the same time? Are we just playing with words, like jumbo shrimp?  Why not call this what it is, an HPE InfoSight plugin for vCenter.  

Hey Todd - I'll take a swing at this; is there anything converged about an Apollo 4200 that is loaded with storage? Not really, until you put some software on top of it to do that magic. So why not do the same thing with ProLiant and Nimble Storage. The magic happens with additional software that runs on a Nimble Storage dHCI that can go out and discover the storage and compute, add it to a cluster and manage it as a single entity. I have a podcast that I'll push out soon that explains more of what is happening in the background. 

And of course it's disaggregated because you can add either storage or compute separately; the dHCI software will recognize that it's been added and simplify the process to make it available in your dHCI cluster. It's actually pretty wicked cool!

PoochieDaddy

So what happens to simplivity?

Whats the advantages of this over it?

Whats different about this than say Hyperflex?

Looks to me like a software wrapper for a converged stack and some marketing BS.

 

PoochieDaddy - I'll take your questions. 

  • So what happens to HPE SimpliVity? It continues to be our lead-with hyperconverged solution. Tons of investment going on and will continue (e.g. InfoSight on HPE SimpliVity with lots of functionality coming there). 
  • What's the advantages of it? I think the big win is customers who have existing ProLiants (Gen9 and Gen10) that want to simplify their environment can create a dHCI-based cluster by adding it to the environment. When you do, the HPE ProLiants get the legendary, best-in-class support experience that Nimble Storage customers have been used to (so the ProLiants come in through the Nimble Storage support process). The other consideration is if you don't really know your workloads - dHCI allows you to add what you need - compute or storage - in separate increments. With SimpliVity, you have to add a node that is both storage and compute. 
  • What's different about this than say Hyperflex? I don't pay a lot of attention to competitor details so can't answer that. 
  • Looks to me like a software wrapper for a converged stack and some marketing BS.  I think your assessment of a software wrapper for a converged stack is good. Your assessment of some marketing BS isn't. For people that want to make hyperconverged about a combined box with storage and compute, fine, make that your argument. That's why we called it "disagreggate" HCI. We think that has advantages. And the software wrapper does a lot of work to make the solution seem like it's HCI. Here are a number of technical videos that show that wrapper in action:
  1. Adding a new server using Stack Manager: https://youtu.be/_AMoDcfPTLk  
  2. Deploying HPE Nimble Storage dHCI into an existing ProLiant environment: https://youtu.be/DCEQFtrEr_A
  3. Deploy a HPE Nimble Storage dHCI infrastructure with a new vCenter: https://youtu.be/eAE3Kqty3BM 
  4. Deploy HPE Nimble Storage dHCI using an existing vCenter: https://youtu.be/HUUjYl22HaQ 

Hope that helps.