Top 10 reasons to get excited about the HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0

[StorageExperts]

Guest blogger Ken Clipperton from DCIG counts down the top 10 reasons that enterprise IT directors, IT operations staff, and developers can get excited about the HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0.

Just a few short weeks ago at HPE Discover 2018 in Madrid, HPE announced significant enhancements to its 3PAR container integrations. These enhancements make HPE 3PAR enterprise storage capabilities—the same capabilities responsible for enterprises choosing 3PAR storage for their most critical business applications in the first place—available to applications in the containerized hybrid cloud, where these enterprises are creating their future.

Enhanced 3PAR container integrations accelerate application development

Many of the enhancements announced by HPE directly enable self-service for developers within an organization while maintaining appropriate governance controls within IT Operations. Enterprises that embrace these new capabilities will safely accelerate application development through the enhanced usability, expanded data services, and enhanced security that the HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0 brings to the enterprise hybrid cloud.

Enterprise consensus around containers and Kubernetes

Enterprises have moved through testing the hybrid cloud waters to a commitment to hybrid cloud as the vehicle for digital transformation. In the process, they have chosen containers orchestrated by Kubernetes as the new standard for developing and deploying enterprise applications. HPE has joined enterprises on this journey, and with the release of the HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0, HPE is making containerized applications first-class citizens in the enterprise.

HPE accelerates application development through enhanced usability

HPE has enhanced the usability of 3PAR storage with containers through a new automated installer that uses Ansible playbooks to deploy the 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker/Kubernetes/OpenShift. Version 3.0 of the 3PAR container integrations also simplifies plug-in configuration by reducing the number of parameters from 19 to 7 while adding support for rich replication and multi-array capabilities.

IT Operations (Ops) staff create volumes on 3PAR that are exposed to developers through StorageClass templates. These templates specify replication, quality of service, snapshot schedules and other parameters to be applied to the volume. In fact, the full range of 3PAR replication features are now available to container volumes, including asynchronous replication, synchronous replication and Peer Persistence. Consequently, IT operations staff can establish prudent boundaries for the dynamic provisioning process while extending many of 3PAR’s robust enterprise data services to Kubernetes clusters.

HPE also enhanced usability by enabling both the automated creation of dynamically provisioned volumes and the automated deletion of those volumes when they are no longer needed. This capability better integrates 3PAR storage into CI/CD workflows with benefits for developers and IT operations staff.

HPE accelerates application development through secure self-service

The enhanced HPE 3PAR container integrations enable secure self-service for developers through volume access permissions and encrypted credentials. IT operations staff can now use volume access permissions to define who can access and mount a volume. These permissions are based on individual user ID (UID) or group membership (GID) and are applied during the dynamic volume creation process.

HPE also enhanced security by enabling 3PAR login credentials to be encrypted and stored with array configuration details in an Ansible Vault. This permits developers to dynamically create volumes on 3PAR arrays without being given direct knowledge of the 3PAR credentials.

HPE accelerates application development through safe sharing of 3PAR arrays

The enhanced HPE 3PAR container integrations enable containerized applications to safely share 3PAR arrays. Storage administrators can now define 3PAR virtual domains and expose them to Kubernetes. Administrators can even specify which drives in the array are available to each virtual domain. This allows multiple Kubernetes clusters to securely share a 3PAR array.

Storage administrators can combine these virtual domain capabilities with per-volume quality of service, volume access permissions and encrypted credentials to safely share a 3PAR array among production and development workloads.

HPE enables rapid containerization of legacy stateful applications

The fastest path to the hybrid cloud for legacy enterprise apps is commonly referred to as “lift and shift.” One challenge in the lift and shift process is that legacy storage volumes are not recognized by container environments.

HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0 eliminates this challenge with its new “legacy volume import” capability. Legacy volume import enables the rapid containerization of legacy stateful applications by attaching all the metadata attributes that the container environment requires to an existing 3PAR volume. Thus, the legacy volume import tool enables data-in-place containerization of data; though many enterprises will choose to clone the volume and then transform the clone.

And now...

Top 10 reasons for enterprise IT directors, IT operations staff and developers to get excited about the HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0

Enterprises are adopting container technology in order to accelerate enterprise application development and the transition to a hybrid cloud architecture. Until now, enterprises have been held back by a lack of high-performance storage, enterprise data services, and appropriate data protection capabilities.

HPE 3PAR Volume Plug-in for Docker 3.0 removes these obstacles, enabling enterprises to rapidly yet safely develop and deploy applications to the enterprise hybrid cloud:

1. Allows IT to say “yes” to developers without compromising enterprise operational integrity.
2. Eliminates delays in the provisioning of storage for dev/test and the deployment of containerized applications into production through new automation and data services capabilities.
3. Gives developers a new level of freedom within prudent boundaries established by IT Ops staff.
4. Provides containerized apps with high-performance 3PAR storage and its rich enterprise data services and data protection capabilities.
5. Enhances the security of the storage environment by storing credentials in an encrypted vault and enabling role-based access controls.
6. Enhances CI/CD workflows through multi-tenancy, multi-array support, and automated zero-space snapshots of production data so tests can run against current complete data.
7. Declutters storage by automatically deleting unneeded snapshots at the end of the build pipeline process.
8. Safely shares high-performance storage with developers by applying QoS to dynamically-provisioned development and production volumes.
9. Enables lift-and-shift of traditional applications into the container environment by importing existing 3PAR volumes into container environment.
10. Allows storage admins to apply RMC rules to dynamically provisioned data volumes for containerized apps, backing up the data out of band to StoreOnce deduplication appliances which can be further tiered to S3-compliant external object storage for long term retention.

This gives IT directors, IT operations staff, and developers plenty to get excited about!

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Meet Around the Storage Block guest blogger Ken Clipperton, Lead Analyst for Storage, DCIG. With more than 20 years of information technology leadership experience, Ken has served on multiple corporate advisory boards, state-wide technology commissions, national user group boards, and presented at many national and regional technology conferences including the Flash Memory Summit.

Note: This content is sponsored by HPE and based solely on opinions and analysis offered by DCIG.