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ThomasGoepel

Take a look at me now – HPE SimpliVity with AI

hpe-simplivity-ai-hyperconverged-SDCG.jpgIt’s an exciting day for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). The availability of HPE InfoSight on HPE SimpliVity ushers in a whole new generation of HCI with far-reaching capabilities, particularly when combined with recent technology advancements. New infrastructure intelligence, lifecycle management, and data protection features propel HPE SimpliVity solutions from an easy-to-manage, resilient infrastructure to an intelligently simple, hyper-efficient, edge-optimized HCI experience. HPE SimpliVity is now AI-driven and that, in a word, is the future.

From hardware-confined to AI-driven

HPE SimpliVity has always gone beyond standard HCI consolidation. In early days, one could argue that IT architectures were “hardware confined.” Most systems incorporated only a very basic consolidation of servers, storage and hypervisor in each node. Software-defined technology and traditional hyperconvergence soon overtook the original architecture, allowing for tremendous IT productivity and efficiency gains over the previous infrastructure. Software-defined infrastructure removed the IT silos and replaced wasteful, manual processes and over-provisioning with efficient, fluid pools of virtual compute and storage.

Throughout that evolution, HPE SimpliVity provided data centers with game-changing HCI features, from built-in backup, rapid recovery, inline dedupe and compression, to a HyperGuarantee that guarantees the simplicity, efficiency, and power of the platform.

That’s all goodness. But as we look forward, IT also needs infrastructure to be autonomous, to anticipate and prevent disruptions and self-heal, to optimize itself across distributed environments, and move IT from being reactive to predictive.

An autonomous future for HCI

Now, thanks to HPE InfoSight predictive analytics, HPE SimpliVity can deliver that AI-driven reality. This new generation of hyperconvergence automatically and continually tunes the infrastructure to improve performance, resiliency, and efficiency. Warwick Brown, Infrastructure Architecture & Security Lead at Carlisle Homes calls the extra efficiency “…awesome. InfoSight predicts and reports on metrics that my team cares about.”

Today’s announcement confirms HPE SimpliVity’s ability to transform and radically simplify day-to-day operations in the data center. Building upon its 100% software-defined architecture, the all-in-one system goes farther than any AI-driven hyperconverged solution on the market to streamline operations and accelerate innovation by delivering:

  • Global intelligence with HPE InfoSight. Every HPE SimpliVity model* now features predictive analytics and resource planning that takes the guesswork out of system upgrades. Global visibility into system and performance details helps with resource management, and support case automation saves time and improves operations for customers like Gerhardt Kruger, Cloud and Infrastructure Engineer at King Price Insurance. “I just love the new technology… InfoSight is basically AI that is looking after my environment when I'm not looking. If InfoSight logs a call and provides predictive support, that is already saving time, just something as small as that. It helps us to focus on other things in the business.” Justin Brooks, Systems Engineer with Pitt Ohio, ran a comparison between HPE InfoSight analytics and his team’s manual calculations. “The storage efficiency page is nice, where you can see your data growth. The numbers line up with our data growth patterns, which we manually calculate based on data we get from VM tools. It’s nice to see that.”
  • Simplified lifecycle management. One-click, non-disruptive cluster upgrades are available for firmware, hypervisor, and HPE SimpliVity software across the federation. This feature simplifies the upgrade process and reduces risk for IT managers who remotely manage globally distributed sites.
  • Modernized data protection. HPE SimpliVity integration with HPE StoreOnce enables app-aware data protection with rapid recovery and policy-based automation. This cost-effective solution simplifies management, and complements the HCI platform’s built-in backup and recovery capability with long-term retention and compliance. VMs can be securely retained for months or years outside the HPE SimpliVity federation, then quickly restored. In fact, HPE guarantees the restore of a 1 TB VM in 60 seconds with 3 clicks – as proven by customers like Altamaha Bank & Trust, who recently restored 900GB in less than a minute with the HCI platform. And, HPE lab tests indicate that customers who move data to an HPE StoreOnce tier can realize as much as 6-7X cost savings as well, through data storage cost/GB and reduced licensing fees.

Edge optimized, scalable solutions

With these advancements, HPE SimpliVity radically reduces complexity at the edge, where customers often lack IT resources. Part of the appeal of the HPE all-in-one HCI solution is that customers can start with a compact, 2-node fully resilient cluster with built-in backup and scale from there. In other words, remote manufacturing sites, retail stores, and other mid-sized business sites can achieve full HA with all data services to host all VMs starting with as few as two HPE SimpliVity nodes. The clusters can be scaled-out to large edge deployments in hub-and-spoke topologies, all centrally managed, for extremely efficient, cost effective multi-site disaster recovery. Combined with HPE SimpliVity RapidDR and encryption, these capabilities provide customers a unified, secure, edge-optimized HCI solution for VM workloads.

Predictive analytics make scalability simpler, too. HPE InfoSight for HPE SimpliVity transforms how customers’ infrastructure can evolve in remote offices and smaller data centers. The global visibility into detailed system, performance, and capacity utilization information provide meaningful metrics without onsite staff, freeing up existing IT resources for more innovative projects.

Get a closer look

HPE SimpliVity has helped thousands of customers worldwide simplify their infrastructure through industry-leading data efficiency and guaranteed performance. Today’s announcements help HPE SimpliVity customers take their hyperconverged environments to a new level of intelligence and resiliency.

To learn how intelligence changes everything for HPE SimpliVity, take a look at these resources:

 

*HPE SimpliVity nodes must be running software version 3.7.8 or higher.

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About the Author

ThomasGoepel

Thomas Goepel is the Director Product Management, Hyperconverged Solutions for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. In this role, he is responsible for driving the strategy of HPE’s Hyperconverged products and solutions spanning from the Infrastructure Components to the Management Software. Thomas has over 26 years of experience working in the electronics industry, the last 25 of which at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where he has held various engineering, marketing and consulting positions in R&D, sales and services.