Now available: HPE ProLiant with VMware vSphere® Distributed Services Engine™

[HPE_Alliances]

At VMware Explore in August, alongside VMware we announced our new joint solution for vSphere 8 which is now available for order.  So, let us do a recap on what’s it all about and how to get started.

First what did we announce?
HPE ProLiant with VMware vSphere® Distributed Services Engine™ was developed in collaboration with VMware and AMD Pensando and was the first HPE solution for VMware’s Project Monterey. This new solution enables the data processing unit (DPU) to offload services from core processors and improve application performance with a modern distributed architecture. All sounds really promising, but let’s break it down and see what makes this new solution a big evolution for virtualized infrastructure.

So, what does a DPU do?
The DPU is a hardware accelerator and accelerators are a proven way to improve performance and drive more efficient workloads by offloading services or tasks from CPU. Like how a GPU will excel at graphics and AI//ML tasks, DPU excels at infrastructure services like networking, security and storage services. DPUs are programmable too (we use AMD Pensando) so for vSphere, ESXi is installed both on the DPU and CPU for integrated control while hardening security by isolating services from CPU which is running the Virtual Machines (VMs). For the first release, networking services have been offloaded which according to VMware’s benchmarks saves up 20% of CPU cores and yields 36% higher transaction rate which equals better workload consolidation and App performance. Depending on the use case this could mean more VDI users per server or greater performance for rendering or database workloads.

What are three pre-optimized solutions?
Our goal was to make it easy to buy and easy to deploy – the three pre-optimized solutions are as follows and have been designed to address top uses cases with vSphere 8 - (1) Edge or entry level (2) VDI or Rendering and (3) Data Analytics or heavier workloads – each have everything you need to get started quickly - including the software and hardware to deploy quickly.

It is pre-installed with the HPE Custom Image for VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0, and the HPE Service Pack for ProLiant. VMware vSphere 8.0 supports off-loading NSX virtual networking to the AMD Pensando DPU. In this solution, all the host management, storage (vSAN), and vMotion traffic are hosted on the 2-port HPE Marvell SFP+ Adapter, whereas the software-defined networking traffic generated through VMware vSphere NSX is hosted on the AMD Pensando DPU. VMware recommends the vSphere management network is enabled on a network controller other than the AMD Pensando DSC25v2 card (DPU).

Deployment and Configuration Information
First step is to check out the  HPE Reference Architecture for deployment and configuration of HPE ProLiant with VMware vSphere Distributed Services Engine showcasing the basic NSX network offload to AMD Pensando DPU on the server.  

HPE ProLiant with vSphere Distributed Services Engine hosts VMware ESXi on the x86 cores and offloads vSphere networking and NSX to the AMD Pensando DPU.  This offloading capability reduces the number of x86 cores used by vSphere and NSX networking and makes the CPU cores available to run additional customer workloads. VMware's vSphere Distributed Services Engine functionality is enabled with a VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus license without requiring additional software installation from the core VMware vSphere distribution. To enable the NSX offloading functionality, the server must also be licensed with VMware NSX Ent+ (core based per CPU) licenses and requires the installation of NSX Manager software into the environment.

Here’s the full specs for each of the preoptimized solutions available today:

If you are looking for a quote please check this link out or for here for more information on HPE.com