Announcing HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS

[StorageExperts]

Software-defined storage to seamlessly manage block storage across hybrid cloud environments

Learn how the introduction of HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS is simplifying data management and workload placement across public and private clouds through software-defined storage. – By Vinay Jonnakuti, Director, Product Management, HPE Storage

I’ve got big news to share about a major advancement in the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform. We’ve just announced the launch of HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS. This extends the HPE GreenLake for Block Storage software-defined architecture to public cloud. Delivered and managed via HPE GreenLake, this new software-defined storage solution brings the advanced capabilities and simplified experience of HPE GreenLake for Block Storage to AWS. This means you can now experience the same enterprise-class storage data services on‑premises and in the public cloud while also benefiting from seamless data mobility and unified management across hybrid cloud.

Why it was time to move beyond traditional storage architectures

Legacy storage architectures just aren’t up the task when it comes to cost effectively and flexibly scaling out to keep pace with the growing demands of your traditional and your modern workloads. This certainly applies to existing storage architectures that typically consist of a pair of highly available controller nodes connected to dedicated drives via a midplane within a single hardware chassis. The midplane is often a limiting factor and determines the maximum performance can be achieved from the system. To scale performance, you would have to purchase a new system with another pair of high-availability (HA) controller nodes, even if you didn’t need the extra capacity. Once groundbreaking, these architectures now facing formidable challenges as the volume and complexity of data continue to explode. To help you manage your data, a new storage system design was needed – and that’s HPE GreenLake for Block Storage with Alletra MP.

Why the industry’s first disaggregated, scale-out block storage was such good news

To help you better manage and unlock the potential of your data, HPE launched HPE GreenLake for Block Storage with HPE Alletra Storage MP as the industry’s first disaggregated, scale-out block storage designed to help better manage and unlock the potential of your data. It provides mission-critical resiliency at midrange economics with the industry’s first disaggregated, scale-out block storage with a 100% data availability guarantee. This software-defined, disaggregated, and scale-out storage architecture enables you to scale capacity and performance independently, for greater efficiency and lower costs.

Start small with cost-efficient two-node entry level configurations, then scale-up and scale-out to multi-node configurations with granular performance and capacity upgrades. And maximize ROI via non-disruptive, data-in-place upgrades without repurchasing existing storage.

Figure 1: Traditional vs. HPE GreenLake for Blog Storage with Alletra MP storage design

Better still, this multi-protocol hardware architecture provides flexibility and high performance for both block and file storage needs. HPE Alletra Storage MP consists of standardized, composable building blocks – compute (node), capacity (JBOF), and switches – that can be configured for different software-defined storage personas and use cases.

Now there’s more good news: HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS

HPE is simplifying data management and workload placement across public and private clouds by bringing the same software that powers HPE GreenLake for Block Storage on-prem to the public cloud on AWS. HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS is software-defined block storage that delivers a seamless, unified storage management experience across hybrid cloud with the same enterprise-class efficiency, resiliency, and data protection expected of mission-critical data and workloads. You can manage, monitor, and protect global storage environments across your hybrid cloud estate – consistently and securely at scale – from the HPE GreenLake platform. 

Beyond a simplified, consistent management experience, you gain the agility to move data, workloads, and backups for optimizing performance and costs. Efficient data reduction features include thin provisioning, deduplication, and compression.

HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS is ideal if your enterprise wants to optimize data management as well as application development and deployment across on-prem and public cloud. It’s equally ideal if you’re looking for easy-to-manage, cost-effective hybrid cloud data protection and disaster recovery.  

All management can be done right through the HPE GreenLake Cloud Console. Use the Data Ops Manager to configure and compose the systems. Use the Block Service to manage and protect the volumes. Once you’ve purchased a subscription for HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS, you can compose through the HPE GreenLake Cloud console. HPE GreenLake for Block Storage is deployed in your AWS Account which is also established within the Data Ops Manager service.

 Figure 2: Composing HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS

Once the system is composed, you can see the configured systems information along with other on-prem HPE Storage arrays managed through the Data Services Cloud console.

Figure 3: Dashboard

Drill down deeper into the configured HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS to find the cloud resources associated with the configured storage system leveraging EC2 and EBS instances in AWS, along with other information associated with the system.

Figure 4: Cloud resources

Here's a quick demo showing you how you can configure your AWS accounts, compose an instance of HPE GreenLake block Storage for AWS, and create volumes – all through the HPE GreenLake Platform.

Why is this such good news for your AWS public cloud?

With HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS, the benefits add up.

Reduce your cloud storage costs

Industry-leading data reduction technologies can help reduce your cloud storage costs on AWS by providing better effective capacity. Storage is always thin-provisioned, deduped, and compressed – giving you superior efficiency for your workloads in AWS. This allows you to improve your cloud storage TCO, optimize your cloud spend and storage usage, as well as reduce any future ingress/egress charges.

Run business critical apps in the cloud

You get enterprise resiliency, availability, and ease of management for the most demanding database, virtualization, and container workloads – both on-prem and in the cloud through the HPE GreenLake platform. With all the proven capabilities of on-premises enterprise block storage now available in the public cloud, you can run any block-based workload in the cloud with confidence.

Maintain security and compliance across hybrid cloud

You can strengthen your defenses with integrated, native security across your entire IT estate. HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS helps accelerate zero trust adoption with role-based access control, single sign-on, encryption and federated identity control for its features and capabilities.

Four use cases for HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS

1. Workload mobility

Having a hybrid cloud estate makes it critical to have a replication strategy that can seamlessly move data between on-premises and cloud environments. Hybrid cloud solutions enable the ability to easily migrate workloads between on-premises and cloud environments. This allows organizations to optimize workload placement based on cost, performance, and compliance requirements.

HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS also supports the intent-based provisioning feature which intelligently guides you based on the application as to if it's ideal for deployment on-prem or on HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS. You can choose the right platform based on business needed and move workloads as needed.

2. Hybrid cloud replication

You can now set up the replication target for an on-prem HPE Alletra Storage MP array to replicate to a sofware-defined storage (SDS) system in AWS through the HPE GreenLake Platform. In certain cases, you do not need a different physical data center for replication minimizing overall cost and ease of management through HPE GreenLake platform.

Replication is a critical component of any disaster recovery strategy, ensuring data is replicated to a secondary location for fast recovery in the event of an outage or disaster. In a hybrid cloud environment, this replication can occur between on-premises infrastructure and the cloud, or between multiple cloud providers. You gain:

• Flexible deployment supporting replication between on-premises to cloud, cloud-to-cloud, and cloud-to-on-premises environments.
• End-to-end encryption ensuring data is secured with certified hardware or software-based encryption, both at-rest and in-transit

3. Disaster recovery

Disaster recovery is a critical component of any business continuity plan, ensuring an organization can quickly recover its systems and data in the event of a major outage or disaster. With HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS, you can now easily recover virtual machines (VMs) in AWS as a disaster recovery (DR) site.

4. Test/Dev

Hybrid cloud environments enable more flexible and cost-effective test and development workflows. Replicated data can be used to provision test/dev environments in the cloud, without impacting production systems.

With HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS, you can accelerate development cycles and expand your testing capabilities. It lets you develop software on-premises or in the cloud and deploy to either target faster using an agile and efficient DevTest environment. You can leverage space-efficient snapshots and clones to quickly spin up a DevTest sandbox on-prem or in AWS. This enables you to test new apps, patches, and updates instantly without impacting the production environment and without having to purchase and deploy new hardware on-prem.

Tap into the advantages of HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS

Hybrid cloud storage can give you unprecedented flexibility, speed, agility, and cost savings, but not if it is disjointed and bogged down with complexity and inefficiencies. With HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS, you get storage that is hybrid by design. It unifies your on-premises and cloud environments with one cloud experience, consistent data services, and seamless data mobility.

Now that it’s available for AWS, I’m excited to see how our customers will start leveraging the software-defined architecture delivered through HPE GreenLake for Block Storage.

Dig deeper for more details

Learn even more: HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS solution brief

Check out the HPE announcement news release: HPE builds foundation for next-gen data management with software-defined storage and AI-driven automation

And watch here for a complete announcement overview.

Plan now to join the webinar: Announcing new HPE Storage innovations

May 16, 11:00 a.m. ET          Register now  

Meet Storage Experts blogger Vinay Jonnakuti, Director, Product Management, HPE Storage

Vinay leads product management for HPE GreenLake Block Storage for AWS, HPE SimpliVity, and Ecosystems for Storage. Before this Vinay led teams dedicated to driving solutions, go-to-market, and technical marketing teams. He is eager in gathering insights from field and customer interactions to enhance products and drive execution. Connect with Vinay at @vinaymohan. Or on LinkedIn.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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