HPE Nimble Storage dHCI extends its advantages with network automation and increased performance

[StorageExperts]

Disaggregated HCI architecture has always delivered on the outcomes that customers demand, without tuning or tradeoffs. Today we’re announcing two new HPE innovations that deliver significant customer benefits: Network automation that simplifies management and lowers risk; and All-NVMe storage that powers business-critical workloads with performance at scale.

If there’s one thing everyone in IT can agree on it’s that hyperconverged Infrastructure, or HCI, delivers simplicity, ease-of-use, and better economics by collapsing silos and removing complexity. IT benefits from streamlined operations and time savings when managing virtual machines as complex tasks reduced from days to minutes. 

But there’s an opportunity for HCI to do more. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI represents an evolution that extends the HCI experience to all your apps. It delivers the same simplicity and operational experience, but with a disaggregated architecture capable of running business-critical apps and mixed workloads at scale with higher performance, resiliency, and resource efficiency.

Now, customers can benefit from two new HPE Nimble Storage dHCI innovations:

• Network automation to simplify management and lower risk
• All-NVMe storage to power business-critical workloads with performance at scale

Network Automation

For years organizations have faced network complexity that delays time to market due to organizational dependencies, siloed management tools, and manual processes. Network complexity spans across the HCI lifecycle from deployment to ongoing operations to expansion:

• Initial deployment: Networking complexity adds friction to initial deployment of IT stacks. Specific tasks — cabling validation, manually creating switch-based VLANs, optimizing switch performance — can all be time-consuming, repetitive tasks. For example, large node configurations can require hundreds of steps for switch configuration and hours upon hours of time for network deployment.  This level of complexity can cause increased delays, potential errors, and business risk.
• Ongoing operations: Once deployed, networking requires ongoing monitoring and operations to ensure business-critical applications are available and performant. Day 2 and beyond requires time-consuming IT tasks and troubleshooting, and this extends to the network.
• Expansion: Networking overhead grows when HCI clusters need to expand in order to turn up more VMs and business-critical applications. This can necessitate a mix of tools, require multiple teams, including network experts, to be involved, and cause expensive delays in time to market.

This multi-layer complexity comes at a cost to time to market for new app deployments due to specialist requirements, provisioning procedures, and networking resources. It’s no wonder customers are demanding a better HCI experience — a more cloud-like experience to power additional business-critical and mixed workloads.

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is eliminating this complexity today — with new built-in network automation that brings simplicity and automation to network setup and management. Now customers can enjoy simplified management, reduced time to market, and reduced risk, with benefits that span the network lifecycle:

• Network automation delivers rapid deployment. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI now makes network  deployment and configuration radically simple, enabling organizations to increase productivity and operational efficiency. Repetitive tasks such as switch VLAN configuration, optimizing switch performance at scale with best practices, and cabling validation are now automated, which saves time and avoids potential errors that can delay time to market. With network automation, all repetitive steps are reduced and can be accomplished in minutes, regardless of node count. Overall, this reduces the number of steps required to configure switches by over 90% for large configurations — saving time and de-risking deployments. In addition, VM administers now have decreased dependency on network specialists,  accelerating time-to-market.

Network intelligence simplifies ongoing operations

• Network intelligence simplifies ongoing operations. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI further simplifies network complexity with AI-driven intelligence powered by HPE InfoSight. Now while this is not new for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI, HPE InfoSight complements our new network automation to simplify for Day 2 network operations. Our customers are empowered with health checks and advanced diagnostics that proactively diagnose and troubleshoot problems.  For example, vSwitch misconfigurations or even VM performance bottlenecks induced by network congestion can be automatically discovered and resolved quickly.
• And last, but not least – our new network automation delivers cloud-like scaling and expansion of dHCI clusters when more host resources are needed. Network automation extends stack setup to the network layer, greatly reducing the amount of time and the number of steps needed to add new host resources and configure switches. The stack automation includes cabling validation, creation of VLANs for the new host, setting Jumbo frames, and flow control. Admins can add a new host in less than five minutes using the new network automation from vCenter. Flexible scaling and automation enable customers to scale compute and storage resources independently and non-disruptively — as well as with lower networking complexity.

All-NVMe storage

For organizations looking to run performance-intensive databases and consolidate mixed workloads, they need the fastest speed at the lowest latency.

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI, with a novel, disaggregated HCI architecture, has always delivered on the performance outcomes that customers demand, without tuning or tradeoffs. Today, customers can benefit from HPE Nimble Storage dHCI with All-NVMe support to consolidate even more business-critical applications and ensure workloads are always-on and always-fast with SLAs for availability and performance. All-NVMe support with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI delivers 3x the performance of previous models.

HPE optimizes dHCI, taking automation further and running faster

HCI has evolved to include ever more use cases. HCI delivers simplicity and agility, and now it's time to bring that experience to business-critical apps and mixed workloads at scale. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI takes the complexity out of infrastructure with stack automation that now includes networking. Customers can gain more agility with full stack automation to drive productivity, and they can speed more workloads with All-NVMe storage support. 

HPE is building momentum in this evolving category, and our customers are benefiting from our leadership. It’s been almost two years since we launched a new model of HCI with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI. The response from customers, partners, and the market has been remarkable. HPE Nimble Storage dHCI has achieved phenomenal adoption with ~250% growth over the past year.  I’m excited for all the customers we’ve helped with this uniquely architected solution and proud of the momentum generated within the fast-growing dHCI category. With these advancements further improving the experience for HPE Nimble Storage dHCI customers, I look forward to the accelerated momentum to come. 

Availability:

• HPE Nimble Storage dHCI with network automation is now available worldwide with initial support for Aruba 8325/8360 switches.
• HPE Nimble Storage dHCI with All-NVMe is available now. 

For more details on our new network automation feature, please read the technical blog: Introducing Network Automation with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI .

Take HPE Nimble Storage dHCI for a test drive today! Register here.

Check out Calvin Zito’s HCI 2.0 Chalk Talk .

Learn about HPE Nimble Storage dHCI in action!

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Chuck Wood, Senior Product Marketing Manager, HPE Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Chuck is responsible for product marketing, leading hyperconverged solutions for software-defined, dynamic datacenters. He blogs about his professional passion – demonstrating excellent customer outcomes based on HPE HCI and dHCI. Connect with Chuck on LinkedIn. Find him on Twitter @chasypwood.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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