Meet the all-new HPE SimpliVity Gen10 Plus with HPE SimpliVity 4.2.0

[StorageExperts]

HPE SimpliVity adds the HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus, a new Intel-based hyperconverged platform with the HPE SimpliVity 4.2.0 software that gives you higher performance and more choices.

–By Shwetha Varsha, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, HPE

Did you join us for HPE Discover 2023 in Las Vegas this June? This year's event covered a range of HPE Storage products with multiple sessions and booths. In the HPE Storage Hardware Zone, you you would have found the HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus, the latest hardware offering in the HPE SimpliVity portfolio now available with HPE SimpliVity 4.2.0 onwards. Customers and partners who visited our booth were interested in deploying our flagship HCI appliance on a 380 Gen10 Plus because it offers higher core CPUs , a higher number of DIMMs per CPU to reach 8TB of memory, along with GPUs and OCP NIC cards that were never offered before. Our customers and partners who were pleasantly surprised and enthusiastic that HPE SimpliVity was now being offered on yet another additional hardware platform with a faster PCIe Gen4 architecture and improved performance, even a new 3.84TB SSD. Who wouldn’t want a more performant node?

Let’s explore some of the features of this new HPE SimpliVity platform and the latest software – and what this means to you.

Under the hood: HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus

HPE SimpliVity is an efficient, all-in-one, HCI solution that reduces complexity and lowers overhead by simplifying operations from edge to core. Ideal for general-purpose, edge, and VDI workloads, its infrastructure and advanced data services are efficiently packed into a single, scalable building block, allowing you to start small and grow.

This is a 100% software-optimized, single-socket or dual-socket server based on the third-generation Intel Scalable Xeon Processor series, expanding options for selectable components like processors, DIMMs, NICs, GPUs, larger capacity drives, multi-vendor SSDs, and boot controllers to power your virtual workloads. Keep reading for a look at each of these HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus features in detail.

Form factor, processor, DIMMs, IO expansion slots, and other hardware features

Powered by the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Plus leveraging its 360-degree holistic security, this platform comes in a 2U SFF (small form factor) chassis and is based on the third-generation Intel Xeon processor, Intel Ice Lake. The HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus supports up to 42% more cores and up to 30% more memory as compared to the HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10. You can now choose from a broad selection of 1P or 2P compute which gives a range of 8 cores in a 1P config up to 80 cores in a 2P config and memory resources to run more workloads shown here:

Wider range of processor options:
• Silver (8 / 12 / 16 / 20 cores)
• Gold (8 / 12 / 16 / 24 / 26 / 28 / 32 cores)
• Platinum (24 / 28 / 32 / 36 / 38 / 40 cores)

Memory: Maximum of 4 TB per socket, 8 TB per node

For DIMMs, all components native to the HPE Proliant DL380 are supported with RDIMMs upto 64GB and the option of 128GB/256GB for LRDIMMs. Compute and Storage Expansions will be supported soon as well. For optimal memory performance, make sure to use the preferred slot based on the number of DIMMs (Note : Refer the HPE Proliant DL380 Gen10 Plus for CPU population guidelines.)

The HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus supports both PCIe 4.0 and the OCP 3.0 IO expansion slots. Using the OCP 3.0 slot for NICs frees up one PCIe slot on the primary riser for possible use by GPUs. HPE SimpliVity can support all three riser options, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary to provide configuraton flexibility with IO cards. The HPE SimpliVity configuration comes with high-performance fans with high-performance heatsink per socket selected by default to support all processor options.

Storage

The latest release introduces the support for 3.84 TB drive configurations with HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus. All the storage capacities supported on the HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 are available (the 7.5, 10, 15, 21, and 32 TB capacities) and achievable by using both the 3.84TB and 1.92 TB drives.

The new platform continues to provide you with a disk resiliency option as the models are available in FTT1 and FTT2 varieties, selectable at deployment.

Today only Read-intensive drives are supported. Storage expansion is supported but is an activity driven by HPE Services. (Note: The 3.84 TB drive configurations are recommended because for the same usable capacity, the 3.84 TB drive options cost 25% less, consume 45% less power and deliver 10% better overall performance.)

Boot and data controllers

This release supports multiple boot controllers. By default the latest platform will ship with the NS204i-p NVMe boot controller requiring no additional components. The other options include the Microchip E208i-p and Broadcom MR216i-p boot controller that require additional components like the cable and drive cage kit. The SimpliVity configuration uses the front panel drive box 1 to install the boot drives.The data controller is the Microchip P816i-a that continues . The SimpliVity configuration uses the Drive Box 2 and 3 for the data drives. Data at rest must be configured before deployment.

GPUs

A choice of multiple single and double-wide GPUs are supported with this platform that include the NVIDIA T4, A2, A10, A16, A30, A40, and A100.

Interoperability

The deployment procedure for this platform has not changed. From a flexibility perspective, HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus nodes can interoperate in clusters with HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 G nodes (for similar usable capacity) but the new nodes’ performance will downgrade to old nodes for write operations. To take full advantage of the new HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus node performance gains, it is recommended to set them up in separate clusters.

HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus, supported from 4.2.0 onwards, provides significantly higher performance when compared to the other platforms thanks to the Gen4 PCIe Card, the new Intel Gen4, Icelake processor and HPE SimpliVity code changes that better leverage the underlying hardware. This platform is now the max performance configuration offered for HPE SimpliVity. The best part being, all these added benefits with the existing value of the HPE SimpliVity platform.

HPE SimpliVity Upgrade Planner

Another key feature introduced with the HPE SimpliVity 4.2.0 is the HPE SimpliVity Upgrade Planner. Based on the HPE SimpliVity interoperability guide, this simple, intuitive, and easily accessible planner is a UI-based tool to help better plan HPE SimpliVity upgrades. You can use the plan generated by this planner to discuss with HPE Services or even carve out various maintenance windows based on the steps needed for upgrade. This supports all HPE SimpliVity Gen10 VMware environments from HPE SimpliVity 3.7.10 and above.

Other updates with the HPE SimpliVity 4.2.0

HPE SimpliVity continues to support newer versions of vSphere. HPE SimpliVity 4.2.0 will be the last version to support ESXi 6.7. The latest firmware for this release includes the new components required to support the HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus. Quickly find links to the current HPE SimpliVity software release, firmware bundles, release notes, Interoperability Guide, Interoperability Catalog File, and ESXi custom bundle on the new HPE SimpliVity Releases page. This the navigation of the HPE Support Center by providing download links with history table of older versions included and links to either a the Website or downloadable PDFs.

 HPE InfoSight for HPE SimpliVity update

The HPE SimpliVity Hosts page on HPE InfoSight now includes a hyperlink that connects the servers on HPE SimpliVity Hosts page directly to the server details page on HPE InfoSight for servers, minimizing the number of clicks.

Ready to learn more?

Review  HPE SimpliVity 380 Gen10 Plus QuickSpecs and HPE OmniStack 4.2.0 for vSphere Release Notes.

Check out the HPE SimpliVity Upgrade Planner and the video.

See here how this customer benefits from HPE SimpliVity.

Discover how HPE continues to innovate and simplify with HPE SimpliVity.

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Meet Shwetha Varsha, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, HPE

Shwetha currently leads the HPE SimpliVity enablement, Hands-on-Labs and POCs for pre-sales, sales, and partners. She works with the field and engineering to bring in valuable feedback to the product.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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