Primary storage news for HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage

[CalvinZito]

It's a big day for HPE Storage.

Leading up to the HPE Discover Virtual Experience we have big news. We just announced some pretty exciting primary storage updates that center on Advancing Intelligence, Mission-Critical DR, Accelerating Apps, and On-Demand Automation. HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera are our stars of the day, and I have two ways for you to learn about what’s up: a Chalk Talk and a podcast.

Who doesn't love a good Chalk Talk and I think I packed a lot into this 6 minutes so you can get a quick impression of what we announced. If you want to go deeper, I recorded a podcast with Sandeep Singh, VP of HPE Storage Marketing and Omer Assad, VP and GM of our primary storage business. We take a deep dive into all the enhancements and since there are 8 of them, this takes just over 30 minutes.

Before I share these with you, I'll give you a short overview. 

What's the news?

In both the Chalk Talk and podcast, we talk about the news across four dimensions: Advancing Intelligence, Mission-Critical DR, Accelerating Apps, and On-Demand Automation. For HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Primera, there's something to discuss for each of these. I'll give a bit more detail on a few of these. 

Advancing Intelligence

• HPE Primera enables autonomous, self-optimized system operations. There are two machine learning models running inside HPE Primera: a machine learning (ML) neural network that is globally trained from data collected across the installed base, and a long short-term memory model based on the local environment. These two ML models work together to predict app performance and resource needs, and act to optimize resource utilization. This one deserves its own blog post. In the world of primary storage, it is game-changing. I pulled out the discussion around this from the podcast and turned it into a YouTube video focused on embedded AI with HPE Primera. 
• HPE Nimble Storage gets cross-stack analytics extended to Microsoft Hyper-V. One of the most coveted features of the HPE InfoSight portal for customers has been the cross-stack analytics in VMware environments that give visibility and diagnostics into virtual resources, from VM to the storage system. We're now bringing that intelligence to Hyper-V. This is great news, as around 30% of Nimble Storage customers host Hyper-V VMs on their arrays.

Mission-Critical Disaster Recovery

• Here we’re adding to the HPE Primera all-inclusive software with Peer Persistence and Async replication and near instant async replication over extended distances. HPE Primera has a robust set of DR solutions and what’s great is that it’s simple to set up, PLUS it's all free with all-inclusive software.
• HPE Nimble Storage is a proven platform with 6-nines availability and now we’re adding to it with built-in 3 site asynchronous replication. That third site can be either an on-premises location or via cloud with HPE Cloud Volumes. And Nimble replication is very easy to set up, taking only a few clicks.

Accelerating Apps

• We now have HPE Primera All-NVMe. You can have 500TB all NVMe and based on SAP HANA testing, now 2X the number of SAP HANA nodes at half the price.
• HPE Nimble Storage now has Storage Class Memory as a cache tier. Imagine having the performance of all SCM at close to the price of an all-flash array. I have a Chalk Talk that goes deeper on this so check it out. It's available on existing or new AF60 and AF80 all flash arrays and we're seeing with 2x faster response times and sub 250 microsecond average latency.

On-Demand Automation

• We have news around VMware vVols. HPE is #1 in the industry with more vVols deployed on HPE Storage than any other vendor. In fact, we have around 55% of all vVols on HPE, which is more than all the other vendors combined! We now have vVols and SRM integration for HPE Primera and HPE Nimble Storage. I think vVols lacking SRM was an inhibitor to more adoption of vVols so I'm really glad to see this. 
• For container-ready storage automation for stateful apps, we’ve added HPE CSI driver for HPE Primera, and have had recent updates to Nimble’s CSI Driver. – This will give you software-defined storage and self-service for developers so you can run traditional and containerized applications on the same environment.

With that, let's get to the multimedia. First here's the Chalk Talk.

And for those of you that want to dive deeper into all of this, you can listen to the podcast. If you want to download it to your device, you can do that too.

To subscribe to the podcast, open this link and click on the "View in iTunes" button under my picture. If you don't use iTunes, you can find my podcast on TalkShoe.com, Google Play Music., and I just added  the podcast to Spotify Podcast, and Stitcher!  On Google, you'll get "invited" to try Google Play Music for 30 days. Just click "no thanks" to get past this and get to the podcast.

Here's what we talked about in the podcast with an approximate start time for that part:

• 0:00 - Intros
• 1:30 - Overview of the announcement
• 2:35 - Advancing Intelligence 
• 17:45 - Accelerating Applications
• 24:15 - On-Demand Automation
• 29:00 - Mission-Critical Disaster Recovery
• 33:20 - Discover Virtual Experience preview and podcast wrap-up

So much more to read

This article is just the tip of the spear, We have other subject matter experts from product marketing, product management, and technical marketing posting articles that will help you learn more about what we announced. Here's what else you can find (updated as of June 12): 

• Product marketing manager Matt Morrissey focuses on HPE Primera in AI that acts on your behalf! It’s here NOW.
• My long-time HPE Storage colleague Simon Watkins hits more details in HPE Nimble Storage celebrates a decade of innovation and steps into the future. 
• Three posts from long-time Nimble Storage technical blogger Nick Dyer: Announcing NimbleOS 5.2: Continuing Our Track Record of Innovation, NimbleOS 5.2: Simplify Fibre Channel Deployments with Target Driven Zoning (SmartSAN), and NimbleOS 5.2: Enhance Your DR & Backup Plans with Nimble Fan Out Replication.
• Stephen Daniel is an HPE Distinguished Technologist and he wrote Accelerate transactional workloads with Storage Class Memory.
• There are two articles that dive deeper into HPE InfoSight Cross-Stack Analytics for Hyper-V from Evans Nicholson, Cross-Stack Analytics for Hyper-V with HPE InfoSight – get to know your newest power tool! and from product manager Ankit Agarwal, HPE InfoSight introduces cross-stack analytics for Hyper-V, enhances AI Recommendation Engine,.

HPE Discover Virtual Experience

Be sure to register for Discover Virtual Experience that starts on June 23. I have a blog post that points you in the right direction so take a look at Everything storage at Discover Virtual Experience - and get it all for free! With your registration, HPE will donate $10 to your choice of one of 10 featured causes. Join us and give back to organizations helping people, businesses and communities around the world recover from the COVID-19 crisis. Read more about these organizations and the great work they are doing to support COVID-19 recovery around the world. (Terms and conditions apply.)

About The Storage Godfather (formerly HPEStorageGuy)

I'm Calvin Zito and November 16, 2019 marked 36 years with HP/HPE. I've worked in HPE Storage since 1990. I was recently recognized as a 10 time VMware vExpert. As an early adopter of social media and active participant in communities, I've blogged for over 11 years. I'm also an avid Boise State fan. You can find me on Twitter as @CalvinZito. If you don't follow me on Twitter, please do it now! You can also contact me via email. 

Calvin Zito
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

twitter.com/HPE_Storage
linkedin.com/showcase/hpestorage/
hpe.com/storage