At the Google Cloud Next โ19 conference in San Francisco, HPE and Google Cloud announced a joint hyperconverged solution based on Anthos (the rebranded Google Cloud Services Platform). HPE Validated Design for Anthos on HPE SimpliVity will help businesses modernize applications and provide a simple, reliable user experience, whether on premises or in the cloud. Iโm really excited about the possibilities this solution brings to Kubernetes environments.
Why HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged?
The HPE validated design brings the simplicity of HPE SimpliVity to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) environments. This Anthos-based solution simplifies testing and development and hybrid cloud management for containerized applications.
The HPE SimpliVity Data Virtualization Platform provides efficiency, data protection and global unified management. HPE SimpliVityโs strong remote management capabilities and bandwidth-efficient replication between sites make for easy installation and central administration. The combination of infrastructure and advanced data services for VMware virtualized workloads, as well as containers in VMs, enables an easy transition to a container environment by allowing containers and VMs to share the same hardware and storage, without requiring entire servers to be devoted to GKE.
The HPE-validated design enables:
- Hybrid CI/CD for private cloud and remote office/branch office (ROBO)/edge hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) application deployments
- Private HCI cloud, supporting cloud-first applications
- Applications/services developed in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and run in production on-premises
- Data management for on-premises containers using HCI on-premises storage
- Low-cost, distributed ROBO/edge containerized application deployments with operationally efficient data management capabilities and replication mechanisms on HCI platforms
- Hybrid mode operations supporting a mix of VMs and Kubernetes-orchestrated containers on the same hardware
- Tiered hybrid data protection policies available for on-premises data backup and to cloud
How the container-based, hybrid cloud solution works
Anthos with HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure and HPE GreenLake services provide a fully-managed, on-premises, container-based hybrid cloud. Customers can choose a traditional purchase model, or a consumption model, where they only pay for the capacity they use. Users can run applications on premises, as a service in the GKE environment, and leverage the Google Cloud portal to manage both public cloud and on-premises resources.
The HPE SimpliVity technical marketing team ran a preliminary version of the solution through its paces, and could quickly see the power of HPE SimpliVity validated for Anthos. Iโd like to share a few highlights of the run-through.
VMware vCenter Interface
In the new solution, HPE SimpliVity will allow IT admins to deploy enterprise workloads, while at the same time use it for GKE On-Prem services, as illustrated in this VMware vCenter screenshot from preliminary tests. The depicted HPE SimpliVity federation has the GKE Admin cluster and a couple of user clusters deployed.
Once a user cluster is deployed, the administrator can validate it and then register the cluster in the GCP environment.
From the Kubernetes Cluster page within GCP, all the Kubernetes Clusters are now visible, both on-prem and in the public cloud.
Google Marketplace
GCP Marketplace offers ready-to-go development stacks, solutions, and services to accelerate development, so users spend less time installing and more time developing. The new design will enable the benefits of Marketplace for deploying applications on-prem.
Working from the GCP, my team could manage both the Kubernetes cluster and the user clusters deployed on HPE SimpliVity and Nimble. The team also deployed an application directly onto an HPE SimpliVity user cluster from the Google Marketplace.
As these screenshots illustrate, customers using Anthos and HPE SimpliVity will be able to build, run, and manage container-based architectures alongside VMs with unified data management across the environment. HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure improves container-based architectures alongside VMs by addressing key issues such as security, monitoring, and data management.
You can find more detailed technical information about HPE SimpliVity in the HPE SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure for VMware vSphere technical whitepaper.
For more information about the HPE and Google Cloud partnership:
www.hpe.com/partners/google-cloud
https://cloud.google.com/anthos/
Vinay Jonnakuti
HPE Software-Defined and Cloud Group
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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