Explore new HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1 features and updates

[StorageExperts]

Senior Technical Marketing Engineer Shwetha Varsha describes the new software release in detail, exploring enhancements to data protection, HPE InfoSight wellness features, and improvements to lifecycle management for the HPE hyperconverged infrastructure. Explore the details here. 

HPE SimpliVity has been deployed across thousands of businesses and edge sites around the globe, providing our customers with high availability hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) that includes efficient, built-in data protection and centralized, simple, multi-site management through VMware vCenter – all in a very small footprint.

With every release, HPE SimpliVity engineers enhance the all-in-one HCI solution for edge to core workloads, and our latest 4.1.1 release includes some of our finest enhancements yet. Our recently announced hyperconverged platform, the HPE SimpliVity 325 Gen10 Plus v2, takes advantage of these new features and updates. The platform’s software-optimized, single-socket server is based on the latest 3rd generation AMD EPYC 7003 Series processor. The HPE SimpliVity 325 Gen10 Plus v2 platform offers 33% more storage than the previous generation, and it is available in XS, S, and M (t-shirt sizes!) with usable capacities of 4.6 TB, 7.5 TB, and 10TB respectively.

HPE SimpliVity 325 Gen10 Plus v2, supported from 4.1.1 onwards, provides significantly higher performance when compared to the other platforms thanks to the Gen4 PCIe Card, the AMD processor and HPE SimpliVity code changes that better leverage the underlying hardware.

In this blog, I’m pleased to share a closer look at a plethora of new features and updates that have been enabled with HPE SimpliVity software 4.1.1. These features include:

• HPE Cloud Bank Storage support
• HPE StoreOnce Data Immutability for data protection
• HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Copy
• Streaming Wellness and a 5-Minute Heartbeat feature for HPE InfoSight-enabled systems
• Security updates
• HPE SimpliVity lifecycle management enhancements to the overall upgrade and deployment experience.

Data protection and security enhancements

HPE Cloud Bank Storage

HPE SimpliVity has extended its external storage support to include HPE Cloud Bank Storage. The implementation is highly scalable and extends its efficiency to send, store, and retrieve only unique data, which helps lower TCO and optimize bandwidth utilization cost while transferring data.

HPE Cloud Bank Storage delivers robust offsite protection that can be combined with cloud-based disaster recovery helping you to reduce CapEx and OpEx. Customers looking to archive non-active/cold data to a low-cost cloud service provider can use HPE Cloud Bank Storage, making it ideal for off-site data storage. Because HPE Cloud Bank Storage supports a broad partner ecosystem, HPE SimpliVity backups can be moved to the cloud of choice like Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, or Scality.

HPE Cloud Bank Storage cannot be backed up directly and is available as an HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Copy target. Start by creating an Object Store in the cloud and connecting it to the HPE Cloud Bank Store. On the HPE SimpliVity side, you can register a HPE Cloud Bank Store with HPE SimpliVity Cluster only after an external Catalyst Store (such as HPE StoreOnce) is registered.

Steps for registration of HPE Cloud Bank Storage are the same as for any external storage registration to HPE SimpliVity with one change: there’s a new dropdown field where you can choose HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Cloud Bank as the external store.

Backups have a new column that identifies the external store type under Backup Location.

HPE StoreOnce Data Immutability

HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Data Immutability provides security for external backups. When the Data Immutability setting is enabled on the HPE StoreOnce store, backups residing on the store cannot be deleted either manually or using a policy by HPE SimpliVity. This feature provides added protection against malicious attacks (ransomware) or accidental backup data deletion without impacting in-progress backups or copies.

You can enable the Data Immutability feature and specify the period in days on the HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store when creating a store or by editing an existing store’s security settings.

HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Copy

The “Copy Backup” feature of HPE SimpliVity has been extended – HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Copy is now supported with HPE SimpliVity. From HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1 you can now copy backups from HPE StoreOnce Catalyst Store to:

• Another HPE StoreOnce appliance
• HPE Cloud Volumes Backup Store
• HPE Cloud Bank Storage

Express Restores for external storage backups

In the initial release of HPE SimpliVity support for external backups, the restore feature for external backups was not optimized. From 4.1.1, HPE SimpliVity now supports Express Restores. The restore process for external backups is optimized, meaning restore blocks are deduped and compressed. Since only unique data is restored, external backups can now be restored up to 30% faster!  This benefit also applies to backups restored from HPE Cloud Volumes Backup Store and HPE Cloud Bank Storage.

Backup reporting

Backup reporting is now available for all HPE SimpliVity environments. Customers no longer need to deploy or convert their federation to a centrally managed federation to generate backup reports. Reports are generated in different ways:

• Peer Managed Federations – Backup reporting uses the HPE SimpliVity Virtual Appliance/OVC
• Centrally Managed Federation – Backup reporting uses the Management Virtual Appliance
• External Backups – Backup reports are generated at the external storage tab if backups on external stores exist.

Note: Backup reporting is not currently supported for HPE Cloud Bank Storage.

Security

Beginning with HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1, external certificate authority signed certificates can be used to help customers use the benefits of a public key infrastructure (PKI) for:

• Authentication
• Protect privacy and maintain integrity of messages transmitted
• Tracking communications over the network

From this release onwards, only Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 is supported, making HPE SimpliVity more secure than its predecessors and meeting required security standards.

NSX-T support

We’ve also enhanced our support for NSX-T from HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1. Now SVA/HPE SimpliVity traffic is supported on NSX-T managed switches. This was previously supported only for the VMware standard switches and only VM traffic was supported for NSX-T. Supported features:

• The minimum supported version of NSX-T is 3.0.1.
• Both VXLANs (virtual extensible local area networks) and VLANs (virtual local area networks) are supported for N-VDS
• NSX-T is supported on HPE SimpliVity version 4.0.1U1 and above
• Support for vSphere 6.7 and above

HPE InfoSight enhancements

Streaming Wellness

Customers now have access to the HPE SimpliVity Wellness Dashboard on the HPE InfoSight portal. With Streaming Wellness, you can see issues and resolutions regarding your HPE SimpliVity hosts including hardware, software, and any external errors on the HPE InfoSight portal.

Signature detection happens on the continuous stream of alerts that the HPE SimpliVity systems generate. The new Streaming Wellness tab provides quick access to a dashboard of issues created for the alerts which match the signature pattern. Issues are created with different levels of severity:

• Critical
• Caution
• Informational

Issues are displayed immediately as soon as the signature is hit. For critical issues, support cases may be automatically created for quicker resolution.

5-Minute Heartbeat and subscription

HPE SimpliVity nodes send data home every 5 minutes with the heartbeat feature. You can see the minimal node details immediately upon registering. SSD and HDD issues are visible in near real-time on the portal, which helps identify registration and connectivity issues quickly.

Now you can enable email subscriptions via HPE InfoSight Portal for missing heartbeat and hardware (SSD/HDD) failures.

HPE SimpliVity lifecycle management enhancements

VMware ESXi + HPE firmware decoupling

Prior to HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1, upgrades included firmware, VMware ESXi software, and the HPE SimpliVity software itself, all bundled together. Since the HPE firmware and VMware ESXi release cadence is independent from HPE SimpliVity releases, users would not get new ESXi and firmware versions until they were supported in HPE SimpliVity Upgrade Manager.

Starting from HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1, the firmware and ESXi have been decoupled from the HPE SimpliVity software in the upgrade bundle. Now customers do not need to wait for the next HPE SimpliVity release to perform upgrades of the firmware or VMware ESXi. This also reduces the otherwise manual effort of upgrading the ESXi and firmware for intermediate releases between HPE SimpliVity release dates.

This is possible because the Upgrade Manager from HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1 onwards uses a new file called an Interop Catalog that maintains the list of supported firmware and VMware ESXi. To take advantage of this enhancement, customers must download the Interop Catalog file and place it alongside the Upgrade Manager.

Improved upgrade and deployment experience

As part of HPE’s commitment to deliver secure products, all HPE SimpliVity software is now digitally signed, and HPE products have the facility to validate digital signatures. A multitude of user interface and user experience improvements have also been added to the upgrade process.

Note: From HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1 onwards, VMware vSphere 6.5 is no longer supported.

Role-based access control (RBAC) 

With 4.1.1, RBAC policies are available through RESTAPI and PowerShell to provide easy, scriptable, and scalable administration for group to role assignments.

Storage Expansion for HPE SimpliVity 380 G

For customers who want to expand capacity in existing HPE SimpliVity 380 G nodes, three storage expansion options are available:

• x6 to x8 storage expansion kit
• x8 to x12 storage expansion kit
• x12 to x16 expansion kit supported with read-intensive drives

Note: Storage expansions require redeployment, and an HPE Pointnext Service contract is mandatory.

Additional resources

Read the recent announcement blog: Good news for HPE SimpliVity – new platform, new features, and more data protection

Get more details about HPE SimpliVity 4.1.1 software:

• Read the Quick Specs
• Visit the HPE SimpliVity document library

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Meet HPE Storage Experts blogger Shwetha Varsha,  Senior Technical Marketing Engineer for HPE SimpliVity

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.

Connect with Shwetha on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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