More choices to simplify IT for VM workloads at scale

[StorageExperts]

Modernize your enterprise: Learn how with new HPE Alletra 5000 storage support and HPE disaggregated HCI.

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

We all know this to be true: Data is the life force for activating the next generation of business and operation models that move your business forward. As you seek simpler solutions on your transformation journey to run virtualized workloads, you likely find challenges to scale hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). Certain challenges may exist with resources like independent scaling, resiliency, and overall economics. 

However, there’s good news. As Eric Burgener, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies Group with IDC states it in a research paper entitled Maturing Hyperconverged Infrastructure Is Running Mission-Critical Workloads in Many Enterprises Today: "Enterprises that still think HCI is limited by an inability to scale compute and storage resources independently, recovery times for device and/or node failures, and node-level performance and capacity limitations should look again. Vendors in this space have come up with new features and approaches that address these concerns, and the best HCI platforms offer a storage management feature set that very closely approximates external storage arrays while differentiating themselves with their flexibility, ease of use, and better economics."

Taking HCI further

HPE Alletra dHCI represents one of these new approaches to HCI. 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 the highest performance, resiliency, and resource efficiency. If you're looking for HCI to do more, let's explore some new enhancements now available. 

What you really need is an HCI solution without compromise

HPE provides just that with workload-optimized solutions available via HPE GreenLake. About three years ago, our customers started leveraging HPE Nimble Storage dHCI. Designed to provide a disaggregated HCI (dHCI) architecture, this solution is ideal for business-critical apps and mixed workloads that demand 99.9999% of data availability guaranteed and sub-millisecond latency. To give you more choice, we recently added support for HPE Alletra 6000 with cloud-native data infrastructure support and all-NVMe capabilities to the HPE Nimble Storage dHCI portfolio. At its core, HPE Nimble Storage dHCI leverages industry leading HPE ProLiant DL servers, HPE Alletra 6000 storage arrays or HPE Nimble Storage, and HPE networking switches.  

Now, you can choose HPE Alletra 5000 storage with disaggregated HCI clusters. You can also reap the benefits of more cloud-native support with either adaptive flash arrays or all-NVMe arrays. With these added cloud-native capabilities, HPE is referring to the solution as HPE Alletra dHCI.

HPE Alletra dHCI with HPE Alletra 5000

You now have more options with your disaggregated HCI solutions for hosting more VMs. HPE Alletra dHCI clusters can be built leveraging HPE Alletra 5000’s ultra-efficient architecture that delivers both flash speed and disk economics while enabling consistent performance and industry-leading data efficiency. You can choose either a hybrid option or all-NVMe option by selecting HPE Alletra 5000 or HPE Alletra 6000. The dHCI stack automation software running on either storage array automates the deployment, scale out, and day to day management of the cluster stack, integrating with existing VMware vSphere environments or deploying an entire net new vSphere environment. All deployments are automatically implemented with VMware and HPE best practices. What’s more, HPE InfoSight with predictive analytics and support automation is fully supported.

Leverage HPE and VMware innovation

In addition to the new storage support, HPE has also delivered more ways to help you modernize IT and support modern app development. This enhancement came in the form of a new cloud solution with VMware Cloud Foundation leveraging workload domains on HPE Alletra dHCI.

For more than 21 years, HPE and VMware have partnered to co-innovate joint solutions that modernize IT infrastructure. These HPE storage innovations, HPE InfoSight, and VMware Cloud Foundation solution support are one of many recent examples of innovation that works to your benefit.

What customers are saying about disaggregated HCI

Nothing is more powerful than hearing what our customers have to say about a solution. Here are a few quotes from customers who have deployed disaggregated HCI, and how they benefit with resiliency, lifecycle management, efficiency, and overall simplicity.

Our customer Thermo Fisher Scientific noted, “There is a lot less worrying with our dHCI solution. We know it will be fine at scale versus our past HCI clusters where we were always worried about a failed drive or node maintenance."

For this finance customer, disaggregated HCI was the “perfect choice for mid-large enterprise storage." They stated, "HPE Nimble offers different kind of models such as hybrid flash array, and full flash array. The administration operation is quite simple and compression rate, backup option, and replication strategy make it great choice for mid, large sized organization. Also HPE offer zero touch upgrades.  It was quite difficult to upgrade OS of old storage."

And a city agency in Egypt shared its experience with disaggregated HCI, saying, "The efficiency and utilization ratio of these solutions were very high, they took very minimal rack space, and they optimized power consumption, including the energy used for cooling." 

 Want to learn more?

• Read the HPE Alletra dHCI solution brief
• Read this blog about HPE Alletra 5000
• Try the dHCI experience and see dHCI in action

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Meet Storage Experts blogger Chuck Wood 

Chuck is the Senior Product Marketing Manager for HPE Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure. He is responsible for all phases of product marketing, leading hyperconverged solutions for software-defined, dynamic data centers. He blogs about his professional passion around demonstrating excellent customer outcomes based on HPE HCI and dHCI. Connect with Chuck on LinkedIn. And find him on Twitter @chasypwood.

Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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