End of November Madrid was the place to be for the annual HPE Discover event. Customers, partners, (social) media and anyone interested in the strategy and technology from HPE gathered in the Feria de Madrid for the latest news of the tech giant.
In this article you can find an overview of the most important announcements of the week, in upcoming articles I will dive deeper in the subjects itself…
HPE Composable Cloud
HPE launched the Composable Cloud, which is not really a product but more a combination of multiple products that will deliver an open scale-out hybrid cloud platform for all types of businesses that want to simplify operations and innovate faster.
Composability was already there with the launch of the Synergy platform in 2015. Recently HPE announced the availability of Composability (aka software defined everything) on their rack server models DL line.
In combination with software like HPE OneView for on-premise configuration management, HPE InfoSight for AI-driven analytics and HPE OneSphere as the multi-cloud management platform supporting private and public clouds, you will get the composable cloud experience.
I will dive deeper in all these products in upcoming articles! Stay posted!
HPE Composable Fabric
HPE announced the Composable Fabric (technology from the acquisition of Plexxi earlier this year) on their HCI Simplivity platform.
So far (and most of the other hyperconverged solutions on the market) HCI is a combination of software defined servers and software defined storage in 1 solution giving easier deployment, configuration and management experience. But you still needed a network on top of it (with all the challenges coming with it – spine-leaf, ToR-EoR-core switches, configuration hell like EtherChannel, trunks, spanning-tree, anyone?).
By adding a software defined network to their Simplivity solution HPE states it will remove all those challenges by creating a high-performance flat network managed through the HCI layer. First demos on the show floor looked promising, check my deep dive article for more details on this!
I hope (expect – am convinced) that the Composable Fabric will be deployed across the entire HPE stack like Synergy and other DL-like servers…
HPE Intelligent Storage
HPE released its Intelligent Storage portfolio at HPE Discover. “Intelligence changes everything,” said Milan Shetti, GM, HPE Storage. “Customers using intelligent storage can reap the benefits of AI and stop worrying about their infrastructure.
This is accomplished by 3 pillars applied on their current storage products, starting with 3PAR and Nimble.
An AI-driven resource planner helps optimize workload placement based on available resources – and eliminates guesswork and the risk of disruption when deploying new workloads.
Cross-stack recommendations for HPE Nimble Storage extend the HPE InfoSight recommendation engine to the virtualization layer. HPE InfoSight now moves beyond the basic predictive analytics tools other vendors offer to provide AI-driven guidance across the infrastructure stack regarding how best to optimize customers’ environments and where to place their data.
With more applications being developed for the cloud, enterprises need to optimally move data across their hybrid cloud environments. HPE Cloud Volumes, currently available on Nimble, gets an expansion to the UK and Ireland for the European customers. Further is support foreseen for Kubernetes and Dockers to speed DevOps.
2 years ago, HPE did a Tech Preview already at HPE Discover in London with SCM (Storage Class Memory), now it is available for 3PAR and Nimble in 2019.
HPE Memory-Driven Flash is a new class of storage built with SCM and NVMe that accelerates application performance for HPE 3PAR and HPE Nimble Storage. HPE Memory-Driven Flash lowers latency up to 2X and is up to 50% faster than all-flash arrays with NVMe solid state drives. Intelligence built into HPE 3PAR and HPE Nimble Storage optimizes SCM to enable real-time processing for latency-sensitive applications and mixed workloads – like AI and machine learning or high-speed transactions – at scale.
HPE InfoSight for Servers
HPE is bringing Infosight’s Artificial Intelligence and cloud-based Machine Learning to HPE ProLiant, Synergy, and Apollo servers.
HPE InfoSight watches over the infrastructure 24/7 so there is no need to spend days, nights, and weekends dealing with infrastructure issues anymore.
There will be several phases for the launch within the next year. Availability date is planned 7 januari 2019, already in my agenda!
HPE OneSphere
HPE announced OneSphere last year in Madrid. HPE OneSphere is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) based cloud management platform to manage hybrid clouds.
Optionally, it can be bundled with the HPE software-defined infrastructure, HPE Synergy, and HPE SimpliVity products. It can be deployed on-premises, integrated withAmazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure public cloud, as wellas on-board existing VMware vSphere® or kernal-based virtual machine (KVM) virtual data centers.
HPE OneSphere simplifies self-service provisioning of hybrid cloud resources for developers through service catalogs. It provides a detailed cost analytics to track, categorize, and report on your cloud costs across multiple clouds and introduces the concept of work spaces.
Several updates under the hood were announced and showcased in Madrid.
HPE in the Edge
I was impressed of what HPE does at the Edge. So far I was only interested on the Hybrid IT pillar from the company, however since more and more data is generated at the Edge, I will need to take into account this Edge as well as an important function in the IT infrastructure.
Several announcements were made:
- HPE Edgeline OT Link Platform, an open platform that automates the interplay between diverse operational technologies (OT) and standard-IT based applications at the edge to enable intelligent and autonomous decision making;
- HPE Edgeline systems management, the industry’s first systems management solutions designed specifically for the edge to ensure enterprise-grade reliability, connectivity and security;
- HPE Edgeline EL300 Converged Edge System featuring OT link and HPE Edgeline systems management, providing superior resilience against harsh edge environments for a broad range of industrial deployments; and
- HPE Edgeline Field Application Engineering Services available from HPE Pointnext to help customers plan, build, and customize OT link-based IoT and cyber-physical systems.
A very interesting product is the Edgeline EL300 system that is deployed to connect OT (Operations technology) with IT (Information Technology). Several use cases were shown like manufacturing, automotive and windmills. Check out my other Edge article for more details!
More moments, pictures and other videos of the event can be found on the social media, like my Twitter account @bartheungens and many others following #HPEDiscover.
Be social and share!