HPE GreenLake Edge-to-Cloud Platform brings the Cloud to you

HPE GreenLake Edge-to-Cloud Platform brings the Cloud to you

After years of working in cloud environments, we’ve come to expect some basics that we collectively refer to as the “cloud experience.” For example, scalable capacity that’s ready when you need it, and the ability to easily click and spin up new instances. In short, we expect a point-and-click experience with the added advantage that somebody else is managing the IT operations, so we can focus on accelerating outcomes—while paying only for what we use. That’s the cloud experience.

But some customers want to maintain more control over their data and make sure it has the required security. This has always created a disconnect in the cloud experience. Some industries, such as healthcare, don’t want to put their clients’ medical records in the cloud. Other companies’ applications have Jupiter-sized data gravity—literally terabytes of data to move to the cloud and back—that would incur costs each time they’re moved. Others have applications and data that are entangled like a spaghetti mess. Figuring out how to tease that apart, refactor it, and move each one to the cloud is expensive and time-consuming.

I’d estimate that 70% of web applications are still operating on-premises. Many companies are trying to overcome the tradeoffs between cloud-native capabilities and on-premises control. There’s never been a solution that could provide them with that cloud experience.

Until now.

HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform is redefining digital transformation

Digital transformation has always been synonymous with moving to the cloud. And although the future of cloud is hybrid, efforts to connect on-premises data with the cloud have been a duct-tape fix at best, because they didn’t deliver a consistent cloud experience. But now there’s a better choice.

The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform gives customers that same in-the-cloud experience with their on-premises apps and data. (Umm… How?) You see, instead of moving your data to the cloud, the HPE GreenLake platform extends the cloud to your data. So your critical data and apps stay on-premises with an unparalleled platform that combines the simplicity and agility of the cloud with the governance, compliance, and visibility that comes with hybrid IT. It completely removes that disconnect with traditional IT.

Bring the cloud to wherever you store data

For organisations that didn’t want to put everything in the cloud, the common alternative used to be keeping it in a local data centre. But now local doesn’t necessarily mean onsite. In fact, being on-premises can also be at the edge, and vice versa. For example, if you keep a data centre located nearby on Main St., that’s technically an edge. If your data is located in another branch of your business, or even in another city, these are all your locations. Technically, they’re all on-premises.

So, whether your data is at the edge, in a data centre you own, or colocated, that is all considered on-premises. Being “in the cloud” simply means your data is in some mysterious location that could be virtually anywhere as opposed to definitely somewhere. This distinction changes the way we think of hybrid cloud and being on-premises.

Ready to break up with your data centre?

Businesses and organisations looking to get out of operating their own data centres are in for some good news: You no longer need that brick-and-mortar model. The HPE GreenLake platform lets you maintain your single-tenant environments wherever you want—in cages, in colocation sites—and still have your own private environment. It effectively lumps together edge sites, colocation sites, and the data centre into an on-premises, single-tenant environment that provides that true cloud experience. So, finally, you can digitally transform on-premises—in place—and shut down that costly data centre.

Don’t settle for less than a true cloud experience

Leasing is a financial model only and shouldn’t be compared to a cloud experience that’s managed for you and that offers scalability, pay-per-use, and self-serve capabilities. The HPE GreenLake platform offers a true cloud experience that’s far richer than just an equipment lease.

Customers can offload the burden of operating IT and free up resources with fully-managed cloud services. This includes capacity management to predict future infrastructure needs and keep equipment ready and on-hand for when it’s needed. That’s a true cloud experience.

The HPE GreenLake platform empowers you to realise the full value of technology and cloud expertise. And, speaking of technology, the HPE GreenLake platform offers a range of cloud services that accelerate innovation. These include HPE GreenLake cloud services for compute, data protection, SAP HANA, storage, VDI, and VMs, plus industry solutions that support key workloads such as electronic medical records for hospitals and high payment delivery processing for financial institutions.

Combine that with <a “=”” href=”https://www.hpe.com/us/en/services/pointnext.html?altcid=sm_us-pointnext-lb” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>HPE Pointnext Services’ deep expertise in implementing these solutions and our partner ecosystem, and you’ll find that customers can achieve a cloud experience for their horizontal workloads and vertical solutions—all in the location of their choice.

For our customers, the future is greater choice and freedom for their business and IT strategy, with an open and modern platform that provides a cloud experience everywhere. This is the future of the cloud—and it’s very exciting.

As your IT partner, we can help you explore how HPE GreenLake can support your organisation from edge to cloud. Reach out to us today.

Compute from Edge to Cloud

Compute from Edge to Cloud

The cloud has fundamentally impacted how computing resources are provisioned and managed, however the nature of computing itself has not changed. We see similar workloads in the cloud as we do in on-premise computing environments. Thus, it’s important for organisations to understand how to optimise their workloads to maximise the value of their hybrid cloud investments. While not all organisations may be focused on their multicloud workloads, the principles explored below can be leveraged for any business, regardless of where they are in their cloud journey. It’s important for all types of businesses to consider their edge to cloud posture.

Businesses can better understand their hybrid infrastructure requirements through workload evaluation. Compute, storage, networking, and memory are all standard components of computing workloads. Any of these four components are present in each application, but they are not always balanced in the same way.

Modernisation of the edge-to-cloud IT estate can unlock the promise of digital transformation. HPE enables new business possibilities by delivering intelligent, workload-optimised computing systems and solutions that improve agility, operational efficiency, and the speed of innovation.

One way to manage computing resources is to automate complex tasks, increasing the speed and simplicity from edge-to-cloud. HPE provides high-performance solutions that scale up or out, on-premises or in the cloud, with purpose-built infrastructure and software that accelerates HPC, AI, and analytics adoption and scaling. Below we explore HPE’s workload-optimised compute solutions as used at the edge and in high-performance computing, like Exascale which are even used for space missions.

Edge workloads in the age of IoT

With billions of IoT devices deployed worldwide, businesses are consistently flooded with data.

In this customer-centric era, no firm can afford latency, security, or connectivity issues when transporting large amounts of data between data centres and remote locations. Many of these issues can be avoided by locating smaller data centres, IT infrastructure, computational, storage or networking capabilities near the billions of IoT devices at the edge of the network. This approach also can save on operational costs and is also suitable for smaller organisations.

Unexpected interruptions can be not only expensive but also dangerous. A hybrid infrastructure that incorporates power, cooling, environmental monitoring, and security is critical for cost savings, uptime, and availability. Safeguarding that infrastructure requires remote monitoring and management solutions which simplify the deployment and maintenance of distributed assets.

HPE is committed to assisting businesses across various sectors in exploring and using edge computing capabilities. HPE technologies enable a variety of edge scenarios, from delivering a seamless healthcare experience to building a quicker, more intelligent packaging plant, to assisting businesses in transitioning from old infrastructure, to one that is ready to give data-driven insights.

HPE’s edge computing portfolio includes Aruba ESP and HPE Edgeline.

Aruba ESP

Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) is the industry’s original AI-powered, cloud-native architecture designed to automate, unify, and protect the Edge. Aruba ESP offers the largest telemetry-based data lake for AIOps, as well as Dynamic Segmentation and policy enforcement rules to secure new devices. It facilitates cloud-managed orchestration across wired, wireless, and WAN, providing ultimate flexibility — in the cloud, on-premises, or consumed as a service.

HPE Edgeline

HPE Edgeline offers converged OT (Operations Technology) and enterprise-class IT in a single, ruggedised system that implements data centre-level compute and management technology at the edge. The system integrates key open standards-based OT data acquisition and control technologies directly into the enterprise IT system responsible for running the analytics. This delivers fast, simple and secure convergence between the necessary OT hardware and software components. The convergence of OT and IT capabilities into a single HPE Edgeline system greatly reduces the latency between acquiring data, analysing it and acting on it, while at the same time saving space, weight and power (SWaP).

Exascale computing

Exascale computing heralds a new age of supercomputer development. Exascale computing refers to computer systems that are capable of doing at least one exaflop or one billion, billion computations per second. That is 50 times faster than the fastest supercomputers now in use and a thousandfold faster than the first petascale computer.

Present systems capable of operating at petascale, such as HPE’s Cray supercomputer, enable businesses to do previously impossible tasks.

Historically linked with universities and large government laboratories, supercomputers have long been used to perform commercial applications that extend well beyond fundamental science. For example, oil exploration, banking, tailored content distribution, and online advertising use high-performance computing (HPC) systems to manage massive workloads that need real-time service delivery.

What makes the exascale era unique and exciting is the arrival of artificial intelligence. As companies expand their use of AI, they analyse vast volumes of data to teach the systems how to function. Combining high-performance computing and artificial intelligence enables enterprises to train more extensive, intelligent, and accurate models.

Exascale computing enables scientists to achieve new levels of capability by accelerating their work. By enabling scientists to construct models faster than previously possible, exascale has the potential to alter how research is conducted.

Increased computation power translates into more innovative solutions in a variety of sectors. For example, exascale supercomputers can significantly cut transaction latencies in the financial sector, giving traders an edge. In manufacturing, high-powered systems can determine the resistance of a new 3D print material to daily temperature and pressure fluctuations.

The design issues grow more difficult with each successive generation of high-performance computing. High-performance computing is gaining traction, and the interest in AI-driven applications is ever-growing.

Accelerated space exploration with the Spaceborne Computer

Manned journeys into our solar system need advanced computing capabilities, made possible by exascale computing, to minimise communication delays and guarantee the astronauts’ safety. HPE and NASA collaborated to further these missions by launching a supercomputer on a SpaceX CRS-12 rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

HPE launched the Spaceborne Computer (SBC) in August 2017 as part of a year-long experiment with NASA to see how well a supercomputer performs in the harsh environment of orbit. The Spaceborne Computer had a busy first six months, passing multiple benchmarking tests and remaining operational despite an emergency shutdown owing to a false fire alarm.

By November 2018, astronauts onboard the International Space Station had direct access to the Spaceborne Computer’s super computing capabilities until its return to Earth in June 2019. The Spaceborne Computer completed a one-year mission on the International Space Station, paving the way for humanity’s future journeys to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The SBC-2 was released in May 2021, building on the success of the SBC-1. This second generation of the Spaceborne Computer, composed of the HPE Edgeline Converged Edge system and the HPE ProLiant server, doubles the processing capability of its predecessor and adds artificial intelligence capabilities. As a result, NASA and ISS National Laboratory researchers may now employ Spaceborne Computer-2 for in-space data processing and analysis, enabling them to get faster findings and iterate experiments on the ISS.

HPE’s intelligent compute foundation for hybrid cloud

HPE supports application and data agility throughout the enterprise—at the edge, in the cloud, and data centres—by reducing complexity and silos and enhancing speed and agility via the use of standardised tools, processes, and automation.

Cloud computing enables enhanced speed, agility, and cost savings—but achieving these advantages requires overcoming significant barriers such as data gravity, security, regulatory compliance, cost management, and the need for organisational change. HPE’s hybrid cloud solutions use a proven methodology to aid organisations in overcoming cloud challenges and advancing digital transformation.

HPE delivers an intelligent computing foundation that addresses the challenges of non-cloud native apps and positions businesses to create a unified and modern cloud strategy.

HPE technologies provide unparalleled workload optimisation, automated security, and intelligent automation – all delivered as a service. HPE ProLiant computing solutions can help you revolutionise your IT operations by offering insights into your workloads’ performance, deployment, and efficiency, enabling you to provide better outcomes faster.

The computing solutions take a holistic approach with built-in security, starting with the manufacturing supply chain and concluding with a secure, end-of-life decommissioning process that leverages the world’s most secure servers.

HPE compute intelligence streamlines and automates management tasks, establishing the framework for a hybrid cloud architecture that is open and interoperable. HPE GreenLake, for example, allows enterprises to reach the performance necessary to handle compute-intensive applications while balancing performance, growth, and management. Pay-per-use options for on-premises computing assets enable businesses to align IT expenditures with actual use.

In Conclusion

Be it the edge of the network or the edge of the earth, HPE provides a computational base that adapts to various applications. HPE meets the growing need for forward-thinking, high-performance computing technology that can adapt to demanding workloads by building systems that provide you with maximum choice and flexibility.

HPE’s edge computing portfolio is purpose-built and enables a broad range of top bin processors and accelerator technologies for data-intensive applications, enabling you to maximise the value of your data and expedite time to market.

HPE provides on-premises or co-location HPC systems that include the cloud’s flexibility, scalability, and utility-like consumption. Greater agility is achieved by pay-per-use pricing and pre-installed buffer capacity for provisioning as demand increases. As your IT partner, we can help you take advantage of HPE computing solutions.

While the possibilities of what can be achieved at the edge are virtually limitless, you don’t need to collaborate with NASA to leverage the advantages of compute from edge to cloud. Regardless of the size of your business, HPE’s technologies provide the ideal framework to achieve your business goals. Whether you’re just beginning your journey to the cloud, deploying devices at the edge or optimising your workloads, we, as your IT partner, can help you identify and implement the right HPE solutions for your business’s growth. Contact us today.

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What You Need to Know About Aruba’s Fabric Composer

What You Need to Know About Aruba’s Fabric Composer

From the 1940s through to the emergence of the internet, all data centres were on-premise. With the rise of the internet, technology and innovation has been rapidly developing and has brought forward a new era, where cloud addresses the limitations of traditional on-premise. With this came the advent and increased use of virtualisation, which continues to evolve and expand.

Today, businesses are adopting models that incorporate both on-premise and cloud-based data centres. However, unlike those early days, technology companies have applied their ingenuity to address previous constraints. These solutions have evolved to ensure IT infrastructure can adapt quickly to rapidly changing environments and supported by a data centre when appropriate for the business need.

As Aruba notes, “applying the old way of doing things to a new modern IT and cloud infrastructure can be a losing battle.”

Product descriptors often include terms such as “compose” and “fabric”. Below, we expand on these terms and clarify their meaning in the context of IT and data centre infrastructure and as they apply to Aruba and HPE solutions.

1. Data fabric

The term “fabric” refers to the architectural approach to data access or movement. Data fabric is an architecture that defines a set of data services, standardising data management practices across multiple cloud and on-premise environments, as well as edge devices. It aims to provide democratised data insights and visibility, equitable data access and control, and robust data protection and security. The benefits of this architecture include agility, efficiency, reduced bottlenecks, and speed.

A typical example of a data fabric is the HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric File and Object Store. The platform delivers a distributed data analytics solution across an entire organisation, irrespective of physical location.

2. Composable infrastructure

Composable infrastructure involves compute, storage, and networking resources being abstracted from their physical locations and managed by software through a web-based interface.

The many benefits of this architecture include:

  • Making data centre resources available as cloud services
  • Provisioning infrastructure as needed
  • Logically pooling resources, minimising and over provisioning, increasing data centre agility and cost-effectiveness
  • Facilitating Infrastructure-as-a-Service via a unified management interface

3. Aruba Fabric Composer

Aruba Fabric Composer is an intelligent, API-driven, software-defined orchestration solution that simplifies and accelerates network provisioning for virtual machines. It orchestrates a discrete set of switches as a single entity called a fabric, which significantly simplifies operations and troubleshooting. This data centre orchestration solution is fully infrastructure and application aware, providing automation of various configurations and lifecycle events.

It automates configuration and lifecycle events through its ability to orchestrate IT infrastructure using a discrete set of switches (i.e. 8000 series and 6300 switches). The net effect is a set of interactive and automated workflows, isolating and simplifying the complex data centre administrative functions.

Faster, more efficient data centre networking with Aruba Fabric Composer

A significant challenge in building and operating the modern enterprise data centre is efficient and effective network provisioning. Network infrastructure is traditionally complex and requires specialised skills and training to configure and manage. Network engineers and other resources are typically housed in a separate, siloed structure. Therefore, scheduling network maintenance or configuration can be time-consuming.

Aruba Fabric Composer provides a solution to this challenge in that it “simplifies and accelerates network provisioning, provides end to end visibility and automated detection of connectivity and performance issues.

Aruba Fabric Composer benefits

  • Simplifies IT operations – Orchestrates switches under its control as a single fabric, with workflow automation and point and click GUI to streamline and automate complexity
  • Accelerates Provisioning – Automates and simplifies configuration of virtual machines for optimal performance, removing the need to design and orchestrate the requisite connections within your environment
  • Increased Visibility and Control – End to end network visibility of hosts, virtual machines, VLANs, services and workloads. Simplification of connectivity and performance problem troubleshooting. Automatically detects and dynamically resolves network issues before they impact your business.
  • Unified Security Policy Configuration – Centrally defined policy elements distributed to every rack. Allows the easy configuration of stateless ACLs or stateful policies enforced by Distributed Services Firewalls
  • Monitoring, Telemetry and Troubleshooting – Detailed alarms, events and deep insight as to what is going on in the network and security help with troubleshooting when issues arise.

In her article titled “Aruba Fabric Composer Unifies and Provisions Network and Security Policy Configurations,” Silvia Fregoni states “simplifying enterprise data centre networks has been a major goal of Aruba Fabric Composer.”

Support frictionless data access with HPE Ezmeral Data File and Object Store

HPE’s Ezmeral Data File and Object Store is a platform designed to deliver an overarching, distributed data management solution, regardless of location. Its architecture is similar to woven fabric, where the individual strands are intermeshed, providing a unified, global view of the organisation’s distributed data sources.

When a business grows and data is generated and stored in different locations and different formats, as defined by the unstructured data construct, customers can use HPE’s Ezmeral Data File and Object Store to gather all data in a single platform (or framework), improving data access and usage regardless of how and where it is stored.

This Data Fabric breaks down multiple disparate data silos, allowing business data to be accessed in real-time as a unified data layer; simplifying machine learning and data analytics models and facilitating strategic decision-making across all levels of the organisation as the data insights generated are true, accurate, and consistent.

However, not all data is stored in a central location or data centre. There are many scenarios where data is generated and stored on Edge devices and at the edge of the cloud. Thus, customers need an improved way of managing this data without having to rip and replace it.

An ideal use case where this Data Fabric and Object Store platform comes into its own is where a company has data sources (such as databases storing app data) in the cloud and at the edge of the cloud. Edge data is typically generated by, but not limited to, IoT devices and network switches not physically located in the cloud or a geographically central location (such as company headquarters). This data can either be accessed, processed (or transformed) in situ, or uploaded into a centralised location such as a cloud data store. There are many reasons why ingesting the data into a data store, such as a Greenlake, is feasible in a particular scenario. It is preferable to analyse the data at its source.

A typical example would be a company that analyses weather data generated by weather stations situated across the globe. Most of this data can be uploaded to a centralised location before being analysed. However, there are instances where the real-time data must be analysed at the source, like an approaching severe weather event. There is too significant a time delay between when the data is generated and when it reaches the data store.

The HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric and Object Store is an ideal solution to the challenges of analysing data from multiple, widespread data sources.

In conclusion

Data movement within a data centre environment and access of the data itself is essential for operational and organisational success. Aruba, an HPE company, together with HPE themselves, have designed and continue to develop technology (hardware and software), ensuring that data centre operations are successful, and data is effectively accessed and processed, driving informed strategic decision-making.

Contact us, your IT partner, to explore how HPE and Aruba can assist in solutions that help you better manage your data, whether it resides in the data centre, in the cloud, or at the Edge.

Alletra is breaking down the barriers of IT workloads

Alletra is breaking down the barriers of IT workloads

Last year alone, 64.2 ZB of data was created. Businesses are looking for agile infrastructure that can accommodate this data growth—and with that, the many use cases for utilising that data. Many are using cloud applications, cloud platforms, or cloud infrastructure to supplement their on-premises infrastructure. However, there is a clear disparity in the operational model for cloud resources and on-premises resources. Companies require the same agility and operational flows that the cloud provides.

To address this, HPE is delivering cloud-native and cloud-optimised solutions whilst having infrastructure on-premises. One of these solutions is HPE Alletra—a portfolio of cloud-native data infrastructure that powers data edge to cloud.

The common challenges of hybrid cloud workload management

Cloud migration, when not managed effectively, presents its own set of challenges:

  1. Numerous cloud architectures – As the quantity of apps and data continues to rise, some companies are turning to multicloud strategies. Managing multiple cloud platforms, however, presents a variety of challenges, including governance, interoperability, security, and required resources.
  2. Balancing stability and innovation – The cost of a rushed migration to the cloud can be high, potentially interrupting business processes if not executed correctly. Many businesses want more flexibility to transition their on-premises applications to the cloud progressively. At the same time, on-premises infrastructure must be modernised to improve performance, scalability, and efficiency.
  3. Security – The modern workforce is growing more distributed, as company systems incorporate an increasing number of IoT devices, creating a broader attack surface and more sophisticated cybersecurity threats. This requires a modern, dynamic, and comprehensive security strategy.

Enterprises can overcome these challenges through storage infrastructure which facilitates data transfer from edge to cloud. Cloud-native data infrastructure enables enterprises to adapt swiftly to changing business demands by mobilising data across clouds.

A flexible and straightforward hybrid cloud solution

To bring the cloud experience to every workload, businesses require a new approach to data infrastructure to get the most out of the hybrid cloud. This new infrastructure allows organisations to realise unified management, consistent data services, and seamless data mobility across clouds. Numerous components are combined to provide cloud infrastructure with dynamic scalability and simplified operations.

A recent addition to HPE’s stable of solutions is Alletra. One of Alletra’s biggest advantages is its ability to accelerate data innovation and unleash the potential of hybrid cloud. The solution spans workload-optimised systems to deliver architectural flexibility without the complexity of traditional storage management. At the same time, it “frees” data across hybrid clouds through one unified platform.

HPE Alletra is a collection of cloud-native data infrastructure designed to power enterprise data from the edge to the cloud. HPE Alletra is driven by the Data Services Cloud Console, a SaaS-based console that delivers unified data operations through a suite of cloud services, automating and orchestrating integrated data and infrastructure workflows for cloud operational agility and simplified data management.

As a result, HPE Alletra reduces the complexity and silos typical of traditional hybrid cloud setups by delivering a cloud-native data architecture that enables cloud operations and consumption. Alletra also streamlines infrastructure management, allowing businesses to begin accessing and using infrastructure-as-a-service and on-demand.

Alletra is AI-driven. With HPE InfoSight’s superior machine learning, 86% of issues are anticipated and avoided before the user even notices.

HPE Alletra – optimised for mission and business-critical workloads

Experience has shown, organisations value the ease, self-service, and automation possibilities of cloud. Consequently, IT administrators have been faced with delivering that experience to mission-critical applications while maintaining performance and reliability. HPE offers two Alletra solutions to meet the needs of a broad range of businesses.

HPE Alletra 9000 is architected for mission-critical applications that demand low latency and high availability. The unique multi-node, all-active technology enables massive parallelisation for predictable and consistent performance at scale. Consolidate legacy and next-generation mission-critical applications with very low latency and a guarantee of 100 percent availability. HPE Alletra 9000’s all-NVMe architecture enables a world leading performance density of over 2 million IOPS12.

HPE Alletra 6000, in contrast, is well-suited to mission-critical applications requiring stringent availability and performance SLAs. It offers rapid, consistent performance while maintaining an industry-leading data economy. It requires minimal setup, and its always-on data services and app-aware intelligence assist performance and efficiency.

Alletra exceeds the requirements of business and mission-critical workloads through several carefully designed and integrated components:

  • All-active architecture – The HPE Alletra 9000 platform is a first-of-its-kind massive parallel, multi-node, all-active platform. Massive parallelisation is possible when all volumes are active on all media, controllers, and host ports — at all times.
  • Efficient handling of large I/O sizes – HPE Alletra can handle high IOPS in low-latency applications whilst having the bandwidth to handle big I/Os.
  • App-aware resiliency that forecasts issues to prevent disruptions – HPE Alletra forecasts and avoids disruptions across storage, servers, and virtual machines. The solution is backed by a no-questions-asked guarantee of 100% availability.
  • Mixed-workload technology – The HPE Alletra 9000 is equipped with purpose-built ASICs optimised for mixed workloads.
  • System-wide striping – HPE Alletra system-wide striping ensures that data is distributed over standard RAID groups and across all drives behind a controller node and all drives in a system, optimising performance and efficiency.
  • Mission-critical availability and storage consolidation – HPE Alletra 9000 provides Priority Optimisation software with Quality of Service (QoS) controls for crucial attributes such as bandwidth, latency, and IOPS to assure mission-critical workloads and optimal performance. These capabilities enable verification of QoS levels without physically partitioning resources or maintaining distinct storage silos.

Key outcomes for businesses using Alletra

Dealing with unforeseen interruptions to data access (such as unscheduled downtime, forklift upgrades, and escalating support expenses) can be disruptive to business outcomes. Alletra unifies the user experience of cloud-based storage as-a-service, removing unnecessary complexity and scaling with your business’s evolving demands.

Today, more than ever, application uptime is critical. Data loss results in time and money being wasted. That’s why HPE Alletra 9000 includes a 100% availability guarantee as standard, while HPE Alletra 6000 includes a 99.9999% availability guarantee.

HPE Alletra’s predictive support automation enables the elimination of level 1 and level 2 support, granting you access to next level support and eliminating time-consuming and inconvenient escalations.

Spelling an end to rip-and-replace disruptive platform cycles, HPE Alletra systems are easily expandable to meet the demands of your organisation. By minimising complex, long, and disruptive data transfers, the value of your data infrastructure is safeguarded.

Conclusion

HPE Alletra is a data infrastructure solution that emulates the cloud in resilience, agility, and overall operating experience. Simultaneously, the solution enriches the storage experience by providing a perfect infrastructure for business- and mission-critical applications that demand excellent latency sensitivity and availability. Contact us, your IT partner, to explore how HPE Alletra can benefit your business.

Containerisation: Harmonising workloads at the edge

Containerisation: Harmonising workloads at the edge

Containerisation: Harmonising workloads at the edge

Cloud and centralised data centres have dominated the IT compute discourse over the past decade. These approaches leverage the economy of scale to significantly decrease the marginal cost of the system operation and administration, and lower the capital expenditure needed for scaling.

Recently, mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT) applications have given rise to a decentralised computing approach. The edge computing paradigm serves these applications in terms of efficiency and economy. This means computing and storage resources are positioned at the edge, closer to the data source, sensors, and mobile devices. The advancement of blockchain-based solutions contributes to the edge computing movement. It offers a new way of exchanging valuable insights between intelligent edge devices without uncovering the underlying data.

Edge computing involves the deployment of resources at the edge, delivering highly responsive computing services for mobile applications, scales easily, and has privacy advantages for IoT applications. As the computing paradigm shifts towards the inclusion of edge servers, lightweight containerisation solutions are fast becoming the standard for application packaging and orchestration.

With containerisation technology, applications deployed on the edge can be deployed in the remote data centre and vice versa. Moving large amounts of on-premises data to the data centre may be costly and could cause delayed response due to the limited bandwidth of communication channels. For some industries, replicating on-premises data to the data centres may have regulatory constraints.

The design and deployment of edge-specific workloads must primarily address the following challenges:

  • The management complexity of distributed workloads
  • Increased security risks
  • The limitations of latency and bandwidth.

Containerisation solutions address these challenges effectively by:

  • Managing application deployment across various infrastructure types and any number of devices
  • Seamlessly and reliably deploying applications across distributed infrastructure
  • Remaining open, maintaining flexibility and easily adapting to evolving requirements
  • Implementing latest security best practices across hybrid workloads

The containerisation provides the means to harmonise workloads that help with modernisation and abstraction from the underlying infrastructure, allowing DevOps teams to approach the deployment at the edge with the same set of tools as they would traditionally in data centres and the cloud.

HPE Ezmeral – the enterprise containerisation solution

HPE Ezmeral Container Platform facilitates deployment and management of containerised enterprise applications at scale. Ezmeral supports the deployment of both cloud-native and non-cloud-native monolithic applications with persistent data. The prominent use cases for Ezmeral include machine learning, analytics, IoT/Edge, DevOps (CI/CD), and application modernisation.

Kubernetes is part of Ezmeral’s offering. Kubernetes has emerged as an open-source system for container orchestration, providing the fundamental building blocks for cloud-native architectures. The HPE Ezmeral Container Platform includes technical innovations from HPE following the acquisitions of BlueData and MapR, together with open-source Kubernetes for orchestration. BlueData has a proven track record of deploying non-cloud-native AI and Analytics applications in containers. At the same time, MapR brings a state-of-the-art file system and data fabric for persistent container storage. With the HPE Ezmeral Container Platform, users can extend container agility and efficiency benefits to more enterprise applications — regardless of where and how they run (bare-metal, ritualised infrastructure, on-premises, multiple public clouds, or edge).

Ezmeral is a 100% open-source, Kubernetes-based, turnkey solution that brings consistent processes and standard services to cloud-native and non-cloud native apps. The solution delivers improved agility, increased efficiency, and a cloud-like experience to non-cloud-native apps. Ezmeral offers greater parity for application developers working with monolithic, non-cloud-native apps.

The rapid evolution of edge computing

The edge computing concept detaches computing applications, data, and services from centralised data centres to the edge of the network. The main objective is to allow data processing services to be placed near the source of data. Edge computing is closely related to the IoT. While centralised, cloud computing provides a holistic view of the data and operations, the edge is responsible for localised views.

Edge computing environments are resource-limited and can only tolerate lightweight and simplified software runtimes. The performance measure of any edge solution considers deployment time, responsiveness, scalability, and flexibility. Containerisation has emerged as the solution to easily package, deploy and orchestrate edge applications that satisfy these stringent performance requirements.

Containerised applications can flexibly perform edge workloads, allowing easy upgrade and continuous deployment capabilities. This is particularly important when it comes to evolving security vulnerabilities. Using containerisation technologies and container orchestration will enable developers to swiftly update and deploy atomic security updates or new features, without affecting the day-to-day systems of IoT and edge solutions.

The rapid evolution of edge computing has resulted in the creation of systems such as KubeEdge. The system extends native containerised application orchestration capabilities to hosts at the edge. KubeEdge was built upon Kubernetes and provides fundamental infrastructure support for network, app deployment and metadata synchronisation between cloud and edge. Developments such as KubeEdge indicate the importance edge computing is going to play in the computing landscape.

Final thoughts

Edge computing addresses challenges associated with latency-sensitive and real-time applications such as autonomous driving, AR/VR, industrial automation, and video processing. The essence of the solution is founded in the migration of those applications from distant data centres to the edge of the network.

Businesses seek reliable software solutions that allows easy and efficient management of edge infrastructure. Containerisation solutions accelerate migration of existing applications to the edge and the deployment of new and dedicated ones. The main advantages lie in easy scalability and the ability to leverage existing applications, toolchains, and developers’ expertise.

Containerisation isn’t limited to edge applications and large enterprises. Small and medium enterprises can benefit from HPE containerisation solutions and applications, such as app modernisation and the adoption of DevOps for increased productivity.

HPE offers a suite of containerisation products and solutions that can help organisations stand out and build a solid foundation for the future. Any business navigating edge computing should consult an experienced IT partner. Contact us to assist as you build a framework and begin to take advantage of the advances at the edge.

Zerto – Disaster Recovery Solutions: What Zerto can do for you?

Zerto – Disaster Recovery Solutions: What Zerto can do for you?

Zerto – Disaster Recovery Solutions: What Zerto can do for you?

Over the last few years the world seems defined by change, with an increase in the number of challenges organisations are facing, including natural disasters, the global crisis, malicious cyberattacks, human error and infrastructure failure. No business, irrespective of size or industry, is immune to these disruptions. These challenges have resulted in the need to accelerate digital initiatives to better address customer needs, which means an acceleration of cloud to deliver at the speed of businesses, heightened security threats and protecting data wherever it resides. Underpinning these challenges is the growing demand for always-on, 24/7 business.

Customers and stakeholders, both internal and external, expect uninterrupted access to their data and applications. The expectation is no downtime and no data loss. Businesses must turn their attention to disaster recovery and back up to ensure that they can meet the demands of a 24/7 business. It is important to consider both the direct and indirect impacts, including financial costs, resources, brand and reputational damage, which results in the loss of productivity. This is in addition to the time spent during and after an incident on analysing, communicating, and reporting. Zerto’s downtime calculator can help you estimate the dollar value an IT outage would cost your organisation.

The imperative for disaster recovery solutions

Zerto is a leader in the data replication, protection and high-growth disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) market.

Many back-up, DR, and ransomware solutions do not necessarily do enough to prevent business downtime, meaning the cost of downtime is not significantly mitigated even if the data is fully recovered. And with time, these costs add up, resulting in significant financial, operational, and reputational loss.

As a result, Zerto assists organisations with continuous data protection (CDP) in the form of backup, disaster recovery, and cloud-based mobility as a single, all-encompassing solution in the form of Zerto 9.0, the latest version of the HPE Zerto IT Resilience Platform.

This latest version includes a range of advanced features designed to protect organisations from the growing threat of ransomware, including immutability and automation, new cloud data management and protection capabilities for end users and managed service providers.

Zerto supports simplicity at scale with one interface, one experience whether that’s on-premises or cloud. The implementation and deployment is fast integrating with an existing tech stack and on-going management is made easy, allowing businesses to protect and mobilise thousands of VMs and terabytes of data to meet critical SLAs.

With orchestration built in, manual processes for backup and disaster recovery are automated. Non-disruptive testing allows users to perform at any time, even during business hours.

Zerto’s CDP technology delivers industry best RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives) and RTOs (Recovery Time Objective), minimising the business impact of data loss and downtime. This CDP is across clouds and platforms, empowering businesses to unlock the promise and potential of a hybrid and multi-cloud world.

Part of what makes Zerto’s CDP so powerful is its unique journaling capabilities. The journal tracks every change made in an application or on a server, logging them as checkpoints every 5 or 10 seconds. It retains this capability even when working with thousands of servers. This innovative journal can store the changed data for up to 30 days. This presents unmatched granularity when it comes to recovery, with the ability to rewind to the required checkpoint and recover from that point in time.

This CDP is made possible with Zerto’s near-synchronous, block-level replication, providing the best of both synchronous and asynchronous approaches. Sitting at the hypervisor level, Zerto can be a software-only solution, independent of the underlying hardware and infrastructure. This allows the platform to work seamlessly across hypervisors, clouds, and platforms.

Recovering complex enterprise applications requires the protection of VMs as a cohesive, logical entity. Otherwise, there are risks of inconsistent recovery of multi-VM applications where each VM is restored to a different point in time.

When creating recovery points with Zerto, all the VMs will share the same checkpoint. When the application is recovered, every VM that contains the application recovers from the same point. This allows organisations to protect and recover complex multi-VM applications as one unit to the same point in time, equating to large savings on resources and less time dedicated to recovery.

This platform’s primary aim is to reduce the overhead and stress of managing an organisation’s DR plans through its easy-to-use, highly scalable, cross-functional platform, designed for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Zerto has analytics built in, including out of the box dashboards and reports that provide complete visibility across multi-site, multi-cloud environments and allows for hands-off compliance reporting. Beyond visibility, Zerto offers tools to conduct intelligent, predictive infrastructure planning to enhance your ability to be proactive.

The Zerto Platform converges backup, disaster recovery, and cloud mobility solutions into a single, scalable platform that integrates with HPE servers, 3PAR, StoreOnce, SimpliVity, Nimble, MSA Storage and Hyper converged solutions.

The Zerto IT Resilience Platform delivers over 50% savings in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), RPOs of fewer than 10 seconds, and the ability to scale to over 10,000 VMs, resulting in the ability to help customers recover from unplanned downtime caused by disasters such as ransomware and cyberattacks.

HPE and Zerto: Exceeding organisational IT requirements

With HPE, Zerto has delivered world-leading disaster recovery, backup, and data mobility for cloud-native, containerised, and ritualised applications environments. These include backup and DR for Kubernetes, backup for SaaS, and DR for AWS across all regions and availability zones. In spite of these technological advantages, the real value is arguably in the business value and outcomes, as Zerto can ensure your business continues running uninterrupted.

While businesses continue to face significant issues managing data complexity across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, HPE and Zerto’s offering provides a leading solution in managing and protecting organisational data.

Not only is it worth considering HPE Zerto as your DR solution, there are new ranges of innovative Zerto solutions coming soon. ​​We can help you take advantage of the HPE Zerto solution as your IT partner and advisor. Reach out today to make sure you’re getting the most out of the latest solutions.