Tag:

Conferences

With a crowded Kubernetes market, how does HPE differentiate?

by Philip Sellers June 23, 2020

written by Philip Sellers

As of writing, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation has 137 different certified distributions or flavors of Kubernetes. That’s a very crowded and fragmented marketplace of choice for consumers. Much of the differentiation between distributions is within the CNI and CSI – the container networking interface and container storage interface. A company’s opinion or innovation around how to handle networking and storage generally powers the differentiation of a distribution.

HPE Container Platform was first introduced back in November, 2019. Unlike its competitors, HPE offers CSI’s for many of its storage offerings, allowing persistent storage offerings across many Kubernetes distributions. And if the company’s strategy is to support many distros, why have its own? HPE’s Container Platform is based on 100% pure Kubernetes. That’s not differentiated, so what are the ways that HPE is trying to make their distro different?

Controller

Kubernetes is Kubernetes. In the case of HPE, its Container Platform has a lifecycle controller and management plane, from the acquisition of BlueData, is the first place it is differentiating its offering. HPE touts it as the first enterprise-ready platform — marketing that is next to meaningless. While BlueData released multiple earlier versions, the first HPE release – version 5, back in November 2019, made the switch to Kubernetes as the orchestration engine while it continues to use the BlueData controller.

Controllers and management planes are important. Lifecycle is an important concept and Kubernetes is like any other software. You must upgrade it and manage your orchestration software. A lot of the value proposition from VMware’s PKS/TKGi offering is around their lifecycle driven through BOSH. The HPE Container Platform has a very similar value proposition to ease administration for the enterprise.

Physical

HPE’s Container Platform is bare-metal. It runs on hardware and does not have the extra licensing costs or overhead associated with competitors offerings that run inside of a hypervisor. But unlike competitors on bare-metal, HPE touts that its physical platform can support both stateless and stateful workloads. Squarely, HPE is talking about VMware here.

VMware has made a lot of noise around Kubernetes in the last couple years, by integrating it as a first-class citizen on its hypervisor in the latest release. VMware’s opinion is the best way to orchestration containers is on a hypervisor – and HPE is here to say that they believe bare metal is the best way to run containers.

Cloud Native & Traditional, side by side

HPE touts its data layer as the answer to running both stateless, cloud-native workloads and stateful, traditional workloads side-by-side on its Container Platform. This is an important concept. A big barrier to entry for cloud-native software and operations is the legacy software and systems that companies have investments.

Within my own organization, the conversation of what is container ready and what is not is a big sticking point to migration of the overall DevOps methodology of software release and management. HPE’s ability to allow stateful, legacy software to run in a container beside of stateless, cloud-native services is a potentially massive advantage.

Opinionated towards Data

The BlueData acquisition powers most of what is in the Ezmeral portfolio. It is an opinionated release of Kubernetes that packages together AI/ML and data analytics software into an app store. In terms of distributions and addressable markets, HPE is smart to focus on a market with maturing software products that run cloud-native, that tap into the full ability of bare metal to deliver value to customers, and to develop a full ecosystem for that addressable market.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning both benefit from lots of resources – both CPU and RAM – along with many other data services and analytic software packages. This is a smart bet to align to the company’s strength in hardware and focus on software that extends those benefits.

ML Ops

Think DevOps married to Machine Learning and you get ML Ops. It is DevOps like speed and practice brought to Machine Learning workflows. Machine Learning, by its very nature, is iterative and workflows are a key to iterative work. This is a specialized niche of the industry at this time, but its one that HPE can have a larger opinion and leadership position on – rather than targeting mass adoption – like its failed Helion cloud efforts in the past.

June 23, 2020 0 comments

With Project New Stack, HPE seeks to stitch together on-prem and multiple clouds

by Philip Sellers June 10, 2017

written by Philip Sellers

One of the most interesting announcements this week at HPE Discover was a project called New Stack. The project is a technology preview that HPE is ramping up with beta customers later this year, but the intentions of the project are to integrate the capabilities of all the “citizens” it manages to provide IT with cloud-like capabilities based on HPE platforms and marry that with the ability to orchestrate and service multiple-cloud offerings. That’s a mouthful, I know – so lets dig in.

If you assess the current HPE landscape of its infrastructure offerings, it has been building a management layer utilizing its HPE OneView software layer and its native API’s to allow for a full software-definition of its hardware. Based on OneView, HPE has created hyperconverged offerings and its HPE Synergy offerings building additional capabilities on top of OneView. With the converged offerings, the deployment times are reduced and the long term management has been improved with proprietary software.

With the HyperConverged offerings, HPE calls it VM Vending – meaning its a quick way to create VM workloads for traditional application stacks easily. It does not natively assist with cloud-native types of workloads. Certainly, you can deploy VM and VMware solutions to assist with OpenStack and Docker. Synergy improves upon the hyperconverged story by including the Image Streamer capability to allow native stateless system deployment and flexibility, in addition to the traditional workloads. Synergy is billed as a bimodal infrastructure solution that enables customers to do cloud-native and traditional workloads, side-by-side.

The Gap

And then there is a gap. The gap is the required orchestration layers to enable cloud-like operations in on-premises IT solutions. HPE has a package called CloudSystem, which also existed as a productized converged solution, that include this orchestration layer to enable cloud-like . The primary problem with CloudSystem is cost. Its expensive – personal experience. Its also cumbersome. CloudSystem pieced together multiple different software packages that already existed in HPE – including some old dial-up billing software that morphed into cloud billing. CloudSystem was clearly targeted towards service providers.

The reality is today that regular IT needs to transform and be able to operate with cloud methodologies. It needs to be able to offer a service catalog to its user – whether developers, practitioners, or business folks ordering services for their organization. Project New Stack is planned to allow this cloud operation and orchestration across on-premises and multiple clouds.

Enter Project New Stack

New Stack is entirely new development for the company, based around HPE’s Grommet technology and integrating technology from CloudCruiser, which it acquired in January of 2017. CloudCruiser provides cost analysis software for cloud and so that provides a big part of what has been shown for Project New Stack during Discover. CloudCruiser focused on public cloud, so HPE has had to do some development around costing for on-premises infrastructure. It attempts to give a cost and utilization percentages across all your deployment endpoints.

Project New Stack taps into the orchestration capabilities of Synergy and its hyperconverged solutions to assist with pivoting resources into new use cases on-premises. It uses those resources to backend the services offered in a comprehensive service catalog. Those services are offered across a range of infrastructure, on-site and remote. Administrators should be able to pick and choose service offerings and map them from a cloud vendor to their users for consumption, but this is not the only method of consumption.

Talking with HPE folks on the show floor, they don’t see Project New Stack as the interface that everyone in an organization will always use. Developers can still interact with AWS and Azure from directly within their development tools, but Project New Stack should take any of those service spun-up or consumed and report them, aggregate them and allow the business to manage them. It doesn’t hamper other avenues of consumption and explains the focus on cost analysis and management for the new tool.

Orchestration is only part of the story. New Stack should gives line of business owners the ability to get insights from their consumption and make better decisions about where to deploy and run their apps. Marrying it with a service catalog gives a new dimension of decision making ability, based around cost. As with all costing engines, the details will make or break the entire operation. Every customer gets varying discounts and pricing from Azure and AWS. How those price breaks translate into the cost models will really dictate whether or not the tool is useful.

The ability to present a full service catalog shouldn’t be diminished. It is a huge feature – enabling instantiation of services in the same way, no matter where the backend cloud or on-premises. On-premises is new territory for most enterprises with cloud services. Enterprise is slow to change, but if the cloud cliff is real, more companies will face making the decision and brining those cloud-native services back on-premises for some use cases.

What I do not hear HPE talking about is migration of services from one cloud to another. While it may be included, this is typically the achilles heal for most cloud discussions. This is easier to accomplish with micro-services and new stack development than with traditional workloads. Bandwidth constraints and incompatibilities between clouds still exist for traditional workloads. And I didn’t get far enough into the system on the show floor to see how an enterprise could leverage the system to deploy their own cloud-native code, or simply draw insights from the cloud-native code deployed.

Final Impressions

Project New Stack was the most interesting thing that I saw HPE Discover this week. While HPE has been developing software defined capabilities for its infrastructure, what has been lacking is an interface to integrate it all together. OneView is a great infrastructure-focused product made for defining and controlling the full on-premises infrastructure stack. Its incredibly important to allowing cloud-like operations on-premises. In the early forms, it won’t tie everything up in a nice little package, but it is early and that’s intention on HPE’s park to get the product out and into the hands of customers and then refine.

June 10, 2017 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

Partnership announcements at HPE Discover may signal strategy change

by Philip Sellers December 21, 2016

written by Philip Sellers

While HPE typically uses Discover to announce its latest and greatest, news from HPE Discover in London this year included the names of several other vendors. It was a year of partnerships for the company. But that comes after the company has a lot of explaining to do. The blogger sessions that I took part in, it was clear that a lot of explanation was needed concerning the “spin-merge” of Enterprise Services out with CSC and the sale of its software application assets to MicroFocus.

With both of these transactions, HPE is retaining strategic partnerships with both companies. In terms of services, Meg Whitman has publicly said that customers will not see any interruption in the services provided and that all that will be changing is the logo on the invoice for customers. For HPE, it has a focused strategic partner for outsourcing and consulting. When talking software, HPE has a partnership with MicroFocus to continue to sell its software and OEM some of its products in bundles of software. According to The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/08/uk-micro-focus-hewlett-packard-software-deal), HPE shareholders will own 50.1% of the new combined company.

HPE and Arista Networks announced more partnerships for the benefits of its mutual customers with cloud-focused networking. After a re-org within HPE, cloud-networking with Arista will belong to the Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG) while all of HPE’s other networking assets transition under the Software-Defined and Cloud Group (SDCG). Those other assets include Aruba, the 3Com acquired assets and the traditional ProCurve line of networking.

The Arista Networks announcement is interesting to me – because it isn’t a no-brainer type of announcement. This is strategic about providing cloud-centric networking to its customers – a niche it doesn’t have in its own portfolio, even though there is overlap. The HPE of old (yes, that is funny for a year old company!) would be closely aligned and vowing allegiance to its own portfolio, but a decoupled entity is able to do what is best for its customers.

In the same vein, HPE announced a deeper partnership with Veeam. In addition to the existing partnership points between Veeam’s backup and recovery software and HPE’s storage lines, HPE is now going in as a Veeam reseller – so that customers can buy the entire package solution directly from HPE.

Veeam has been a great partner to HPE, implementing deep integration points for its flagship backup and recovery product with the storage lines of HPE – both the 3PAR StoreServ and StoreVirtual storage platforms and the StoreOnce deduplicating disk-to-disk arrays. Veeam has even gone as far as implementing support for Catalyst, HPE’s proprietary protocol for backups on StoreOnce.

HPE, on the other hand, was not quick to embrace Veeam entirely – because of overlapping products in its own portfolio. These assets are being spun out of the company with the sale of its software applications to MicroFocus. This divestiture allows the new, new HPE to partner with best-of-breed backup software that tightly integrates with its hardware.

It seems that no company can be everything to everyone and execute on that strategy well. Strategic partnerships with smaller, innovative companies may be a path to greater success for the company, which has struggled with direction in recent years.

December 21, 2016 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

HPE introduces native Docker drivers for 3PAR and StoreVirtual

by Philip Sellers June 16, 2016

written by Philip Sellers

The following post has been edited. The capabilities originally reported are not in this release the Docker storage drivers and the post has been updated for accuracy.

HPE announced last week at HPE Discover that it will be shipping native Docker storage drivers for 3PAR StoreServ and StoreVirtual arrays. This storage driver will allow for the persistent Docker images natively stored on the company’s arrays.

In the initial release, HPE is releasing a driver that can be used for Docker containers that require persistent storage – like database servers. The persistent volume will be stored on the 3PAR or StoreVirtual arrays directly in bare metal Docker deployments. The Docker-Integrated Volume Plugin for HPE 3PAR StoreService is available from the HPE Storage GitHub page at https://github.com/hpe-storage/python-hpedockerplugin. According to HPE, the Plugin supports Docker Compose; Docker Swarm; application mobility across Docker Engine nodes; secured etcd clusters; and iSCSI CHAP authentication. Also supported are Docker Volume options for volume size, provisioning (thin, full, or deduplicated) and adaptive flash caching for 3PAR StoreServ. StoreVirtual supports volume size and provisioning (thin or full).

In addition to the Docker storage drivers, HPE also announced a wide-spread partnership with Docker which includes full hardware certification for HPE Servers and Docker shipping on all new HPE servers starting later in the year. The partnership also allows HPE customers a single point-of-contact for enterprise support of the whole solution. HPE is also working with Docker to enable monitoring for Docker environments from HPE Site Scope.

June 16, 2016 0 comments

Compute Datacenter Networking

With new HPE EdgeLine systems, its about data proximity

by Philip Sellers June 14, 2016

written by Philip Sellers

Less than a year ago, HPE announced a new set of products under its EdgeLine banner. These devices were created to enable the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect with other IT infrastructure and to allow IT to tap into sensor data and other capabilities directly attached to devices. With the term, Internet of Things, visions of connected refrigerators and connected toaster ovens spring to mind, but when it comes to the Enterprise, where the new HPE is clearly focused, what does an IoT play look like?

HPE believes that when it comes to IoT in the enterprise, it is all about empowering processing and analytics to occur close to where the data is being generated. This past week at HPE Discover in Las Vegas, HPE announced the EdgeLine 1000 and EdgeLine 4000 series of devices that allow more processing power to be deployed into the field near these connected devices that generate data. These devices join the EdgeLine EL10 and EL20 gateway devices it introduced in December at HPE Discover in London. The idea is that by processing the data in the field, the enterprise can save on data transmission, security and can really do some interesting new things in the field. HPE sees this as critical in the success of IoT for enterprise.

The EdgeLine 1000 uses a single ProLiant cartridge (the kind used in HPE Moonshot) in a ruggedized metal case with built-in expansion slots for drives and PCI cards. The EdgeLine 1000 shown off at HPE Discover also featured integrated wireless networking on the system. The EdgeLine 4000 accommodates up to 4 ProLiant cartridges and resembles a traditional rack-mount server.

Why Process Near the Data?

Many of these industrial uses of IoT may be in remote and disconnected parts of the world. It may not be feasible or cost-effective to pay for the data plans required to connect these devices and push all of that data to a datacenter or the cloud. Remote oil platforms, refineries, industrial sites, and even remote jungle deployments [like the one HP showcased with Conservation International] may not have available connectivity options. Or if they do, satellite internet connections are metered and expensive. And even in well connected areas, it may come down to security and not wanting these devices actually talking to the Internet. There may be regulations or laws that govern what connectivity can be established – or it may be simple corporate secrets where they do not want to introduce the risk of transmitting the data outside of its corporate IT.

While at HPE Discover, the team from DS Virgin Formula E racing talked with our group of bloggers. One of the most interesting things about Formula E racing is the amount of sensor data created by the electric race cars and then the amount of data analytics that the teams are performing on that data in the field. For the DS Virgin Formula E team, this was a huge contributor to a much more successful season in year 2. During the first year, the team did not have analytics in the field and were purely racing based on instinct and some review of the sensor data manually. Now the team has deployed HPE Moonshot in the pit and they can download and analyze the sensor data received from the car. In a typical race day, the team comes to a track, has no previous experience with the track, and after a couple rounds of qualifying with short times in between, they run the final race. By using analytics, they take the data obtained by the car in qualifying and they can make adjustments and plans about how to run the race best and most efficiently. The results show for themselves with the team taking the poll in most of the races this season and ranking currently 3rd in the entire field for the year. Taking the same data and sending to to the cloud is a waste of time – the transmission time is better spent doing analytics during very tight turn-arounds. The same principal applies with IoT data.

You also have to determine what data is actually valuable. Everyone talks about the astronomical size of the data that will be generated from IoT devices. Even if you have good connectivity, using all of your available upstream bandwidth to transmit sensor data is probably not the best use case of your connectivity. Case in point, I personally started with a DropCam at home for security reasons – but I dislike the device because it clogs my upstream – constantly transmitting video the cloud. Instead, I have setup another set of cameras that only transmit minute long clips when a camera detects motion. That’s really what I care about – knowing that something moved and seeing video of that – not broadcasting 24/7. IoT generated data is a lot the same and this is where HPE’s vision lies – putting the software to detect the motion or a failure or other event near the data generating device and then allow the detection to occur there.

Unlocking New Capabilities

Also by having processing available in the field, you open up new capabilities to remote workers. HPE was demoing a pump system from FlowServe on the show floor at HPE Discover. FlowServe makes industrial pumps for major operations around the world. Approximately 10,000 of those pumps are outfitted with sensors that can communicate problems, status and operational data points. FlowServe has been working with HPE and the EdgeLine product line to take their sensor-enabled pumps and extend those capabilities by connecting them.

In the demo I saw, FlowServe was able to connect the pump system to an EdgeLine 1000 system and then run real time monitoring of the pump. With these located thousands of miles away from main office locations, this sensor data could enable operators to know when conditions that may ruin a pump occur and shutdown the system to prevent problems. Now, that’s not new – what is new about the solution is that the EdgeLine system could then transmit that problem to a help desk and arrange for a repair automatically. That’s the power of connectivity.

Once a repairman is onsite, however, he may have never seen the installation and may not know anything about where the actual problem occurred. HPE and FlowServe were showing off an augmented reality program that paired an iPad with special software that take a live picture of the installation and overlays sensors and status to the live picture. This augmented reality app can show the repairman where the problem has occurred, give them important data about what needs to be services and even allow the repairman to start the system back up and ensure that his repair was successful by communicating security with the EdgeLine system in the field. A photo of the augmented reality app is to the right.

Smart Cities

HPE was talking specifically about industrial applications – manufacturing, oil, gas – but an interesting fourth example – smart cities. In the case of smart cities, HPE is thinking about traffic cameras, environmental sensors and other applications of technology to connected devices. In its concept of smart cities, HPE showed demos of connect vehicles communicating with one another or with drivers to warn about potholes or other obstructions in the roadway – sort of like Waze, but with much more automation and precision. Booths also showed off solutions for smart parking, health care, supply chain, waste management, the connected car and personal safety tracking devices. All of the solutions were built around interactions that we would have with technology to assist us in our daily lives.

I also talked with a security researcher in Hewlett Packard Labs and we had an interesting discussion about pushing facial recognition analytics out to individual cameras where specific persons of interest could be recognized by the camera, rather than having to transmit all the video data back for centralized analytics to run on it. Innovation like that could enable quicker arrests and pinpointing terrorists before they strike.

While I walked around the booths demoing concepts for the smart city, I have to admit that I thought about TomorrowLand and Walt Disney. This had to be sort of how TomorrowLand felt when it first debuted. Very futuristic concepts of how a smart city could run.

June 14, 2016 0 comments

Compute Datacenter Storage

HPE introduces Synergy, a hardware platform for composable infrastructure

by Philip Sellers December 8, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

The new Hewlett Packard Enterprise introduced its first major new platform last week during HPE Discover in London. The new platform is named Synergy and is based around the idea of composable infrastucture – hardware that can be programatically composed into the desired form for a specific use case. The Synergy platform follows up on the Project Synergy concept HP introduced during the June Discover event in Las Vegas. While HPE has been working with third-parties to get support for its API for composable infrastructure, it was also creating the new generation of hardware needed to power the concept.

HPE staff says that Synergy is a completely new hardware platform built to enable the composable concept. In many ways, the Synergy platform looks like a next-generation C7000 blade chassis. There are quick, noticeable differences.

HPE-Synergy-with-Composer-Pulled-out_low

HPE Synergy 12000 Frame with 12 compute nodes and the Synergy Composer module pulled out

Synergy trims down the number of compute slots from 16 to 12. When asked why – HPE execs told me that the goal of the Synergy platform was to power compute for the next 10 years and that meant flexibility not density as a primary concern. Some peer bloggers scoffed at the 10 year future for the platform, but as an HP customer, that is the lifetime I have received from my existing C7000 BladeSystems as a platform, which are approaching a 10 year anniversary.

With the Synergy platform, there are some terminology changes. HPE engineers told me that they are moving away from the term blade and refer to the servers as compute nodes. The interconnects become the fabric in the Synergy platform. And lastly, the core chassis that everything plugs into is known as a frame.

In an attempt to future-proof the new platform, HPE created a mid-plane in the frame that is photonics capable – meaning, when photonics come to market, there are pathways to utilize them in this chassis. The midplane has also been simplified, according to HPE engineers and there is a bit more breathing room mean for cooling around the servers. Utilizing the additional space, the new compute nodes will have the same number of DIMM slots as their rackmount counterparts, allowing them to stack as much RAM and removing any downside to the converged platform.

Solving issues of scale

While the physical hardware largely resembles the C7000 BladeSystem chassis, HPE set out to solve several of the problems that exist with the C7000 when trying to create a composable infrastructure platform.

First, Synergy embraces HPE OneView as the management platform, removing the onboard administrator management. OneView lives within the Synergy Composer, a management appliance that exists in one of the two appliance bays located on the left side of each of the Synergy platform frame.

Second, Synergy scales better using OneView by allowing a single Synergy Composer to manage up to 20 frames. The Frame Link Module is built to connect frames over greater distances over normal twisted pair, copper cables (CAT5, CAT6, etc.). For redundancy, another Synergy Composer can be placed into an appliance bay in a different frame and the pair mirror one another with failover capabilities.

Solving issues of the OS

Third, Synergy introduces an all-new Synergy Image Streamer – another type of appliance module that sits in an appliance bay – allows for all the boot images required for systems to be stored centrally and managed. The idea behind Image Streamer is to bring many of the same benefits of virtualization to a physical world. Images are stored in the streamer and combined into a Server Profile which includes all of the BIOS settings, WWN and MAC address settings and . The bootable image is presented to the compute node over iSCSI to allow for boot. The complexity of the iSCSI configuration is masked away from the user and handled by Synergy Composer. A second Image Streamer can also be added to another frame for redundancy and the two mirror one another.

The Image Streamer squarely targets OS models without persistent data. Currently, Linux, VMware ESXi and Docker are currently supported OS models with Image Streamer. The boot image is stored as a Golden Master in the Image Streamer and this golden image is forked and combined with a ‘personality’ containing the IP address, hostname and other settings that are applied against the image at boot. The personality can include necessary steps to configure the OS, such as esxcli commands to perform configuration after boot. It is worth noting that Windows is not currently on the list of supported OSes. To patch your OS, you boot the golden image, integrate your changes and then recommit the golden image. At this point, you are able to recompose all of your assigned compute nodes, reboot them and you’re instantly patched. If a patch causes an issue, you are able to roll back to previous state just as easily with a reboot.

Using the Image Streamer doesn’t prevent users from running traditional workloads – like local booting or boot from SAN Windows cluster nodes with SAN storage. Traditional servers can be configured and setup next to Image Streamer profiles. HPE engineers see the Image Streamer as the ultimate flexiblity

Improving connectivity

Another major change is around the fabric and connectivity of the Synergy platform. Since the storage and network have converged even in the C7000 years using FlexFabric modules, Synergy continues this converged theme by utilizing the same Virtual Connect technology of the C7000 and extending it so that a single controlling Virtual Connect module in a one frame can be physically connected to child fabric modules in additional frames. The single Virtual Connect allows for centralized control of Virtual Connect over multiple chassis – or frames. The modules can be daisy chained to simplify management and mobility between compute nodes. The benefit is flexibility to reassign the same server profile to a compute note in a wider range of chassis. The C7000 would almost certainly limit you to blades in the same chassis as reassignment options – due to boundaries of the WWN and MAC ranges.

HPE-Synergy-with-Storage-Module-pulled-out_low

In addition to Virtual Connect, there is also a 12Gb SAS storage module that allows connectivity to Synergy D3940 Storage Modules located in the frame, like the one pulled out in the picture above. The new storage module can be equipped with up to 40 small form factor drives that can be grouped and presented to the compute nodes in the same frame. This would allow disks to be attached and presented as local storage or served up as a StoreVirtual VSA within an ESXi host.

Ship date & pricing

Synergy platform is expected to go on sale at the end of first quarter in 2016 and ship to customers during second quarter of 2016. Pricing has not been announced.

For deployments utilizing the Image Streamer with full redundancy, a minimum of three frames will be required, according to HPE engineers. This allows the necessary management NICs for redundancy with the Image Streamer and redundancy with the Composer appliances. This aligns the Synergy platform with larger environments that need flexibility and the ability to shift and adapt workloads often and on the fly.

December 8, 2015 1 comment

Datacenter Home Tech

Self service IT kiosks and vending machines could improve IT support satisfaction

by Philip Sellers August 12, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

HP was showing off some of its new ideas for IT support at HP Discover. The idea behind internal initiatives were to improve overall IT services to its internal customers – its employees.

One of the initiatives was setting up areas in offices similar to a genius bar in an Apple store where employees could bring their system in for help. The idea was shown in video form on the Discover show floor. Known as myITpc within HP, it is meant to keep support technicians in a single place to provide face to face support for offices that are large enough to warrant this.

For areas that did not have enough users, remote access stations with video chat, KVM and the vending machine provide 24/7 access for employees to get the support they needed. The video chat allows a centralized help desk to support many more individuals without the need to travel. For systems that won’t even boot, there is a KVM attached to allow for remote troubleshooting and recovery from critical failures. But, sometimes the systems are too far gone and this is where the vending machines come into play.

The IT vending machines offer two things to employees within HP – first, it offers the ability to self-service for common parts that break or need replacement and second, it offers a depot for swapping out hardware and performing repairs.

The IT vending machine resembles a normal snack machine where users can swipe or tap an ID card and put in a code to have a particular part dispensed. Everything is tracked by ID number and a code that is assigned for the transaction.

In addition, there are also lockers on the side. If a user has a system that has completely failed, they can get a loaner system from a pre-assigned locker and place their broken machine the locker. This gets the user back to work faster and allows for fewer pickups and drop-offs at remote locations for technicians along with less coordination with the employees. Employees can come to the machine at their convenience to pickup the repaired system and return the loaner.

At upgrade or end-of-lease times, employees can pickup their new hardware from a locker and transition their data across on their own. When done with the old system, they may return it to a locker for return and disposal.

August 12, 2015 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

New HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800 series array architecture make them easier to field upgrade

by Philip Sellers June 18, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

One of the interesting discussions I had during HP Discover was an HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800 architecture discussion with folks on the show floor. At first glance, you’ll notice a large enclosure in the 20800’s cabinet in the photo to the right from the event and also prominently shown in the marketing photos. I was immediately curious what was inside of this enclosure.

Turns out, these 16U enclosures are actually the 8 controllers for a 20800 array. The enclosure is a lot like a blade enclosure with modular controllers that can be added from the back of the enclosure. On the front, there is a bank of fans and batteries for the individual controller nodes. The 8 controllers are wired together through a mid-plane, very simliar to a blade enclosure, and this shared mid-plane eliminates the needs for many wires that would normally wire together these nodes in the “mesh active” architecture. The first thought is that field upgrades should be much simpler due to decreasing the amount of complex wiring required.

In addition to the controller enclosure, another major change in architecture is SAS backend for the 20800 series arrays compared to the 10800 series arrays they replace. The drive enclosures are all connected back to the controllers with SAS cables and the folks I spoke with said that in the field, it should not be necessary to have more than a couple chained SAS connections from the controller to the drive enclosures even in a fully populated array because the controllers have so many available SAS ports. This again keeps things simple for field upgrades.

Not only did the drive enclosures switch to SAS connections, but HP is also introducing a fiber SAS connectivity between the controllers and the drive enclosures to allow the rack of drive enclosures to be locate further away from the controllers themselves in crowded data centers. These connections can extend up to 100 meters according to the people I spoke with. The gallery below shows a little more detail of these changes.

June 18, 2015 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

Evaluating HP Storage Operations Manager from the customer perspective

by Philip Sellers June 3, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

HP has a new name in storage resource management and that name is Storage Operations Manager. I presented today with Kara McMillian at HP Discover about HP’s new Storage Operations Manager product. Storage Operations Manager, or SOM, is the heterogeneous storage resource management software package used to collect and correlate data about your storage environment. It connects to your storage arrays, your SAN fabric and servers to collect and monitor the operation and characteristics of the storage environment. It helps you to visualize the environment by automatically linking and correlating the paths and relationships between the disparate systems – both HP and third-party – within your storage environment.

SOM is a ground-up re-write and re-think of what storage resource management software should be look and operate like. SOM shares the same display underpinnings as the HP NNMi network management package from the HP business software group. This meant that the team writing SOM didn’t have to start a zero, but started with a modern UI and foundation that allowed them to focus directly on the collectors and logic that really mattered within the storage management product.

So what are the key points for customers?

It is really approachable. While the Storage Essentials user interface took some getting accustomed to, Storage Operations Manager makes sense because it looks and works like other modern applications. Once you setup the initial discovery settings, the interface begins to populate data and give you quick and usable summary data on the Dashboard and drill-down areas.
The product is customer installable. Storage Essentials, which SOM replaces, required a service engagement for installation. SOM will not. It is straight forward and a simple installation.
It has a modern HTML5 interface. Anyone who has seen HP’s NNMi product will quickly recognize the shared DNA between the two products. It is a modern, ground-up rewrite built on today’s technology. Gone are the Java applet based visualization tools from Storage Essentials and now these are replaced with plug-in free, HTML5.
Its fast. You’ll notice quicker response time for dashboards and and map views. You click it and it displays – no extended wait times like Storage Essentials, which really were caused by the Java applets.
Integrated performance management for 4 families of storage systems
Faster data collections with a focus on RESTful APIs, where available, makes data collection significantly faster
Easy discovery setup. Just input the IP or DNS name of the device you want to discover, add a username and provide a hint to what type of device this is and SOM will go and try to connect. Also, there are no more discovery groups because the schedules have been removed.
Data collections are no longer tied to specific schedules. Schedules are replaced with freshness criteria that lets you keep the data as fresh as you like rather than having to set specific collection times.
SOM will feature off-cycle device support through device bundle releases. This means that a specific device can receive support without a major software release. Storage Essentials only introduced new device support with major releases. SOM will accelerate new device support.
Reporting is powered by a bundled version of HP’s Service Health Reporter (SHR) product, meaning that again the SOM team leveraged in-house HP expertise for the reporting requirements while they focused on the specific report data that matters to their users. Why’s that a customer point? Because it points to stability – that even though SOM is a first version product, its reporting built on tried and true software.

Summary of Devices Supported

With the initial release of HP Storage Operations Manager 10.0, the system will support the following devices.

Storage Systems
- HP 3PAR StoreServ, StoreEasy, EVA/P6000, & XP/P9000
- EMC Symmetrix DMX, Symmetrix VMAX, CLARiiON, VNX, Isilon, VPLEX
- NetApp’s ONTAP 7-mode
- Hitachi Unified Storage
Fibre Channel Switches
- Brocade
- Cisco
Hypervisors
- VMware vSphere/ESXi
Host Operating Systems
- Windows
- RedHat Linux & SUSE Linux
- HPUX
- Solaris
- AIX

A full list of device support along with the specific version of firmware or software required for compatibility is found within the Device Support Matrix for HP Storage Operations Manager.

Where does it fall short?

For an initial release of a product, HP Storage Operations Manager is a well-rounded replacement for Storage Essentials. Where the product fall a bit short is device support, but remember this is an initial release for an application. Device support will come over time and out of the chute, SOM supports 13 major families of storage arrays and both major Fibre Channel switch vendors. To their credit, the HP team has worked to create a modular device bundle architecture that allows targeted device support as quickly as the team can develop and QA new support and the bundles are not tied to version or even point releases of the product.

Another place this product falls short is agentless Windows OS support. Configuring Windows agentless support not fool proof at this point. Agent-based Windows support is stellar – it is simple install and discovery. I would strongly recommend using the agent approach until this changes.

The last place this product falls short of replacing Storage Essentials is in backup management. The current version of SOM does not contain backup management tools like Storage Essentials contained. Storage Essentials could connect and report from HP Data Protector, Symantec NetBackup and several other softwares. This should come to the new product in the future. In the meantime, I spoke with a product manager and users should be able to run Storage Essentials side-by-side with SOM to allow backup reporting until SOM supports that need.

Disclaimer: HP provided me with early access to this product during the development cycle and HP paid for my trip to HP Discover where I spoke along side of the HP team about this product. My views and opinions shared are my own from my hands-on experience with the product. This is not a paid endorsement.

June 3, 2015 6 comments

Datacenter Storage

A rapid-fire, action-packed week at HP Discover is just around the corner

by Philip Sellers May 25, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

This time next week, HP will be putting the final touches and opening the onsite registration lines for HP Discover. Discover is HP’s annual trade show featuring the full breadth and depth of the HP product portfolio. This is also the final Discover before its separation into two companies, HP, Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, expected in November. HP holds another HP Discover event in Europe during December, so it will be interesting to see how the show is planned once it divides into two separate companies. But as for next week, Discover is always a rapid-fire week of information overload for attendees. It is a challenge to soak up as much as you can to bring back to your employers and I expect no difference this time around.

HP Discover is a chance to learn from experts in sessions, talk with experts on the show floor and network with other HP customers. It’s also a time to hear about direction from executives in the company, who speak to customers and partners together to let us know where the company is going strategically. Discover is used to show off the latest innovations, shiny new things and incremental advances. HP has been busy pushing out new releases and announcements ahead of Discover and there plenty more to come during the event.

I have been invited back to HP Discover by the HP social media group to attend the event as a blogger. Attending as a blogger always gives me a different view than most because we get a great chance to hear directly from executives and product managers about the latest releases and direction of their product lines. Highlights for me always include hearing from the HP storage team and from the ProLiant (aka Industry Standard Server) team. The software and cloud teams always come with challenging new concepts and releases – many of which push me out of my comfort zone, but also provide me with a rich set of ideas to bring back to my company.

I have also been invited to speak along side Kara McMillian, Sr. Product Manager for Storage Management on the Business Software Management team, about my experiences with the brand-new HP Storage Operations Manager (SOM) product. I tested evaluation releases of the SOM product in as HP developed a brand-new, heterogenous storage resource management software product. SOM is the next-generation product that aims to replace HP Storage Essentials, which I have been a long-time user. I’ve spoken along side of Kara and co-worker Inge DeMaere at several previous HP Discover events about the ways we have leveraged Storage Essentials in our enterprise. Please join us for our session, B1058 Introducing HP Storage Operations Manager, the evolution of Storage Resource Management, on Wednesday, June 3, at 11 am.

I’ll be blogging during the week as announcements are made and as I discover things at HP Discover. You may also follow @pbsellers on Twitter for instant updates and retweets from the event.

Disclaimer: HP has invited me and will be covering my costs to attend HP Discover. The offer does not allow any editorial control or direction to HP and the invitation does not have any requirements of me as a blogger. The views and opinions I choose to post are solely my own and are not controlled by HP. I am an HP customer through my primary employer and the level of coverage of this particular vendor is a direct reflection of that relationship and my hands-own experiences.

May 25, 2015 0 comments