HPE Discover 2024: HPE Advances Hybrid Cloud Leadership with Unified Virtualization Management, Fast Object Storage and Disconnected Private Clouds
HPE GreenLake cloud reduces complexity and costs of heterogenous IT environments with hybrid by design cloud operating model.
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on November 26, 2024 at 2:02 pmHewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced key advancements on its GreenLake cloud that simplify management across complex, heterogenous hybrid IT environments and enable customers to increase agility and innovation.
- HPE VM Essentials (VME) Software: VM Essentials is a unified VM management experience that provides customers with choice and flexibility for managing their virtualized workloads across hybrid environments. The new solution simplifies management by integrating existing virtualized workloads with the new HPE VME hypervisor. VM Essentials supports leading storage protocols, distributed workload placement, HA, live migration and integrated data protection. By modernizing with GreenLake cloud and VM Essentials, enterprises can save up to 5x TCO (1).
- HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000: New object storage offers exceptional performance and massive scalability, enabling enterprises to store and retrieve data faster. The X10000 is designed for exabyte scale and achieves up to 6x faster performance vs. the competition (2). HPE’s differentiated multi-protocol (MP) disaggregated architecture for block, file and object storage, simplifies fleet management across hybrid environments and saves customers up to 40% (3).
- New solutions for organizations in regulated environments: HPE will introduce disconnected management for its private cloud and block storage offering, enabling a cloud experience at sites that cannot have an internet connection. Qualified partners will also be able to deliver sovereign private cloud solutions powered by GreenLake.
- HPE Private Cloud AI, co-developed with NVIDIA, expands partner ecosystem and supported use cases: HPE has added 6 new partners to the Unleash AI program to accelerate time to market with solutions for specialized AI use cases. In addition, Deloitte has expanded its collaboration with HPE and will deploy its AI solutions such as C-Suite AI with HPE Private Cloud AI.
“To realize the of hybrid cloud and AI, enterprises need a hybrid-by-design approach,” said Fidelma Russo, executive VP and GM, hybrid cloud and CTO, HPE. “Today, we are proud to announce the most complete HPE GreenLake portfolio to date. With these new offerings, HPE GreenLake cloud delivers a future-proof cloud operating model for virtualized, cloud-native and AI workloads.”
HPE VM Essentials reduces complexity and cost of virtualized workloads
The recent acquisition of Morpheus Data enables GreenLake cloud to further unify and simplify IT operations for customers. VM Essentials is the first step in utilizing Morpheus across the HPE portfolio. Customers have the flexibility to manage existing virtualized workloads or re-platform to the HPE VME hypervisor, while experiencing a simple VM-vending experience across both stacks.
- Reduce costs with HPE’s built-in KVM-based hypervisor: VM Essentials reduces cost for customers with cost-effective per-socket pricing and built-in support for brownfield VM discovery and VM-as-a-service provisioning.
- Simplify management by integrating existing workloads: The software can also integrate customers’ existing hypervisor clusters to enable management and provisioning of VM workloads and kernel-based virtual machines (KVM) from one simple interface, along with basic VM image conversion to VM Essentials.
- Futureproof IT estates with flexible delivery and upgrade paths: VM Essentials will be available as standalone software and integrated into HPE Private Cloud solutions. Customers can also upgrade to full Morpheus PlatformOps to add extensive hybrid cloud management, governance and cost management capabilities.
VM Essentials is backed by HPE’s global support network and ecosystem of ISVs. Cohesity, in AI-powered data security, and Commvault, in cyber resilience and data protection solutions for the hybrid cloud, intend to support HPE VM Essentials, providing VM backup and recovery services.
“HPE VM Essentials provides a real alternative to the status quo. With support for my existing hypervisor and a flexible path for future workloads, we can modernize our business for operational and resource efficiency,” Chris Macken, VP, IT operations and security, Cambrian Credit Union.
New fast object storage offers exceptional performance and massive scalability
The new HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 object storage is designed for EB scale and optimized to enable enterprises to store and retrieve object data faster. The X10000’s exceptional performance is for high-speed data lakes and modern data protection. With this offering, HPE further simplifies storage management through a single disaggregated architecture for block, file and object storage and the intuitive cloud management of GreenLake cloud.
- Access object data faster at massive scale: All-flash fast object storage leverages HPE’s disaggregated, shared-everything MP storage architecture, which allows enterprises to scale capacity and performance independently. The X10000 incorporates HPE’s new simplified branding alongside the Alletra Storage MP B10000, formerly GreenLake for Block Storage.
- Rapidly recover with modern data protection: The X10000 provides massive restore bandwidth, enabling faster data restore for rapid backup and recovery of mission-critical applications. The S3-compatible object-storage interface and de-dupe supports up to 20x data reduction and streamlines integration with any backup solution. The X10000 is certified for backup by vendors including Commvault and Veeam and is being validated with other leading vendors.
HPE is collaborating with NVIDIA to enable a direct data path for direct memory access (DMA) transfers between GPU memory, system memory and the X10000, which is critical for AI applications. This direct path will further increase system bandwidth, decrease latency and improve GPU utilization.
Disconnected management delivers cloud experience for regulated environments
With the acceleration of AI innovation, data has become even more vital to national security and economic competitiveness. Many nations, cities, healthcare organizations, infrastructure providers and research labs want a cloud operating model without exposing sensitive data or IP to open networks. HPE addresses these challenges with new HPE Private Cloud Enterprise Disconnected and Alletra Storage MP Disconnected. These air-gapped private cloud and block storage solutions provide a cloud experience with disconnected management.
Authorized HPE Partner Ready Vantage partners will be able deliver sovereign private cloud services powered by GreenLake. Starting in Europe, partners can create sovereign cloud capabilities that meet local, regional and industry-specific regulations. These partners can earn the HPE Sovereignty competency which demonstrates expertise using GreenLake cloud to provide secure private clouds within a hosted environment or within customers’ own data centers.
HPE expands AI ecosystem with new partners and use cases
AI is a complex hybrid workload that is difficult and expensive for enterprises to deploy and scale. In September, HPE announced the Unleash AI program to accelerate time to value for enterprise customers through validated solutions for HPE Private Cloud AI. HPE has added 6 new partners to Unleash AI: Codeium, Contextual.AI, Dataiku, IronYun, Securiti and Writer. These partners will enable a variety of high-value use cases including AI-powered software development, advanced retrieval-augmented gen (RAG), intelligent video analytics, and solutions for building safe and secure GenAI systems.
Availability
- VM Essentials as standalone software is planned to be available in December and qualified to run with recent HPE ProLiant Compute and HPE Alletra Storage. VM Essentials with HPE Private Cloud Business Edition is expected to be available in Spring 2025.
- HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 will be available in December 2024. The X10000 with direct memory access to NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure is planned to be available in Summer 2025.
- HPE Private Cloud Enterprise Disconnected along with partner-enabled sovereign cloud services is expected to be available in Spring 2025. HPE Alletra Storage MP Disconnected is expected to be available in the 1FH25.
Additional Resources
Customers and Partners React to the Latest Advancements in HPE GreenLake Cloud
BLOG: Optimize, Modernize and Simplify Hybrid IT with HPE VM Essentials
BLOG: Unstructured Data Storage: From Repository to Value Creator
BLOG: Introducing HPE Alletra Storage MP Simplified Brand Architecture
BLOG: Disconnected Cloud Management for High Security, Network Isolated Environments
BLOG: HPE Expands its Private Cloud AI Ecosystem through a Partnership with Deloitte, and New Curated ISV partners in their Unleash AI Partner Program
NEWS BLOG: HPE Partner Ready Vantage Updates Designed to Unlock Significant Opportunity for Partners
(1) Based on internal testing and analysis by HPE. For more published information, review HPE Substantiation Document.
(2) Up to 6x faster than 2 of the leading vendors delivering object storage. Based on internal testing and analysis of publicly available data as of November 2024.
(3) Based on internal use case analysis, Alletra Storage MP reduces TCO vs. non-disaggregated architectures by allowing organizations to avoid over-provisioning.
Comments
This is a big news, at least for HPE and its object storage partners who are now impacted by this announcement.
But it invites us to ask why does HPE develop and release this product after several years without any solutions in both file and object storage? What we mean here is related to products owned and controlled by HPE. Why suddenly their object storage partners don't offer the right solution? They did for many years according to HPE itself. They will appreciate for sure and the joke would be again that HPE will maintain all offerings, the big bazar will continue, we'll see but the idea is always to push hardware.
In file, they acquired Ibrix, PolyServe and Transoft Networks and they never successfully delivered them, they even got CXFS in the SGI basket. They partner with Qumulo and Vast Data and the latter offers a S3 interface but they picked them for file, named GreenLake for File Storage. So why is Vast Data good for file and not for object? The Vast team will also appreciate for sure. Does it mean they will also develop and release a file storage offering? Good luck for a company who has essentially a block storage culture like several big irons. We invite our readers to read again what we wrote about this in 2023. We even remember the time when HP(e) offered SwiftStack, Scality, Ceph, Cleversafe and probably one more... Push hardware with any software was the mantra.
Today, the company argued to deliver 6x times the performance vs. the 2 leading vendors without naming them. What is sure HPE knows well Cloudian and Scality.
One of the reasons could be that HPE estimates that the company must own and offer its product as new AI oriented projects are critical and users can't finally rely on external software. At scale HPE could think that they must own this, OK, and in file? This HPE move invites us to share a point of view HPE has certainly in mind, why do these 2 players they promoted for years never took off as they exist for more than 10 years, no IPO, no exit, tons of money raised... Any (technical) challenge somewhere?
Good luck in a market segment becoming more and more challenging and competitive with new flash-based S3 storage aligned with AI needs from DDN with Infinia, Cloudian HyperStore and its recent GPUDirect support, MinIO AIStor, Scality Ring XP and more globally Hitachi Vantara, Dell, Pure Storage, Weka, NetApp, Quantum, DataCore... The good thing is HPE will be back in the famous Gartner Magic Quadrant but the mystery still remains...
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