HPE Enhances HCI Solutions for Expanding Remote Workforce Initiatives in Wake of Covid-19

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (HPE) announced that the enhanced SimpliVity Gen 10 HCI with the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor, doubles the virtual desktops supported per server to provide businesses a 50% lower cost per remote worker ⁽¹⁾.

Simplivity 325 Gen10 Node

In addition, Nimble Storage dHCI, a disaggregated HCI platform released last year, is available through HPE GreenLake, enabling VDI and VMs as-a-service with a pay as you go model. Advancements to dHCI also include increased scale and support for expanded ProLiant server models with the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor, helping customers use VDI for unpredictable workloads, large scale environments, and performance intensive desktop users.

Nimble Storage Dhci

“Our experience with HPE SimpliVity has been incredible, especially with our large SQL databases, file servers, and virtual desktops that we can rapidly recover in minutes with ease,” said David Wunderley, director, emerging infrastructure and operations support, Pitt Ohio. “During the Covid-19 pandemic, we moved the majority of our corporate users to work from home, and doubled our concurrent VDI user count overnight with no performance impact. The new high density HPE SimpliVity 325 with the 1U form factor will help VDI environments like ours make the most of performance and availability in an extremely small footprint.“

“With HPE Nimble Storage dHCI, we can now provide a superior VDI solution for our 380+ VDI users and 400+ sales reps working remotely due to our changing business model and Covid-19,” said Rob Collins, head, infrastructure and service management, PetSure Pty Ltd. “In the past, we were using AWS for our VDI workloads, but the costs were too high for us. With HPE Nimble Storage dHCI, we are able to reduce our operating costs by 50%, improve our performance 2X for our VDI workloads, and achieve 50% faster application provisioning.“

In today’s environment, businesses are being asked to shift their employees to a virtual office environment to curb the spread of Covid-19. This places new, urgent requirements on IT to quickly enable a remote workforce. Meeting the business and employee needs for VDI requires solving the challenges associated with performance, scale, complexity, and data protection. SimpliVity and dHCI overcome the limitations of traditional infrastructure with intelligent management, easier scalability, cloud data protection, and the performance to support every worker, including knowledge users. During these uncertain times, when capacity is strained and costs need to be controlled, the firm provides businesses with solutions that can help IT optimize their infrastructure to deliver secure, reliable remote access.

Sets new virtual desktop density standard with SimpliVity
Businesses need a reliable, performing, and secure workspace for their remote employees. SimpliVity helps to address this growing remote workforce with an intelligent, software-defined HCI solution that simplifies the time needed to deploy, manage, and scale VDI. For all businesses with remote workers, SimpliVity 325 Gen10 combined with the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor delivers double the virtual desktops per server on average than any other HCI vendor ⁽¹⁾. This drives down the cost for each remote worker by 50% in an 1U platform for entry-level and distributed edge HCI use cases.

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“The Covid-19 global pandemic is an unprecedented situation that is affecting all businesses, our communities, and our way of life,” said Patrick Osborne, VP and GM, SimpliVity, HPE. “As an edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company, HPE is here to help our clients bring together the right expertise and technology solutions to meet their most immediate challenges and unexpected demands. With these challenges, customers are looking to rapidly unleash mobile productivity and desktop virtualization, and HPE SimpliVity and Nimble Storage dHCI solutions provide performance and flexible payment options for our customers.“

SimpliVity 380

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Delivers VDI as-a-service with dHCI
It is architected for VDI users, business-critical applications, and mixed workloads with unpredictable growth.

To support remote worker initiatives, the company is announcing the following:

Support for HPE GreenLake: dHCI is available through GreenLake, delivering VDI as-a-service, accelerating time to value, and simplifying IT management. As a cloud consumption experience, businesses pay monthly for what they use, convert capital to operating expense, and scale compute and storage on-demand.
Expanded server support and scale: dHCI has added support for ProLiant DL325, DL385, DL560, and DL580 servers, and increased the scale of servers supported from 20 to 32. dHCI enables ProLiant customers to convert their existing server investments into a disaggregated HCI.
One-click software upgrades: dHCI has simplified lifecycle management with one-click, unified software upgrades for server firmware, hypervisor and storage software, saving IT productivity time and de-risking upgrades. The upgrades can be performed directly in VMware vCenter.

Financial offers to manage cash flow
In addition to the recently announced newly-configured VDI solutions, today’s HCI offerings for VDI are supported through HPE Financial Services, which can help alleviate some of the strain felt by businesses around the globe as they navigate an uncertain business climate. Financial Services can help release capital from existing infrastructures, defer payments, and provide pre-owned tech to relieve capacity strain. As part of the financing structures to reduce cash outlays during uncertainty, SimpliVity and dHCI customers can delay payments for up to 180 days to help preserve cash.

Availability:

SimpliVity 325 Gen10 with the AMD EPYC processor is orderable direct and though channel partners, with expected shipping in late May 2020.
GreenLake is available for dHCI.
The expanded server support, scale and one-click software upgrade enhancements will be available globally direct and though channel partners in 2H20.