accelerate it service delivery by simplifying traditional...
TRANSCRIPT
Align Infrastructure and WorkloadsIn order for Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders to better support
the needs of their businesses, both now and in the future, many are turning
to converged infrastructure (CI). Unlike monolithic, hardware-defined
infrastructure, software-defined converged infrastructure adapts quickly
and intelligently to workloads while providing faster time-to-deployment and
better end-to-end management and life cycle support. Through improved
agility and simplified system management, CI systems will soon enable
more autonomous data center operations. In addition, as CI components
become more dynamic, they will provide greater alignment between
infrastructure and workload, allowing for simplified, but intelligent control.
As a result, CI systems will be able to automatically allocate and align
resources to nonlinear and unpredictable workloads, relieving the time
consuming manual tasks and complexities of older infrastructure.
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Align Infrastructure and Workloads
A Converged Infrastructure Success Story
HPE’s Unique Approach to Transition to Converged Infrastructure
How HPE Supports Converged Infrastructure
From the Gartner Files: Plan Now for the Future of Converged Infrastructure
About HPE
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Accelerate IT Service Delivery by Simplifying Traditional Infrastructure Management
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Accelerate IT Service Delivery by Simplifying Traditional Infrastructure Management is published by HPE. Editorial supplied by HPE is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner research is © 2015 by Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. All Gartner materials are used with Gartner’s permission. The use or publication of Gartner research does not indicate Gartner’s endorsement of HPE’s products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner’s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see “Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity” on its website, http://www.gartner.com/technology/about/ombudsman/omb_guide2.jsp.
Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
A Converged Infrastructure Success Story Mansfield OilIndustry-leading fuel supplier, Mansfield Oil, lacked the reliability and
scalability to support business growth in their legacy infrastructure. They
needed greater business agility and efficiency to enable growth and
secure a competitive advantage in their evolving energy marketplace.
Mansfield replaced their aging servers with HPE BladeSystem and HPE
OneView as their standard infrastructure. They achieved some impressive
results, including:
• Tenfold improvement in business productivity
• Greater mobility for employees to serve customers efficiently, from
anywhere, at any time
• Increased agility to support ongoing business growth more cost-
effectively
• Accelerated rollout of critical new IT initiatives to enhance business
productivity
• Achieved 98% virtualization and adoption of private cloud thanks to
tight integration between HPE and VMware
With HPE, Mansfield was able to roll out over a dozen new IT initiatives in
just one year. This boosted business productivity tenfold while improving
IT efficiency and lowering expenses.
HPE’s Unique Approach to Transition to Converged InfrastructureHPE understands the approach a business must take to successfully
transition to a converged infrastructure so they can quickly reap the
benefits. HPE’s unique approach optimizes every-day enterprise
workloads, from converged systems for high-intensity virtualized or cloud
workloads, to entire converged data centers.
Between the HPE BladeSystem and HPE OneView, the agility and speed to market we’ve gained is simply unmatched. ...We now have the scalability and agility to take the business further, faster than we ever could before. Instead of spending 90% of our time on run and maintain activities, that’s down to just 50% and dropping. It’s freed up much more time for our architects and engineers to focus on projects instead of break/fix. Giving that kind of time and quality of life back to the IT team is invaluable. You can’t put a price on that.
Hercu Rabsatt, Director – Infrastructure & Service Management, Mansfield Oil Company
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In the attached report, Gartner describes two styles of
convergence, ”vertically integrated” blocks for steady and
reliable systems of record, and modular, “hyperconverged
infrastructures” for fast and agile event management and
processing. With HPE’s broad portfolio, organizations
can choose which style of convergence is right for their
current or future business needs. Many organizations have
taken a first step in the journey toward a more converged
infrastructure by choosing one management for one
infrastructure to enable convergence, federation, and
automation all at once.
They achieve this first step by utilizing HPE OneView
with HPE BladeSystem which includes servers, storage,
and networking across both physical and virtualized
environments. Simply put, HPE OneView streamlines
operations by automating many processes that simplify
complex infrastructure management.
How HPE Supports Converged InfrastructureHPE OneView, converged infrastructure management, is
designed for the way people, not devices, work. It unifies
processes, user interfaces, and the application programming
interfaces (APIs) across server, storage, and networking resources.
It serves as an automation hub allowing you to plug in and utilize
the tools you already know, such as VMware vCenter and VMware
Operations Management Suite, within a single console. HPE
OneView gives you industry-tested, easy-to-use and repeatable
templates so you can make error-free changes once and replicate
them across your infrastructure. In this way, you can remove
complexity and costly mistakes, and streamline operations through
automation, so services can be delivered far more simply and
efficiently.
HPE BladeSystem is a modular platform that converges compute,
storage, fabric, management and virtualization to accelerate
operations and speeds delivery of applications and services
running in physical, virtual, and cloud-computing environments.
Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
figure 1. The Power of One
Paul Durzan
Vice President, Product Management
HPE Converged Data Center Infrastructure
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
If you want to accelerate IT service delivery and simplify the
complexities of managing traditional infrastructure, HPE OneView
together with HPE BladeSystem can provide one management
for one infrastructure. Contact us at 1-855-472-5233 for more
information, or visit hpe.com/info/Bladesystem.
Download a free trial of HPE OneView management software, and
start integrating your HPE infrastructure management platform today.
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Plan Now for the Future of Converged Infrastructure
Gartner Research, G00272347, George J. Weiss,
6 February 2015
Converged infrastructure is becoming more software-defined, intelligent and adaptable to workloads. I&O leaders should evaluate and pilot newer, more advanced CI solutions to ascertain the technology’s changing value proposition.
Impacts
• CI is becoming less monolithic and hardware-defined andmore software-defined and intelligent, allowing I&O leadersto benefit from improved infrastructure agility and simplifiedsystem management.
• The value proposition of CI is expanding to include easieralignment between IT infrastructure and workloads and end-to-end management life cycle support, enabling I&O leaders to have better support for digital business.
Recommendations
• Do not overcommit to one vendor’s road map of convergenceas a long-term strategy, given that road maps, particularlythose for converged infrastructure, will surely change.
• Justify CI investments on a tactical basis, with an ROI of nomore than three years.
• Decouple convergence into software-defined, above-the-linesolutions that can ride above the hardware foundation in anautonomous or semiautonomous manner.
• Determine the degree of continuous and dynamic lifecycle integration and convergence by deconstructing thesystem into subsystems and components as replaceable andupgradable during the CI’s life cycle.
Strategic Planning Assumption
By 2020, converged infrastructure offerings will automatically deliver dynamic resource allocation from pooled compute, network and storage resources, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
Analysis
Converged infrastructure (CI) is evolving. The technology, as a whole, is in the midst of shifting from being largely hardware-defined to being largely software-defined. In light of this shift, CI components (server, compute, network and storage) are becoming less static and more dynamic, enabling a greater alignment between infrastructure and workload. The transition to software-defined CI is also making way for intelligent control. As a result, CI systems will be able to automatically allocate and align resources to workloads.
This research looks at the impact of these technological shifts (see Figure 1). Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will need to plan ahead for a reality in which CI technology not only is dramatically different, but also has a new value proposition. The systems that had enabled faster time to deployment will soon also enable a more autonomous data center operation.
Impacts and Recommendations
CI is becoming less monolithic and hardware-defined and more software-defined and intelligent, allowing I&O leaders to benefit from improved infrastructure agility and simplified system managementTraditionally, vendors preconfigured their CI systems at the hardware level to run a particular workload. Initially, this took the form of converged rack and chassis/blade systems (see Figure 2). Later on, convergence was applied to compute, network and storage components, providing a closer alignment between the infrastructure and workload. However, in both cases, the systems were monolithic and largely inflexible. And while the systems did offer APIs and limited interoperability, customers found internal integration efforts to be time-consuming, leading to reliance on vendor support.
As evolution progressed, vendors began seeing new opportunities to improve the scalability of their CI offerings. They did this through multinode systems with management software and a fabric interconnect tying together multiple CI systems.
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Impacts Top Recommendations
The value proposition of CI is expanding to include easier alignment between IT infrastructure and workloads and end-to-end management lifecycle support, enabling better support for digital business.
• Decouple convergence into software-defined above-the-line solutions that canride above the hardware foundation in anautonomous or semi-autonomous manner.
• Determine the degree of continuous anddynamic life cycle integration andconvergence by deconstructing the systeminto subsystems and components asreplaceable and upgradable during the CI’slife cycle.
CI is becoming less monolithic and hardware-defined and more software-defined and intelligent, improving infrastructure agility and simplifying systems management.
• Do not overcommit to one vendor’sroadmap of convergence as a long termstrategy, given that roadmaps, particularlythose for converged infrastructure, willsurely change.
• Justify CI investments on a tactical basis,with an ROI of no more than 3 years.
Source: Gartner (February 2015)
figure 1. Impacts and Recommendations for I&O Leaders
Systems with
chassis/ rack
conver-gence
Systems with CPU/ network/ storage conver-gence
Multi-node
systems with fabric
inter- tcennoc
Software-defined systems
Aggre-gated, fabric- based
Resource Pools
Hybrid IT/ Cloud Pooling
Monolithic andhardware-defined
Intelligent andsoftware-defined
2009 2020 Today
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Continuous and dynamic integration
Valu
e
Source: Gartner (February 2015)
figure 2. The Evolutionary Journey of Converged Infrastructure
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Today, many vendors are modernizing their CI systems to take advantage of software-defined storage (SDS), software-defined networking (SDN), software-defined compute (SDC) and software-defined facilities (SDF). Software-defined CI will help I&O leaders establish an infrastructure that is easier to manage and adaptable to nonlinear and unpredictable workloads. Software-defined CI will also enable I&O leaders to achieve better resource allocation, optimizing their investment in the technology. But I&O leaders, beware: A lot of vendor hype will emerge as vendors promote their software-defined systems.
As the market transitions from the multimode era to the software-defined era, many CI form factors have emerged. These include:
• Dense form factors (e.g., Dell PowerEdge FX2 and HPMoonshot)
• Smaller-configuration models of existing systems (e.g.,Cisco UCS Mini, Dell VRTX)
• Modular, high-performance computing systems (e.g., HP’sApollo and SGI’s ICE)
• Hyperconverged infrastructure (e.g., Nutanix, SimpliVity,Pivot3, Scale Computing and other appliance offerings ofhyperconvergence)
Unfortunately, CI product proliferation will complicate IT procurement and technology selection strategies that favor standardization, corporate standards and simplicity in portfolio SKUs. Moreover, as SKUs proliferate, model longevity grows uncertain. Nevertheless, the proliferation of models is a positive sign that vendors recognize that their first-generation CI systems, while meeting with good market acceptance, still have gaps to fill.
Looking to the future, the next iteration of CI will incorporate intelligent resource management, enabling automatic and dynamic resource allocation. The next iteration will also include pooled compute, network and storage resources. Later on, these pools will be able to reside in the cloud or on-premises. These last two transitions are necessary if businesses are to establish a more agile infrastructure, enable bimodal IT, support the Nexus of Forces and transition to digital business.
Recommendations:
• Do not overcommit to one vendor’s road map ofconvergence as a long-term strategy, given that road maps,particularly those for converged infrastructure, will surelychange.
• Justify CI investments on a tactical basis, with an ROI of nomore than three years.
• Construct road maps to address different styles ofconvergence, such as vertically integrated blocks forsteady and reliable systems of record, and modular,hyperconverged infrastructures for agile and fast eventmanagement and processing.
• Assess quality of convergence to add and swap componentsfor technology advances, life cycle upgrades, applicationagility, capacity, bandwidth and scaling change.
• Do not be lulled by hyperconvergence as a panaceabefore further market and system developments in theevolutionary cycle occur, since considerable software-defined advances are still ahead and likely to play out inthis space.
The value proposition of CI is expanding to include easier alignment between IT infrastructure and workloads and end-to-end management life cycle support, enabling I&O leaders to have better support for digital businessI&O leaders were initially attracted to CI because it enabled them to buy a “solution in a box,” speeding integration and deployment times, and reducing operating expenditure (opex) costs (although some of the costs shifted to higher vendor service charges).
In the future, I&O leaders will turn to CI for two more reasons:
• The ability to automatically adjust to unpredictable patternsof behavior from workloads
• The ability to address the entire management life cycle innear-continuous fashion (implementation; provisioning andreprovisioning; reapportioning compute, memory, network,I/O and capacity – both on-premises and in the cloud;recovery, replacement and upgrades)
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Both of these new advantages will be particularly crucial to I&O leaders supporting the transition to digital business. Specifically, the technology will help manage the complexities of millions of logical connections and pathways, and limit the chance for unpredictable and unforeseen events affecting response times, integrity, security and reliability.
Table 1. Value-Driving Factors of CI Versus Customer Demand and Willingness to Pay a Premium
Value-Driving Factor Customer Demand
Level of Premium Customers Are Willing to Pay
Advanced automation to streamline processes and improve productivity
Medium-high
Moderate
Increased component standardization to enable interchangeability of components and vendors, increasing vendor competition
Medium-high
Low
The use and value of open-source software
Medium Low
Reduced lock-in to configurations and software licensing
Medium Low
Source: Gartner (February 2015)
But how much will I&O leaders be willing to pay for this increased value, if it is attainable by 2020? The answer will lie in the demand for – and cost of – several factors that will enable this value (see Table 1).
Ironically, the increased vendor competition, as noted above, will have its drawbacks, which will detract from the added value of the newer systems. These drawbacks include fit-for-purpose CI systems increasing IT complexity, and a turbulent, crowded market threatening the longevity of CI systems. What’s more, not all use cases and environments will fit the CI model well. Many cloud service providers and hyperscale and Web-scale IT shops will spin out their own less expensive hardware (e.g., hardware from original design manufacturers), customized configurations and open-sourced tools.
Recommendations:
• Decouple convergence into software-defined, above-the-linesolutions that can ride above the hardware foundation in anautonomous or semiautonomous manner.
• Rightsize CI configurations to the level of your needs byusing software-defined efficient resource management toavoid overengineered and overpriced solutions that includeexpensive hardware.
• Determine the degree of continuous and dynamic lifecycle integration and convergence by deconstructing thesystem into replaceable and upgradable subsystems andcomponents during the CI’s life cycle.
• Plan payback within a one- to two-year period, withmaintenance extending the useful life cycle beyond thewarranty period (three years) to five years.
• Ascertain the degree to which hardware and software partsform both an integrated solution (interlaced) as well as adecoupled configuration that allows adaptability as a pool ofresources to the workloads as they change.
• Within a bimodal (see Note 1) architectural strategy, do notcompromise on a single standard CI as a one-size-fits-allapproach, as current CIs serve a different purpose.
Note 1Bimodal Architectural Strategy Defined
A bimodal IT architecture takes into account both modes of bimodal IT (for more on bimodal IT, see “Bimodal IT: How to Be Digitally Agile Without Making a Mess”). Mode 1 architectures deal with traditional enterprise applications, emphasizing safety and accuracy. These systems are the core mission-critical applications, and are built on the foundation of steadiness and continuity. Mode 2 architectures deal with applications that are fast, agile and part of fast development-to-deployment cycles.
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About HPEHewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry leading technology
company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the
industry’s most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to
the data center to workplace applications, our technology and
services help customers around the world make IT more efficient,
more productive and more secure.
http://www.hpe.com