We feel your pain. Traditional architectures have not been designed to address the demands of the services-oriented economy that requires rapid application development in response to evolving customer requirements. Agility, visibility, efficiency, orchestration, and automation are the watchwords, and the new measures of success.
Your IT environment is likely a combination of physical and virtualized systems. You are possibly running various versions of the same application, and may even have unused licenses lying around – not to mention managing Operating System versions and images. While today’s data centers do deliver against demands for application availability and performance, the stress on IT staff is increasing.
A new approach to enterprise IT is needed. That approach needs to incorporate existing IT investments while providing the framework for growth, flexibility and repeatability. It’s time for composable infrastructure that treats hardware like software. “Infrastructure as code” allows IT administrators to allocate the right amount of infrastructure pools of resources (compute, storage, memory, I/O) needed to optimize application performance. It’s time for HPE Synergy.
HPE Synergy is the first platform architected for composable infrastructure. It’s time to simplify deployment, provisioning, monitoring and management of your IT environment.
Composable Infrastructure is the solution to transition from traditional to “new” IT. In simple terms, composable infrastructure breaks down existing silos and treats each IT element or resource as a service. Those services are then composed, in real time, to meet demands for compute, store, process, etc. Think of it as “infrastructure as code.” It’s more than converging or hyper-converging of hardware, compute and storage into a cohesive, integrated unit. Composable infrastructure virtualizes the entire IT infrastructure, even the physical compute, storage and network devices, and manages the entire set of IT assets via a single application.
The days of defining and procuring IT assets based on project requirements are gone. Now it is possible to assign resources that are already onsite. HPE Synergy turns your physical, virtual and containerized IT assets into a fluid pool of hardware, compute, storage and network resources. This means that all of these underlying resources are disaggregated and can be scaled independently of each other. It also allows IT staff to identify and allocate the most relevant resources to defined workloads. Synergy removes concerns about finding compatible resources for workloads. It can run workloads anywhere – on physical servers, virtual machines or containers. It can run on-premise or in the cloud.
So, how does it work? HPE Synergy includes the following components:
Synergy’s flexible design eliminates configuration lock-in. It allows organizations to define their internal storage options, with support for SAS, SFF, NVMe SFF, Flash UFF or diskless – always aligning internal storage to workload and operational requirements. Flexibility is also available for defining booting options; they include booting the operating system via the Image Streamer, from DAS or SAN, or from USB, micro SD or local drives. An understanding that different workloads require access to different kinds of resources means that Synergy’s design allows for integration of required GPU, flash storage, or non-HPE products.
An embedded benefit lies in silicon-rooted trust. In these days of cyber security challenges, Gen10 servers now check and guarantee security at three levels: 1) protection form DoS attacks, 2) enhanced detection and recovery, and 3) data security within the server. With a validation signature in the ASIC, the firmware is protected throughout production. A firmware scanner automatically scans five firmwares on the motherboard every day. If an issue is found, the server is returned to factory settings, last known good setting, or is taken offline. With composable infrastructure, a new resource is automatically provisioned.
One of the primary goals of HPE Synergy is to create a smarter, more efficient data center. Consistency is the overriding challenge faced by most IT teams; identifying and allocating resources is another. Composable infrastructure systematically addresses these challenges. HPE Synergy provides the tools in the form of Synergy Composer and Image Stream to help enterprises quickly deploy infrastructure while also providing a systematic method to easily flex, scale and update that infrastructure.
The Synergy Composer templates not only simplify provisioning of new resources or managing updates to current infrastructure – they also provide monitoring and flagging capabilities. Profiles created from the template are monitored; if an inconsistency is found, an alert highlights which profile is out of compliance, simplifying remediation.
The Unified API is the key to accessing and controlling management functions. It can be used to discover, search, inventory, configure, provision, update and diagnose composable resources. It easily integrates with existing ITSM solutions as well as open-source automation and configuration management tools. It also takes advantage of modern REST protocols to create, aggregate and host IT resources, allowing automation tools to program on-demand and pragmatically.
The ability to define and compose flexible blocks of compute storage and fabric resources is the cornerstone of Synergy. Workload-driven templates, define BIOS settings, firmware, drivers, etc., to create operating environment images. Templates eliminate time-consuming provisioning processes across operational silos. They also provide the consistency to ensure all resources are deployed in an optimized state, saving weeks and months of effort.
IIS is your trusted technology partner. We compose the optimal set of people, resources and technologies to optimize Synergy in your environment. If that means integrating Red Hat, VMware, or any other application that operates your enterprise workloads, we will do just that.
As an HPE Global Partner of the Year, we have the capabilities to assess and analyze workloads and data center architectures to help you with your migration to composable infrastructure. We will architect the right balance of bare metal, virtual and containerized resources, based on your current investments, budget and operational needs. We will collaborate with you to define and create the templates that make Synergy Composer and Image Streamer so powerful – reducing provisioning time even further.
After deployment, our managed services deliver enhanced proactive, unified monitoring of your infrastructure environment. Leveraging Synergy’s embedded monitoring and management capabilities, IIS delivers unified monitoring of your entire HPE and non-HPE infrastructure, delivering rich dashboards, alerts, governance and custom reports. With dedicated resources to monitor, manage and maintain your cloud, hybrid or on-premise infrastructure, your team can focus on business priorities while we focus on infrastructure.
In addition, IIS can help you turn capital expenses into operating costs through the use of pay-as-you-go financing solutions. With a defined methodology tied to your anticipated usage, a financial model for infrastructure on demand is a reality.
Our goal: to bring you in-depth knowledge of HPE Synergy and complementary vendor solutions, to tailor a solution to meet your business, organizational and technology goals.
The magic of composable infrastructure lies in how it can be used for a variety of applications and workloads, including bare metal, virtualized or containerized workloads. The infrastructure will identify and use whatever resources it needs.
HPE Synergy removes limitations related to resources and time. Thanks to the level of automation that Synergy provides, via Composer and Image Streamer, administrators can offload time-consuming, repetitive tasks. Users benefit from faster availability of resources, whether it’s the launch of new workloads or updates. Defined maintenance windows become a thing of the past.
Imagine a future filled with fluid resource pools and software-defined intelligence. The focus is your business. The benefits are:
Are you ready to learn more about how HPE Synergy and IIS can optimize your data center? Contact us.