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After more than 15 years in the technology field, I am very aware of the positive benefits of understanding and using technology to increase business productivity. Each year we hear of new platforms, new applications, new appliances, and new solutions to help companies grow bigger and better. These changes can include technology refreshes, BYOD initiatives, new software and application implementation, harnessing the power of Big Data and social media, and the list goes on and on.
 
We all know that technology, when used properly, can increase productivity. Studies show that the right tools and the right solutions will make your business run more effectively and efficiently; however, businesses, no matter how big or how small, all have the same primary component that drives them to success or failure: their employees. A business cannot and will not survive without people.

 

What are businesses two largest challenges outside of keeping up with technology trends?

 

• Increasing Employee Productivity
• Keeping and Maintaining Employees

 

Ironically, most of the ways you can motivate an employee to be a productive member of your team are also the same ways to keep your employees. According to Lifehack.org, here are things you can do to increase employee productivity:

 

1. Create a family-like atmosphere. Make sure your employees know that regardless of how you feel about them that you always have their backs and are willing to go to war for them.

 

2. Know your employees’ backgrounds. Understanding your employees’ motivation will allow you to structure a support system that is both beneficial and motivating for each employee.

 

3. Train, train, and retrain. Employees are more likely to be productive when they understand what exactly is expected from them and they are given the training to perform such a task. Training gives confidence, and confidence leads to employees who are productive.

 

4. Small incentives will go a long way. You will be surprised at how powerful a $10 gift card can be in the work place. It has nothing to do with the money or the monetary value but more with the fact that there is a goal that all employees are trying to reach.

 

 

5. Make your word the final say. Opinions and suggestions are great, but ultimately the final say should always come from their superiors. Valuing the opinions and listening to the suggestions of employees before making a decision will show them that they are part of a team and will give them a sense of contribution to the company. The more they feel that their voice is being heard, the more they will contribute to the cause of a company.

 

6. Employees are people as well. Employees have lives outside of the workplace, and our lives outside of the workplace should always take precedence over work. That single mother you employ may not always have a babysitter lined up. The college student may have a final that he must complete to graduate. Be respectful and understanding when life happens to your employees, and you will have an appreciative and productive worker.

 

7. Give them the right equipment. Make sure that the everyday equipment in the office works! There is nothing worse than having an employee say that they couldn’t complete their daily tasks because “the computer was down.”

 

8. Answer questions. Just like a man would rather be lost than ask for directions (sorry, guys), an employee may feel it is better to do something wrong than to ask for how to do something right! For various reasons, such as being scared or not wanting to show a lack of specific knowledge to what is expected from them (see number 3), an employee will not move. You are the person in charge for a reason. Hammer the point home that asking questions is a good thing. Answering questions clearly and in a timely manner will keep the productivity going.

 

9. Celebrate victories no matter how small. When an employee sees that every positive contribution to the team is acknowledged, he or she knows that their actions count and that what they do is really making a difference.

 

10. Be a role model. When people see the boss working, they will also work. When they see the boss slack off, they will do the same. A workforce will always mirror their immediate supervisors.

 

11. Not one employee is more valuable than the others. There is nothing worse in the work force than seeing employees not being treated as equals.  We all have experienced having a peer who was viewed as the “favorite.” We also remember how discouraging and resentful that made us. If you are a boss and you have favorites, you run the risk of having a split workforce.

 

Earlier I stated that most of the ways you can motivate an employee to be a productive member of your team are also the same ways to keep your employees. The chart below outlines 10 things that employees seek when determining if they should stay or if they should go. The values that employees seek are also concepts that will make them more productive.

 

“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person – not just an employee – are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.”

–Anne M. Mulcahy, Former CEO of Xerox Corporation

Cloud Solutions or On-Premise? It’s a question our customers are asking more often, and it is undoubtedly one of the biggest trends in the IT industry right now. For on-premise, there is more to consider than how much new hardware/software is needed to put a solution into place. And for cloud, there is more at stake than a recurring monthly service cost.
For content services and content delivery networks (CDNs) that are faced with viewers that are increasingly consuming video “on-demand,” the decision to revamp their existing delivery infrastructure is forefront on their list of modernization projects.
While many Cloud options exist, and are definitely a viable option for many providers, for those with adequate resources, the on-premise HPE Moonshot solution has many clear advantages.
Multicast (true broadcast) is only available with on-premises (Moonshot) delivery. Cloud solutions are not multicast-enabled; and, as such, all content acquisition/delivery will be Unicast.

• The Multicast source relies on multicast-enabled routers to forward the packets to all client subnets that have clients listening. Each client that listens to the multicast adds no additional overhead on the server. The same load is experienced on the server whether only one client or 1,000 clients are listening.
• Multicast scales easily and uses bandwidth efficiently, which will help control traffic loads and conserve bandwidth. This benefit gives the ability to offer new services (generating additional revenues and strengthening long-term profitability).
• Conversely, Unicast is a one-to one connection between the client and the server. Each Unicast client that connects to the server takes up additional bandwidth.
Bottom line: Multicast is a better way to minimize network traffic and optimize bandwidth when multiple users are accessing the same live video source.
The HPE Moonshot solution provides greater network control; reliability; and, most importantly, dedicated network bandwidth (availability).

Moonshot has the ability to aggregate NICs for increased versatility in network configuration and routing. The HP Moonshot solution avoids problems associated with multi-tenant environments. Cloud solutions bring the risk of one tenant periodically consuming the majority of system resources, creating a greater sensitivity to scalability issues and potential security issues.
With HPE Moonshot:

• Better to control the ingest before encode
• Reduction in encoding cost over long term with owned equipment
• Increased ability to troubleshoot and RCA with accuracy
• Can use subscriber based multicast for acquisition
• Fewer resources are consumed both physically and logically
• Ability to further secure and adapt platform

 

 

 

In my previous installment of this “Why HPE ProLiant” series, we reviewed HP’s Insight Remote Support (IRS) capabilities and the Integrated Lights Out 4 Engine (iLO). With this article, I’ll discuss some of the most exciting benefits of selecting the Generation 9 server platform. Many of the most popular server models have been available on this platform since late 2014.
As a solution provider, a common refrain from clients and prospects is that “a server is a server.” They don’t see the rationale in paying more for a “brand-name” server, such as an HPE ProLiant, vs. a “white-box” server. In this article, the goal is to uncover some of the top specific reasons to go brand-name, in addition to included capabilities such as IRS and iLO.
My goal for this article is to help educate the technology decision maker and purchaser to understand more completely why choosing HP ProLiant is a sound and effective decision for your critical technology needs.

• • HPE OneView (and Lights Out Advanced Pack) now available as an “instant on” orderable SKU! Inform your account manager to include the “electronic” license for OneView Advanced or iLO Advanced software solutions, and your license key will be installed onto the server during factory integration and ready to use as soon as you boot up the server in your environment – providing for a quicker time to deploy and setup the server.

 

• • Vastly Improve Compute Economics: With 2X the compute capacity per watt and up to 60% lower total cost of ownership over three years (including initial acquisition costs) vs. many existing installed ProLiant G6 or similar servers. How?
    • Intel Haswell E5-2600 v3 CPUs
    • HP DDR-4 SmartMemory
    • 12Gbps SmartArray RAID controllers
    • HP PCIe Workload Accelerators

 

• • Accelerates IT Service Delivery: Per IDC whitepaper titled “Achieving Organizational Transformation with HP Converged Infrastructure Solutions”, ProLiant Gen 9 provides up to 60X faster service delivery with simple automation for a competitive advantage.

 

• Boots Business Performance: Up to 4X faster read and write workload acceleration with HP Smart Cache (a technology built-in to HP SmartArray RAID controllers), which accelerates performance so you can get your data faster (based on HP internal testing).

 

Value Added Features/Capabilities:

HPE OneView – Advanced License provides for a converged management platform that mitigates infrastructure complexity with automation simplicity. Standard use license is provided at no-cost with every Gen 9 ProLiant server (Advanced license is a one-time fee). Standard license can provide important system details such as inventory, health reporting, alerting, and reporting for Gen 9, 8, G7, and G6 servers. HP OneView Advanced license also includes the iLO Advanced license functionality.
HPE Insight Remote Support – Covered in detail in my March blog post, provides remote monitoring and alerting from embedded iLO 4 chip directly to HP Support and/or your channel partner such as Zunesis.

 

 

 

HPE Integrated Lights Out (iLO) – Covered in detail in my June blog post, provides a 4th generation dedicated ASIC for a variety of systems management, remote access, and control functionality – all built-in! Gen 9 includes iLO Federation which allows for discovery of up to hundreds of servers in seconds, and manage numerous servers as one. Gen 9 also includes a pre-boot health summary as a simple diagnostic screen for critical server data.
HPE Intelligent Provisioning – Ideal for small to medium business, as the configuration and deployment tool for Gen 8 and 9 servers, Intelligent Provisioning can also be used for system maintenance needs. Now includes an “opt-in” capability to utilize the free 1TB StoreVirtual VSA software-defined storage license upon system setup.

HPE Smart Update Solution – A breakthrough systems management tool that provides systematic and organized updates for ProLiant servers, which is composed of HP Smart Update Manager (SUM) and Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP). These services are provided to facilitate ongoing system updates, a “no-brainer” activity condensed into as few as two updates per year for firmware, drivers, and Smart Components on Blade or rackmount/tower servers.
Where can you go to learn more about this technology? Please follow the below links for access to in-depth information, demos, and implementation information. As always, contact your Zunesis account manager for more information as well!

HPE OneView
HPE Insight Remote Support
HPE Integrated Lights Out
HPE Intelligent Provisioning
HPE Smart Update Solutions

In my last blog, we explored the Customer Service Pillar of being Strategic in the context of what customers are expecting from IT Solution providers today.  As a reminder, I am writing from a customer service roadmap called CustomerFIRST where the word FIRST is the following:

 

• Flexible
• Invested
• Responsive
• Strategic
• Trusted

This week I am addressing the final Pillar of successful customer service – being Trusted.

Trust is the Holy Grail of customer service.  All of the other characteristics of CustomerFIRST are typically required for trust to develop.  Our clients must see us being flexible to their needs and requirements, invested and credible in the solutions we sell and implement, responsive when they need our help, and strategic in how we interact and the value we provide.  Assuming we do all of these consistently well, then we have the opportunity to pursue a trust-based relationship.

Over the years, I have spoken with many senior IT executives about trust and what it takes to earn their trust.  I have been surprised by the desire that clients have to be able to trust their IT Solution Providers.  The reality is that CIOs, CTOs, Directors, & VPs of IT strongly desire trust-based relationship.  These IT leaders have all told me that when they have total confidence in an IT Solution Provider, their lives get easier and better.  When they trust, they don’t feel the need to constantly look over their shoulder or second guess every decision.  When they have trust, they sleep easier at night because they believe that their IT Solutions Partner will do the right thing if something goes wrong.  It is helpful to understand that trust is a desired trait on both sides of the table.
Look at any IT Solution Provider’s Vision or Mission Statement, and you will see the words “Trusted Advisor” embedded somewhere.  It turns out that all IT Solution Providers say they aspire to be a trusted advisor to their clients, but how many actually achieve this distinction?  I would argue that very few truly reach this goal.  Assuming this is true, what it is that makes achieving trust with clients so difficult?
Trust, I believe, is an elusive objective where time, experience, and adversity are all required.  As we have all heard many times, “Trust must be earned.”  Therefore, if we as IT Solution Providers truly want to achieve this lofty ideal of being a Trusted Advisor, we must seriously understand what is required.

If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.
~Zig Ziglar

 

First, we must recognize that trust takes time.  To earn trust, we will need to demonstrate consistent behavior for an extended period of time.  That behavior will also need to be demonstrated in a way that serves the best interest of the client – not our own.  All individuals develop trust at different speeds and many factors play into this.
Maybe your Director of IT or CIO clients have extensive baggage from other IT Solution Providers NOT doing the right thing; and, therefore, they will require substantially more time to build a trust-based relationship.  The bottom line is that time, patience, and consistent behavior are required for trust to have a chance to build.  Too often, our expectations as IT Solution Providers is that a single successful project lights the torch for a lasting and permanent relationship.  In most cases, a single successful project allows us a chance to take a swing at another project, but it does little more than that.
Second, we must have a variety of experiences with a client to create the opportunity to build trust.  Typically, a variety of experiences can involve a variety of projects, interactions, and different individuals from the same firm working with a variety of client personnel.  While trust can develop faster with a single individual, it is much more difficult to develop trust at an organizational level.
Finally, trust requires adversity.  Simply stated, this means that WHEN we make a mistake – and we will all make mistakes – the client needs to see us do the right thing, even when it hurts.  “So, are you suggesting, Steve, that having a perfect track record with a client is less beneficial to building trust than making mistakes and fixing them?”  I guess I am.
Think about the times in life when you personally grew the most.  Those times were likely difficult, challenging, and may have involved major failures that required you to take a personal inventory and change directions or make a really tough decision.  The same is true with relationships.  We seldom build meaningful relationships without walking through the valley with another individual or group.
The big idea here is that any of us doing IT stuff will make mistakes.  Information technology is difficult, ever changing, and just hard.  As a result, we must consistently choose to accept responsibility and take immediate corrective action (on our nickel) if we want to build trust with any client.  If we don’t care about building trust, we will point fingers, run for the hills, or choose a liberal interpretation of the statement of work (SOW).
Over the years, I have put together a short list of characteristics to help guide our employees at Zunesis in their interaction with clients.  These, I believe, are fundamental to building and earning trust:

• Always put the best interest of the customer first.
• Follow through on commitments.
• Communicate exceptionally well, and identify and communicate problems quickly.
• Accept responsibility for failure, and take swift corrective action.
• Always do the right thing, every time, even if it hurts.

 

Those of you reading this are probably asking yourself if earning trust is even worth it.  I believe it is, but earning trust doesn’t exactly square with our immediate gratification culture.  It is hard to find things like (1) time & patience, (2) variety & experiences, and (3) adversity on many business playlists today.
But these are the mandatory ingredients of building and earning trust.  If you are one of the few IT Solution Providers that desires trust with your clients and are deliberate in your efforts to get there, I commend and respect you.  Your business will continue to succeed and your clients will have a broader smile on their faces more of the time.
This is my final BLOG in this series on CustomerFIRST.  I wish you the very best in your efforts to serve customers in the ways they wish to be served.

Annual List Features Trailblazing Solution Providers Transforming Business with Emerging Technologies
Denver, CO (PRWEB) August 19, 2015

Zunesis announced today it has been recognized in The Channel Company’s exclusive 2015 CRN® Next-Gen 250 list. The annual list honors forward-thinking technology solution providers who have transformed their business by breaking into emerging technologies such as cloud computing, unified communications, virtualization, mobility, business analytics, and business intelligence. These solution providers, each in business for less than 20 years, have adapted to an evolving marketplace with precision, clearly identifying themselves as the leaders of the future.

 

As of October 2015, Zunesis will have been incorporated for 15 years. In those 15 years, the industry has transformed time and again as old technologies improve and new technologies emerge. Zunesis’ commitment to excellence and agile corporate structure have allowed them to adapt quickly and effectively as the technology landscape changes.

 

One of the things that has made Zunesis successful in adapting to technological advances is their fully-equipped, on-site lab. This asset allows the Zunesis solution architects to test out and stay up to date on the workings of new technologies. “As technology changes at an ever-increasing rate, it’s important for us to stay ahead of the new technologies that are available so that we can confidently recommend – or not recommend – them to our clients,” notes Zunesis CTO, Michael Gosselin. The lab also provides a place for Zunesis’ clients to test out technologies in a live setting before making a purchase.

 

“As emerging technologies come to market, so do the new delivery models needed to support them. Agile integrators are in demand now more than ever to architect new technology solutions to meet customer needs,” said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company. “The trailblazing solution providers honored in this year’s CRN Next-Gen 250 list continue to innovate and evolve to meet market demands and have clearly established themselves as the next generation of leadership in the IT channel. We congratulate the honorees named to this exclusive list for their achievements and look forward to following them in the future to see what they have in store.”

A sampling of the Next-Gen 250 list will be featured in the August issue of CRN and online at both http://www.crn.com and through the CRN Tech News App for iPad and Windows 8.

 

About Zunesis
Zunesis is a leading IT solution provider with locations in Colorado and Nevada. Our vision centers around an intense focus on serving our customers and bringing value to their business through strategic IT solutions. In April 2015, Zunesis was named to the CRN TechElite 250 for the 6th consecutive year as a best-of-breed solution provider with deep technical expertise and premier certifications.

 

About The Channel Company
The Channel Company, with established brands including CRN®, XChange® Events, IPED® and SharedVue®, is the channel community’s trusted authority for growth and innovation. For more than three decades, we have leveraged our proven and leading-edge platforms to deliver prescriptive sales and marketing solutions for the technology channel. The Channel Company provides Communication, Recruitment, Engagement, Enablement, Demand Generation and Intelligence services to drive technology partnerships. Learn more at http://www.thechannelcompany.com.

A person once said to me that I was the most socially comfortable person they had ever met. In fact, my favorite situation is to be in a room with 50 people where I know no one. When I depart I will know most of them, often finding a connection to at least one from my past or someone we both personally know. Shaking hands, looking into someone’s eyes, breaking the ice with a quick comment or bad joke… my favorite things. Social Media, not so much. Most businesses I talk with have the same hesitation to get engaged.
Zunesis is a leader in digital marketing, assisting companies to become leaders themselves at the dawn of this new social age. With its main focus on assisting businesses as they transform from legacy IT environments into agile, elastic ones, Zunesis is at the forefront in helping customers to begin the journey to social well. Most businesses that we talk to are facing similar social/mobile challenges, no matter the industry or company size.
So, how does your company overcome the digital marketing challenges of today? The answer: jump in!

How do you start? As a business leader, you know that your brand and the sentiment around it is critical. Having the best people to deliver your product or service is first, positive word of mouth second. These social platforms are the new word of mouth, globally. Production and protection of your brand is your responsibility. Knowing that your brand is in the hands of all those you interface with – employees, customers, future customers, global customers, etc. – can be overwhelming.

Let Zunesis listen for you.

 

This hand-held, fast-paced, mobile culture isn’t going to disappear. In fact, it is only getting bigger. To continue to think that this is in its infancy and that you have time to adapt is essentially putting your head in the sand. Last I checked, Facebook had the 3^rd largest population on the planet behind China and India. Jump into the social game before you get left in the dust. Jump in too late, and the current may sink you.

Zunesis partners with Zerto to deliver comprehensive BC/DR for virtualized environments.
 
Denver, CO (PRWEB) July 29, 2015
 
Zunesis, Inc. announced today that they have joined the Zerto Alliance Partner (ZAP) Program to offer clients award-winning Zerto Virtual Replication. Zerto’s hypervisor-based solution offers the only business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) built for protecting mission-critical applications deployed in virtualized data centers and cloud environments. Under the program, Zunesis has access to the tools and support to deliver unparalleled, real-time, cost-effective BC/DR to enterprises of all sizes.
 
“Zerto combines the enterprise-class features of physical replication with the flexibility, ease of management, and scalability of virtual environments,” said Sean Milner, Regional Director, Zerto. “We are proud to collaborate with some of the most innovative and advanced organizations in the world to develop, sell, support, integrate and deliver enterprise-class BC/ DR solutions.”
 
As one of the leading IT solution providers in the Rocky Mountain Region, Zunesis is thrilled to be able to provide their clients with stable business continuity plans through their new partnership with Zerto.
 
“We know that our clients need assurance that their mission-critical applications are protected,” said Zunesis CEO, Steve Shaffer. “Their businesses lose money every minute that their systems are down, so they look to us to guarantee that their applications will be protected when the storm comes. We are excited to partner with Zerto because we know they provide that assurance.”
 
About Zunesis
Zunesis is a leading IT solution provider with locations in Colorado and Nevada. Our vision centers around an intense focus on serving our customers and bringing value to their business through strategic IT solutions. In April 2015, Zunesis was named to the CRN TechElite 250 for the 6th consecutive year as a best-of-breed solution provider with deep technical expertise and premier certifications.
 
About Zerto
Zerto is committed to keeping enterprise and cloud IT running 24/7 by providing innovative, simple, reliable and scalable business continuity software solutions. Through the Zerto Cloud Continuity Platform, organizations can seamlessly move and protect virtualized workloads between public, private and hybrid clouds. The company’s flagship product, Zerto Virtual Replication, has become the standard for protection, recovery and migration of applications in cloud and virtualized data centers, and won numerous awards, including Best of Show at VMworld 2011, Best of VMworld Europe 2014, as well as 2011, 2012 and 2013 Product of the Year Awards for its innovative hypervisor-based replication approach. For more information, go to http://www.zerto.com.

 

What in the world does “metathesiophobia” mean? Simply stated, this is the fear of change. The origin of the term is Greek, meta- meaning “change” and -phobos meaning “fear.” We all have fear of change on some level. It is and always evolving; and some of us, more than others, have inherited this trait through our genetics.
When it comes to changes in technology – which we all know are constant – we generally experience two conflicting emotions: we feel excitement at the prospect of something new while simultaneously experiencing a feeling of resistance. We naturally resist change because we fear what we don’t know. Over the years, the evolution of technology has fueled this fear. Although we’ve seen many grand technological advances, we’ve also witnessed too many technology flops to count. This leaves us asking questions about every new technology on the market: What if it does not work? What if this change brings down my network? The list could go on and on indefinitely.
Although it is natural, and even responsible, for IT staff to approach changes in their IT environment with caution, approaching it with fear is not necessary. Worrying about the “What ifs” in any circumstance may help avoid pitfalls, but results are only ever achieved once some level of risk is taken. The beautiful thing is that changing your IT environment doesn’t have to be scary; it can be exciting. It can be done with confidence.
Working with Value-Added Resellers (VARs), who in turn work with companies that have deep R&D budgets, can eliminate the fear associated with implementing new technologies. You can rest assured that the R&D has been done; in fact, manufactures like HP test each new product to the limit, fix the bugs they find, and release to the public once they’re fully confident in the final outcome.
Working with a good VAR like Zunesis allows you the opportunity to demo IT products before you buy them. This means that not only can you be confident that the product or solution works, generally speaking, but you can be confident it will work in your environment. It allows you to see the pros and cons for yourself before you make a purchase decision.
Let Zunesis remove fear from your life. I will be discussing this for my next few blogs. If you would like more information to help you be confident moving forward, let me know; and I will be glad to help.

By now, we have all heard that Microsoft is rolling out another new and improved version of its popular Windows operating system. The new version of Windows, named Windows 10, is set to be released on July 29, 2015. So what does the next generation of Windows offer enterprise and small-to-medium businesses, and is it worth it?
Windows 10 for Business
Win 10 offers protection from modern security treats and includes features like Windows Hello and Microsoft Passport, which, according to Microsoft, make it easier to adopt biometrics and multi-factor authentication using your face, fingerprint, or iris to unlock your device. These features provide a user-friendly way to move away from passwords.
Windows 10 also has built-in defenses to help protect your critical business information from leaks or theft, while separating corporate from personal files. Technologies like Secure Boot and Device Guard ensure you’re protected from power-on to power-off.
Microsoft claims that Windows 10 is familiar and better than ever. It has similarities to Windows 7, including the Start menu, as well as new features like Continuum and Microsoft Edge, which provide new, innovative productivity experiences. Windows Continuum functionality for mobile phones tailors the app experience across devices to transform a phone into a full-powered PC, TV, or even a Smart TV. Microsoft Edge is the all-new Windows 10 browser built to give you a better web experience. Edge allows you to write directly on webpages and share your mark-ups with others. Edge also allows you to read online articles free of distraction or use the reading list feature for saving your favorite reads for later access.

 

Windows 10 is also expected to drive the next wave of device innovation, powering devices that hang on the wall, team collaboration, and holographic interfaces that open up revolutionary new ways to create, learn, and visualize.
Clearly Microsoft has included some unique and interesting features into Windows 10. Discovering if the new operating system will be embraced by business users will not be known for some time; all we can do is wait for the release and hope for the best. If Windows 10 is not what we expect, be on the lookout for Microsoft to roll out Windows 11 sooner than later.

In my last installment of this “Why HPE ProLiant” series, we reviewed HP’s Insight Remote Support capabilities. With this article, we’ll take a deeper look at some of the value-added technology provided through the HPE iLO 4 ASIC.

 

As a solution provider, a common refrain from clients and prospects is that “a server is a server”; and they don’t see the rationale in paying more for a “brand-name” server such as an HPE ProLiant vs. a “white-box” server. Through learning about what IT professionals are looking for and what their challenges are, we find that the following are core concerns:

 

– Keep the systems up and running
– Maintain infrastructure while controlling costs
– Increase staff productivity
– Prevent system downtime
– Better control of assets

 

While “white-box” and similar low-cost/low-value server manufactures can provide a quick fix to providing clients with needed CPU and memory “horsepower,” often times there is little additional value to support the concerns listed above that is provided by these low-value solutions. In this post, I want to share with you just one of many HPE ProLiant server innovations that is provided with HPE ProLiant servers: Integrated Lights Out (iLO). [Advanced features provided with a one-time license fee]

 

iLO provides the automated intelligence to maintain complete server control from any place, giving you control from a web browser or the iLO mobile app for smartphones. HPE ProLiant Gen 8 and 9 servers include a dedicated iLO 4 ASIC onboard which includes a 1GbE out-of-band network management port. iLO Management technologies contain these capabilities:

 

Provision: Rapid Discovery and Remote Access – inventory and deploy servers [with Advanced license] using web interface, smartphone app, CLI, or remote console.
Monitor: Active Health System and performance protection with advanced power and thermal control, agentless management monitors core hardware, provides alerting without adding cumbersome OS-level providers, and out-of-band management.

Optimize: Integrated Remote Console [most features with Advanced license] provides global team collaboration, video record/playback, and virtual media/KVM. iLO Federation permits management of groups of servers at scale. Enhanced security with Directory Service Authentication

Support: iLO provides core server instrumentation availability whether the OS is up or down. Download your Active Health System logs, and send to HP Support (or use Integrated Remote Support as covered in February’s article!) for faster problem identification.

 

What is this Advanced features license I keep mentioning? While many features of iLO are available with every ProLiant straight out of the box, some features indicated in this article require the iLO Advanced Pack. This is a one-time fee license (which includes 1 year of 24×7 HPE software support); and with most Zunesis HP ProLiant quotes, we include this license on your server quote unless otherwise requested to remove it. iLO Advanced Pack comes with the new HP OneView Management Suite license as well.

 

More information about what versions come with what functionality can be found in this chart below (Please note iLO Essentials only available on DL1xx series Gen 9 ProLiant):