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 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):

 

 

 

The vendor world is not particularly gifted at letting the rest of the world know when they have specials taking place. Today I would like to rectify that situation and focus on a fantastic deal that HPE has for their ProLiant servers, an additional value-add included with each Intel Xeon server purchased.
HPE, for no additional cost, is giving clients a 1TB license of HPE StoreVirtual VSA (Virtual SAN Appliance) software with all Intel Xeon-based HP ProLiant DL, BL, and ML series servers. Essentially, VSA is a virtual machine which can utilize “captive” internal unused disk installed in a server. This storage with VSA software can appear as an iSCSI SAN which can then be used by other servers or virtual machines.
The HPE StoreVirtual VSA technology is based on LeftHand OS (a well-known and a very mature storage operating environment). If two or more VSAs are installed (on different servers), a fault-tolerant storage environment can be created, as the Lefthand OS software is fully featured and includes such technologies as snapshots, replication, thin provisioning, etc.
HPE StoreVirtual VSA is just a part of HPE’s Software-Defined Storage initiatives, including VSA-powered deduplication appliances (StoreOnce VSA), and hooks into the industry’s leading virtual machine backup tool, Veeam.

Configured in just minutes, HPE ProLiant Gen9 servers, which now feature an integrated single-click VSA deployment, can easily be up and running with an operating system and VSA software to support virtualized applications and shared storage on the same hardware.
Unfortunately, if your server was purchased prior to this promotion, or there is no “coupon code sticker” on your server, but you can trial this storage software for 60 days to see if it would fit your needs.
If you like what you see with this promo or need more capacity capability, even in your older/existing servers, please contact Zunesis for a quote or for more information.
See what you gain with HPE StoreVirtual VSA!

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