HPE Synergy- Six Years of Innovation
It has been a while since we talked about the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Synergy platform. It is hard to believe it was announced in 2015 and is already 6 years old. This platform was definitely built with the future in mind. It was designed from the ground up to support future technologies and communications bandwidth. Server hardware has taken a back seat to the conversations around Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, HyperConverged, Security, Ransomware and Anything as a Service.
Since 2015, the Compute Modules have migrated from the Gen9, to the Gen10 and now the Gen10 Plus. We still have a lot of conversations around hardware in the data center. The goal around the Synergy platform is to provide a “cloud-like” (on demand resources) experience in your data center.
Cloud-Like Experience
The HPE Synergy platform is defined as a composable, software-defined infrastructure that allows you to provide that cloud-like experience. This platform enables you to compose fluid pools of resources (physical or virtual compute, storage, and fabric) to meet the requirements of your workload. This can be done using the unified API to simplify and automate deployments. Using this API, you can provision the required resources with a single line of code.
The design of the Synergy platform allows you to manage one infrastructure that can quickly scale and reduce complexity in your environment. This infrastructure will support current- and next-gen apps, each with vastly diverse infrastructure requirements and service-level objectives. The applications can run on physical hardware, virtual hardware or containers, all in the same frame.
Industry Leading Security
As will all HPE Servers, the Gen10 and Gen10 Plus has provided industry leading security. They have designed and implemented an enhanced, holistic, 360-degree view to security that begins in the manufacturing supply chain and concludes with a safeguarded, end-of-life decommissioning.
This all starts with the Silicon root of trust that is built into all Gen10 and Gen10 Plus servers. The Silicon Root of Trust from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has been designated a 2019 Cyber Catalyst cybersecurity solution. It protects against firmware attacks, detects compromised firmware or malware, and helps to rapidly recover the server in the event of an attack. This starts with the HPE developed and proprietary iLO 5 management. The iLO 5 ensures all firmware and the BIOS have the proper signature before it allows the machine to power on.
This level of security protects all firmware and BIOS through a key programmed into chip silicon at a TAA compliant chip production facility. It also integrates security with HPE Secure Start and Secure Boot to protect all BIOS, firmware, SPS, IE and boot sequence. The recovery process automatically quarantines compromised BIOS and firmware, then re-flashes with a known good image.
Budget Savings
With composable compute delivered as an on-premises cloud service, you’ll gain agility and avoid costly manual configuration and management of compute resources. When coupled with HPE GreenLake, you will have a powerful, software-defined, composable compute infrastructure that composes physical and virtual compute, storage, and fabric pools into any configuration for any application. If you choose the pay-per-use model for on-premises compute assets, it will enable you to align IT spend with actual usage. You only pay for what you use above a reserve. This model will provide you with near-real-time visibility into your usage data, and you can set budgets, create reports, and build rules-based insights.
What’s New in HPE Synergy?
So what’s new in HPE Synergy? The latest compute modules announced is the HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Plus. This new compute module is an all-new design around Intel 3rd Generation Xeon Scalable Processors. It can provide up to a 40% increase in performance over earlier processor generations. This performance gain is achieved with improvements to the product line design around the processor, memory, storage, and boot options.
The HPE Synergy 480 Gen10 Plus compute module delivers the performance, efficiency, and flexibility of a 2-socket server to support the most workloads. The Gen10 Plus provides more cores for a new level of workload performance and expanding ESXi VMs, expanded the memory DIMM socket count to 16 slots per socket, with 8 channels @ 3200 MT/S increased speed. The new Gen10 Plus has also expanded the capacity and persistence of the Intel Optane 200 memory support.
There are many additional upgrades and improvements to the Synergy Frame, more information can be found at HPE Synergy Composable Software Defined Infrastructure Platform | HPE.
Contact Zunesis today to find out more about HPE Synergy.
What is Synergy?
HPE Synergy is the next generation server architecture replacing the highly successful C7000. It is a software-defined solution that enables you to compose fluid pools of physical and virtual compute, storage, and fabric resources into any configuration for any workload. It allows for a quick deployment through a single interface, which creates efficiency and allows you more control.
What Are People Saying?
IT professionals often struggle with old technology that cannot fit all of the dynamic organizational needs of their company. Along with ease of deployment, valuable features of the Synergy solution include effortless management and integration with OneView. OneView allows everything to be managed on one dashboard.
Synergy gives you more control over firmware and how physical servers are managed, along with providing online firmware updates, which minimizes windows downtime.
Check out the latest technology refreshes for Synergy in this video from HPE Discover:
Benefits
With the ever-growing need for more bandwidth, Synergy midplane offers a bandwidth of over 16Tbps. The latest C7000 midplane is only capable of 7Tbps of bandwidth. Above all, this is three times the bandwidth from each compute node when compared to BladeSystem. It can support 100Gbit Ethernet and beyond, technology that the C7000 is not capable of supporting.
The Photonics-ready solution (able to support network bandwidth requirements well into the future as they’re developed) offers up to 200 drives (HDD and SSD) of storage. These drives can be allocated, as needed, individually to compute nodes within the same Frame. A second option is pooled, to allow the storage to be shared by other Frames.
Covering up to 60 blades, this solution allows two VC modules (plus satellites). This provides network virtualization for up to five Synergy Frames. Whereas before, two modules were needed in every blade enclosure, covering only 16 blades.
Money Talks
Synergy has been known to reduce IT Infrastructure costs by as much as 50%. When you consider the capacity enhancement, the time it takes to deploy this solution, and simple management component, the transition is a no-brainer!
In addition, a recent IDC analysis showed that organizations will realize value with HPE Synergy. The value will translate into more than a three-to-one return on their investment (223% five-year ROI).
Get Moving with Synergy
If you would like to learn more about Synergy and how it can add value to your IT infrastructure, please reach out to Zunesis to schedule an appointment.
Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or
other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
HPE Synergy
HPE Synergy is a composable infrastructure which treats computing, storage, and devices as resources that can be pooled together and used as needed. An organization has the ability to adjust the infrastructure depending on what workloads are required at the time. This allows for an organization to optimize IT performance and improve agility.
The best definition I found for Composable Infrastructure is the following:
Compose your infrastructure for any workload.
Some History
HPE started shipping the Synergy Platform during the first half of 2016, over 3 years ago. It is hard to believe this platform has been around for 3 years already.
In general, the Synergy platform provides options in compute, storage and networking. It offers a single management interface and unified API to simplify and automate operational complexities. It helps to increase operational response to new demands.
Composer and Image Streamer Management
Using the Composer and Image Streamer management, an organization has the software-defined intelligence to rapidly configure systems to meet the requirements and needs of the organization. Using HPE composer’s integrated software-defined intelligence, you are able to accelerate operations using a single interface.
Synergy Image Streamer enables true stateless computing for quick deployments and updates. This is a new approach to deployment and updates for composable infrastructure. This management appliance works with HPE Synergy Composer for fast software-defined control over physical compute modules with operating system provisioning.
The Synergy platform provides a fully programmable interface that allows organizations to take full advantage of potential vendor partnerships for open-source automation. Tools such as Chef, Docker, and OpenStack also work with the Synergy Platform. Using these tools an organization is able to seamlessly integrate multiple management tools, perform automation and future-proof the data center.
Infosight and Synergy
HPE has also announced Synergy Support in HPE InfoSight. InfoSight is a cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) management tool that came with the Nimble purchase. HPE has expanded the platform to include HPE Servers including Synergy and Apollo systems.
It includes the Predictive Analytics, Global Learning and the Recommendation Engine. The AI Engine provides data analytics for server security and predictive analytics for parts failure. Future capability will include firmware and driver analytics.
The Global Learning aspect provides a server wellness dashboard, a global inventory and performance and utilization information. The Recommendation Engine will provide information to eliminate performance bottlenecks on the servers.
Built with the Future in Mind
The Synergy platform is built with the future in mind. From the Management analytics to new compute platforms, to higher power requirements, to increased networking bandwidth, this platform is ready. Architectures are evolving to memory-driven computing, 100Gb networking and non-volatile memory (NVM).
The Synergy frame has been architected to handle these new technologies and more. Each HPE Synergy bay is ready to support future technologies such as Photonics, future CPUs, GPUs and new memory technologies.
For more information on HPE Synergy, Contact Zunesis today.
