On April 12, HPE, Hewlett Packard Enterprisehas invited journalists and partners to its headquarters in Cernusco sul Naviglio, near Milan, to present the new hardware and software solutions, developed to innovate and support the growth of its customers. The event was attended by HPE Paul DelgrossoChannel Sales Director, Paola RigoldiCompute Solutions BU & Sales Manager, Fabio TognonData Services Director.
Paolo Delgrosso: HPE strategy on the Italian territory
In the world, the amount of digital data is constantly growing, so much so that in the period between 2022 and 2026 a 100% increase of information stored in computing devices globally. By now everything is digital, everything produces data that is recorded somewhere. And nothing is thrown away: the tendency is to keep data indefinitely, perhaps in multiple copies for safety.
HPE is well aware of the phenomenon and offers solutions for archiving, managing and exploiting data. This, however, without forgetting the sustainability of production processes: the company has an internal section that studies the best strategies for reducing energy consumption, in particular that of data centres.
Sustainability is important to HPE, in all of its research, development and business activities. The company aims to be net zero across its value chain by 2040. Today, 50% of the energy it consumes comes from renewable sources and aims to reach 100% by 2030. Since 2000, the company has filed over 6,000 patents relating to technologies developed to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. From a circular economy perspective, 85% of HPE products returned by customers are overhauled, refurbished and returned to market. HPE’s commitment to the environment also involves its suppliers: with over 500 audits already conducted, the company encourages and certifies its suppliers to adopt environmentally friendly production systems.
Paola Rigoldi: A new generation of HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers
To extract value from data, you need computing power, high-performance hardware not only from a computational point of view but also from an environmental point of view. In other words, servers must not only be powerful but also consume as little power as possible.
With this in mind, the company presented the new family of servers HPE Generation 11 ProLiant. They are servers available in different sizes and, compared to the previous generation, are capable of greater performance in terms of CPU. The performance is doubled and at the same time the energy efficiency is up to 45% higher. All the latest HPE machines are certified compliant with the PNRR directives, in particular they comply with the rule that requires that their development and production do not harm the environment.
The new HPE computers have been developed according to criteria of intuitiveness in operations, reliability for security, optimization for the workloads required by the customer. The intuitiveness is based on a simplified use, unified within a data center (which can also be distributed around the world) and automated thanks to the software developed by HPE. The applications allow the management of servers for their entire life cycle, such as updating from a single point on machines located in multiple remote sites.
All communications between HPE servers are secure and encryptedevery car is authenticated upon insertion into the customer’s network. The software section carries out continuous surveillance of the hardware and its functioning, to immediately identify any attempts at attack and malicious tampering.
The Gen11 ProLiant family consists of several machines, from the smallest DL320 in 1U rack format with a single CPU up to the tower ML350, a computer holder of numerous firsts in terms of performance (environmental, virtualization, data management). Almost all machines are available with processors Intel oppure AMD.
All new servers can be purchased in the traditional way or as a service (HPE GreenLake), which offers interesting economic advantages, given that the hardware is gradually scalable according to the growth of customer needs. With HPE GreenLake operational expense savings can be up to 65%, TCO can be reduced up to 45%, efficiency gains can be up to 60%.
Fabio Tognon: A new generation of HPE Alletra storage and the evolution of HPE GreenLake Cloud Services
HPE’s evolution continues in optics service based and the growth of the GreenLake offer is proof of this: the company announces not only new products but also new services.
What you need today is a fluid data center, which can adapt to both technological and market changes, which grows with the exponential increase in data. In fact, it is necessary to collect, organize and analyze data, and for this you need computing power and large archives. Obtaining information from the data collected and managing it in a secure manner are two tasks that allow companies to beat the competition in time, to recover quickly from malware attacks (primarily ransomware), to be more innovative.
Efficiency in data processing is hampered by some bottlenecks. First from archives organized in silos, closed vertical structures maintained by highly specialized and experienced people only in a specific field. Silos are complicated to manage and protect, they are inefficient and not economically viable. Another obstacle is the traditional data center solutions, which are not designed for hybrid cloud, do not integrate data protection and furthermore require highly trained operators to perform day-to-day maintenance and management operations. Again, the custom designed solutions they are ill-suited to meet new and diverse customer demands, unable to keep pace with either sudden increases in data volumes or unforeseen changes in storage needs.
Today we need one elastic solution, easily adaptable, which is not confined within the walls of specializations. With HPE products, the cloud experience becomes intuitive, thanks also to the help provided by AI, and the management of data and related storage is simplified. The systems developed by HPE allow high performance, have a flexible architecture that allows the management of all types of data. This allows you to maximize efficiency and data protection at the hybrid cloud level, therefore throughout the system, not just at particular points of the IT architecture.
Based on these principles, HPE is announcing four new GreenLake-based services: Block Storage, File Storage, Backup e Recovery, Disaster Recovery. These as-a-service products are available with a subscription (File Storage also through traditional purchase).
Fabio Tognon, Data Services Director
The subscription system is a very powerful facilitator because it allows you to calibrate the offer tailored to the customer, and subsequent changes are very rapid. The customer does not have to buy and install the system that he expects will serve in 3 – 4 years, but only what is needed at the moment. The system can then grow as needed.
Block Storage it is a filing system mission criticalavailable with limited costs of type mid range but with performance of upper level. It guarantees 100% data availability. In essence, HPE offers an enterprise-class data management service, with enterprise-class performance, but with a 34% lower price. Also File Storage is an enterprise service, which puts ease of use first. The product ensures reduced access times, with a minimum size of 200 TB. Note that Block Storage and File Storage are provided by same infrastructure: the engine under the hood is HPE Alletra Storage MPa multi-protocol hardware system that breaks down the barriers between the different data processing sectors and allows unified management.
Fabio Tognon
HPE expects an excellent response from the market not only on the Block Storage part but also for the File Storage part, although the latter is very specific. HPE is stimulating the market on the importance of data: it is not enough to store it, it is necessary to exploit its potential value. The company has been working on it for 3 years and is having the first results, the first returns from customers.