Align Infrastructure and WorkloadsIn order for Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders to better support

the needs of their businesses, both now and in the future, many are turning

to converged infrastructure (CI). Unlike monolithic, hardware-defined

infrastructure, software-defined converged infrastructure adapts quickly

and intelligently to workloads while providing faster time-to-deployment and

better end-to-end management and life cycle support. Through improved

agility and simplified system management, CI systems will soon enable

more autonomous data center operations. In addition, as CI components

become more dynamic, they will provide greater alignment between

infrastructure and workload, allowing for simplified, but intelligent control.

As a result, CI systems will be able to automatically allocate and align

resources to nonlinear and unpredictable workloads, relieving the time

consuming manual tasks and complexities of older infrastructure.

issue 1 Pellentesque Pede Nibh Sed Laoreet Sagittis

Align Infrastructure and Workloads

A Converged Infrastructure Success Story

HPE’s Unique Approach to Transition to Converged Infrastructure

How HPE Supports Converged Infrastructure

From the Gartner Files: Plan Now for the Future of Converged Infrastructure

About HPE

1

2

2

3

4

8

i n s i d e t h i s i s s u e

Accelerate IT Service Delivery by Simplifying Traditional Infrastructure Management

2 l

Acc

eler

ate

IT S

ervi

ce D

eliv

ery

by S

impl

ifyin

g Tr

aditi

onal

Infr

astr

uctu

re M

anag

emen

t

Accelerate IT Service Delivery by Simplifying Traditional Infrastructure Management is published by HPE. Editorial supplied by HPE is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner research is © 2015 by Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. All Gartner materials are used with Gartner’s permission. The use or publication of Gartner research does not indicate Gartner’s endorsement of HPE’s products and/or strategies. Reproduction or distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner’s Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see “Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity” on its website, http://www.gartner.com/technology/about/ombudsman/omb_guide2.jsp.

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

A Converged Infrastructure Success Story Mansfield OilIndustry-leading fuel supplier, Mansfield Oil, lacked the reliability and

scalability to support business growth in their legacy infrastructure. They

needed greater business agility and efficiency to enable growth and

secure a competitive advantage in their evolving energy marketplace.

Mansfield replaced their aging servers with HPE BladeSystem and HPE

OneView as their standard infrastructure. They achieved some impressive

results, including:

• Tenfold improvement in business productivity

• Greater mobility for employees to serve customers efficiently, from

anywhere, at any time

• Increased agility to support ongoing business growth more cost-

effectively

• Accelerated rollout of critical new IT initiatives to enhance business

productivity

• Achieved 98% virtualization and adoption of private cloud thanks to

tight integration between HPE and VMware

With HPE, Mansfield was able to roll out over a dozen new IT initiatives in

just one year. This boosted business productivity tenfold while improving

IT efficiency and lowering expenses.

HPE’s Unique Approach to Transition to Converged InfrastructureHPE understands the approach a business must take to successfully

transition to a converged infrastructure so they can quickly reap the

benefits. HPE’s unique approach optimizes every-day enterprise

workloads, from converged systems for high-intensity virtualized or cloud

workloads, to entire converged data centers.

Between the HPE BladeSystem and HPE OneView, the agility and speed to market we’ve gained is simply unmatched. ...We now have the scalability and agility to take the business further, faster than we ever could before. Instead of spending 90% of our time on run and maintain activities, that’s down to just 50% and dropping. It’s freed up much more time for our architects and engineers to focus on projects instead of break/fix. Giving that kind of time and quality of life back to the IT team is invaluable. You can’t put a price on that.

Hercu Rabsatt, Director – Infrastructure & Service Management, Mansfield Oil Company

“

“

Accelerate IT S

ervice Delivery by S

implifying Traditional Infrastructure M

anagement l 3

In the attached report, Gartner describes two styles of

convergence, ”vertically integrated” blocks for steady and

reliable systems of record, and modular, “hyperconverged

infrastructures” for fast and agile event management and

processing. With HPE’s broad portfolio, organizations

can choose which style of convergence is right for their

current or future business needs. Many organizations have

taken a first step in the journey toward a more converged

infrastructure by choosing one management for one

infrastructure to enable convergence, federation, and

automation all at once.

They achieve this first step by utilizing HPE OneView

with HPE BladeSystem which includes servers, storage,

and networking across both physical and virtualized

environments. Simply put, HPE OneView streamlines

operations by automating many processes that simplify

complex infrastructure management.

How HPE Supports Converged InfrastructureHPE OneView, converged infrastructure management, is

designed for the way people, not devices, work. It unifies

processes, user interfaces, and the application programming

interfaces (APIs) across server, storage, and networking resources.

It serves as an automation hub allowing you to plug in and utilize

the tools you already know, such as VMware vCenter and VMware

Operations Management Suite, within a single console. HPE

OneView gives you industry-tested, easy-to-use and repeatable

templates so you can make error-free changes once and replicate

them across your infrastructure. In this way, you can remove

complexity and costly mistakes, and streamline operations through

automation, so services can be delivered far more simply and

efficiently.

HPE BladeSystem is a modular platform that converges compute,

storage, fabric, management and virtualization to accelerate

operations and speeds delivery of applications and services

running in physical, virtual, and cloud-computing environments.

Source: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

figure 1. The Power of One

Paul Durzan

Vice President, Product Management

HPE Converged Data Center Infrastructure

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

If you want to accelerate IT service delivery and simplify the

complexities of managing traditional infrastructure, HPE OneView

together with HPE BladeSystem can provide one management

for one infrastructure. Contact us at 1-855-472-5233 for more

information, or visit hpe.com/info/Bladesystem.

Download a free trial of HPE OneView management software, and

start integrating your HPE infrastructure management platform today.

4 l

Acc

eler

ate

IT S

ervi

ce D

eliv

ery

by S

impl

ifyin

g Tr

aditi

onal

Infr

astr

uctu

re M

anag

emen

t

Plan Now for the Future of Converged Infrastructure

Gartner Research, G00272347, George J. Weiss,

6 February 2015

Converged infrastructure is becoming more software-defined, intelligent and adaptable to workloads. I&O leaders should evaluate and pilot newer, more advanced CI solutions to ascertain the technology’s changing value proposition.

Impacts

• CI is becoming less monolithic and hardware-defined andmore software-defined and intelligent, allowing I&O leadersto benefit from improved infrastructure agility and simplifiedsystem management.

• The value proposition of CI is expanding to include easieralignment between IT infrastructure and workloads and end-to-end management life cycle support, enabling I&O leaders to have better support for digital business.

Recommendations

• Do not overcommit to one vendor’s road map of convergenceas a long-term strategy, given that road maps, particularlythose for converged infrastructure, will surely change.

• Justify CI investments on a tactical basis, with an ROI of nomore than three years.

• Decouple convergence into software-defined, above-the-linesolutions that can ride above the hardware foundation in anautonomous or semiautonomous manner.

• Determine the degree of continuous and dynamic lifecycle integration and convergence by deconstructing thesystem into subsystems and components as replaceable andupgradable during the CI’s life cycle.

Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2020, converged infrastructure offerings will automatically deliver dynamic resource allocation from pooled compute, network and storage resources, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Analysis

Converged infrastructure (CI) is evolving. The technology, as a whole, is in the midst of shifting from being largely hardware-defined to being largely software-defined. In light of this shift, CI components (server, compute, network and storage) are becoming less static and more dynamic, enabling a greater alignment between infrastructure and workload. The transition to software-defined CI is also making way for intelligent control. As a result, CI systems will be able to automatically allocate and align resources to workloads.

This research looks at the impact of these technological shifts (see Figure 1). Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will need to plan ahead for a reality in which CI technology not only is dramatically different, but also has a new value proposition. The systems that had enabled faster time to deployment will soon also enable a more autonomous data center operation.

Impacts and Recommendations

CI is becoming less monolithic and hardware-defined and more software-defined and intelligent, allowing I&O leaders to benefit from improved infrastructure agility and simplified system managementTraditionally, vendors preconfigured their CI systems at the hardware level to run a particular workload. Initially, this took the form of converged rack and chassis/blade systems (see Figure 2). Later on, convergence was applied to compute, network and storage components, providing a closer alignment between the infrastructure and workload. However, in both cases, the systems were monolithic and largely inflexible. And while the systems did offer APIs and limited interoperability, customers found internal integration efforts to be time-consuming, leading to reliance on vendor support.

As evolution progressed, vendors began seeing new opportunities to improve the scalability of their CI offerings. They did this through multinode systems with management software and a fabric interconnect tying together multiple CI systems.

Accelerate IT S

ervice Delivery by S

implifying Traditional Infrastructure M

anagement l 5

Impacts Top Recommendations

The value proposition of CI is expanding to include easier alignment between IT infrastructure and workloads and end-to-end management lifecycle support, enabling better support for digital business.

• Decouple convergence into software-defined above-the-line solutions that canride above the hardware foundation in anautonomous or semi-autonomous manner.

• Determine the degree of continuous anddynamic life cycle integration andconvergence by deconstructing the systeminto subsystems and components asreplaceable and upgradable during the CI’slife cycle.

CI is becoming less monolithic and hardware-defined and more software-defined and intelligent, improving infrastructure agility and simplifying systems management.

• Do not overcommit to one vendor’sroadmap of convergence as a long termstrategy, given that roadmaps, particularlythose for converged infrastructure, willsurely change.

• Justify CI investments on a tactical basis,with an ROI of no more than 3 years.

Source: Gartner (February 2015)

figure 1. Impacts and Recommendations for I&O Leaders

Systems with

chassis/ rack

conver-gence

Systems with CPU/ network/ storage conver-gence

Multi-node

systems with fabric

inter- tcennoc

Software-defined systems

Aggre-gated, fabric- based

Resource Pools

Hybrid IT/ Cloud Pooling

Monolithic andhardware-defined

Intelligent andsoftware-defined

2009 2020 Today

tnemyolped-ot-emit dipaR

tnemeganam loop ecruoser TI dirbyH

Continuous and dynamic integration

Valu

e

Source: Gartner (February 2015)

figure 2. The Evolutionary Journey of Converged Infrastructure

6 l

Acc

eler

ate

IT S

ervi

ce D

eliv

ery

by S

impl

ifyin

g Tr

aditi

onal

Infr

astr

uctu

re M

anag

emen

t

Today, many vendors are modernizing their CI systems to take advantage of software-defined storage (SDS), software-defined networking (SDN), software-defined compute (SDC) and software-defined facilities (SDF). Software-defined CI will help I&O leaders establish an infrastructure that is easier to manage and adaptable to nonlinear and unpredictable workloads. Software-defined CI will also enable I&O leaders to achieve better resource allocation, optimizing their investment in the technology. But I&O leaders, beware: A lot of vendor hype will emerge as vendors promote their software-defined systems.

As the market transitions from the multimode era to the software-defined era, many CI form factors have emerged. These include:

• Dense form factors (e.g., Dell PowerEdge FX2 and HPMoonshot)

• Smaller-configuration models of existing systems (e.g.,Cisco UCS Mini, Dell VRTX)

• Modular, high-performance computing systems (e.g., HP’sApollo and SGI’s ICE)

• Hyperconverged infrastructure (e.g., Nutanix, SimpliVity,Pivot3, Scale Computing and other appliance offerings ofhyperconvergence)

Unfortunately, CI product proliferation will complicate IT procurement and technology selection strategies that favor standardization, corporate standards and simplicity in portfolio SKUs. Moreover, as SKUs proliferate, model longevity grows uncertain. Nevertheless, the proliferation of models is a positive sign that vendors recognize that their first-generation CI systems, while meeting with good market acceptance, still have gaps to fill.

Looking to the future, the next iteration of CI will incorporate intelligent resource management, enabling automatic and dynamic resource allocation. The next iteration will also include pooled compute, network and storage resources. Later on, these pools will be able to reside in the cloud or on-premises. These last two transitions are necessary if businesses are to establish a more agile infrastructure, enable bimodal IT, support the Nexus of Forces and transition to digital business.

Recommendations:

• Do not overcommit to one vendor’s road map ofconvergence as a long-term strategy, given that road maps,particularly those for converged infrastructure, will surelychange.

• Justify CI investments on a tactical basis, with an ROI of nomore than three years.

• Construct road maps to address different styles ofconvergence, such as vertically integrated blocks forsteady and reliable systems of record, and modular,hyperconverged infrastructures for agile and fast eventmanagement and processing.

• Assess quality of convergence to add and swap componentsfor technology advances, life cycle upgrades, applicationagility, capacity, bandwidth and scaling change.

• Do not be lulled by hyperconvergence as a panaceabefore further market and system developments in theevolutionary cycle occur, since considerable software-defined advances are still ahead and likely to play out inthis space.

The value proposition of CI is expanding to include easier alignment between IT infrastructure and workloads and end-to-end management life cycle support, enabling I&O leaders to have better support for digital businessI&O leaders were initially attracted to CI because it enabled them to buy a “solution in a box,” speeding integration and deployment times, and reducing operating expenditure (opex) costs (although some of the costs shifted to higher vendor service charges).

In the future, I&O leaders will turn to CI for two more reasons:

• The ability to automatically adjust to unpredictable patternsof behavior from workloads

• The ability to address the entire management life cycle innear-continuous fashion (implementation; provisioning andreprovisioning; reapportioning compute, memory, network,I/O and capacity – both on-premises and in the cloud;recovery, replacement and upgrades)

Accelerate IT S

ervice Delivery by S

implifying Traditional Infrastructure M

anagement l 7

Both of these new advantages will be particularly crucial to I&O leaders supporting the transition to digital business. Specifically, the technology will help manage the complexities of millions of logical connections and pathways, and limit the chance for unpredictable and unforeseen events affecting response times, integrity, security and reliability.

Table 1. Value-Driving Factors of CI Versus Customer Demand and Willingness to Pay a Premium

Value-Driving Factor Customer Demand

Level of Premium Customers Are Willing to Pay

Advanced automation to streamline processes and improve productivity

Medium-high

Moderate

Increased component standardization to enable interchangeability of components and vendors, increasing vendor competition

Medium-high

Low

The use and value of open-source software

Medium Low

Reduced lock-in to configurations and software licensing

Medium Low

Source: Gartner (February 2015)

But how much will I&O leaders be willing to pay for this increased value, if it is attainable by 2020? The answer will lie in the demand for – and cost of – several factors that will enable this value (see Table 1).

Ironically, the increased vendor competition, as noted above, will have its drawbacks, which will detract from the added value of the newer systems. These drawbacks include fit-for-purpose CI systems increasing IT complexity, and a turbulent, crowded market threatening the longevity of CI systems. What’s more, not all use cases and environments will fit the CI model well. Many cloud service providers and hyperscale and Web-scale IT shops will spin out their own less expensive hardware (e.g., hardware from original design manufacturers), customized configurations and open-sourced tools.

Recommendations:

• Decouple convergence into software-defined, above-the-linesolutions that can ride above the hardware foundation in anautonomous or semiautonomous manner.

• Rightsize CI configurations to the level of your needs byusing software-defined efficient resource management toavoid overengineered and overpriced solutions that includeexpensive hardware.

• Determine the degree of continuous and dynamic lifecycle integration and convergence by deconstructing thesystem into replaceable and upgradable subsystems andcomponents during the CI’s life cycle.

• Plan payback within a one- to two-year period, withmaintenance extending the useful life cycle beyond thewarranty period (three years) to five years.

• Ascertain the degree to which hardware and software partsform both an integrated solution (interlaced) as well as adecoupled configuration that allows adaptability as a pool ofresources to the workloads as they change.

• Within a bimodal (see Note 1) architectural strategy, do notcompromise on a single standard CI as a one-size-fits-allapproach, as current CIs serve a different purpose.

Note 1Bimodal Architectural Strategy Defined

A bimodal IT architecture takes into account both modes of bimodal IT (for more on bimodal IT, see “Bimodal IT: How to Be Digitally Agile Without Making a Mess”). Mode 1 architectures deal with traditional enterprise applications, emphasizing safety and accuracy. These systems are the core mission-critical applications, and are built on the foundation of steadiness and continuity. Mode 2 architectures deal with applications that are fast, agile and part of fast development-to-deployment cycles.

8 l

Acc

eler

ate

IT S

ervi

ce D

eliv

ery

by S

impl

ifyin

g Tr

aditi

onal

Infr

astr

uctu

re M

anag

emen

t

About HPEHewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry leading technology

company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the

industry’s most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to

the data center to workplace applications, our technology and

services help customers around the world make IT more efficient,

more productive and more secure.

http://www.hpe.com