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Enhance edge resiliency with the latest HPE SimpliVity software release

Learn about HPE SimpliVity software release 4.1.2 with new features that include an option for dual disk resiliency, unified continuous hardware monitoring, and the ability to view VM copy locations more easily.

โ€“ By Shwetha Varsha, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, HPE

HPE-SimpliVity updates-blog-HPE20160526163_800_0_72_RGB.jpgResiliency is a key factor for edge workloads. HPE SimpliVity systems are built around data resiliency โ€“ not only at the disk level but at the overall platform level as well. We know how important data is to you. Thatโ€™s why we at HPE want to make sure that once you store you data on our systems, that data will stay there and always be available. Because we know that the loss of data can have a huge business impact. This also requires intelligent monitoring and management of hardware and software at the edge.

HPE SimpliVity software version 4.1.2 is here!

This update introduces a few new features, such as the option to increase disk resiliency when you require a higher level of protection. Now with HPE SimpliVity InfoSight Server Integration, all the benefits that are available in HPE InfoSight for Servers will be available on HPE SimpliVity infrastructure. The HPE SimpliVity hardware will be continuously monitored in a unified manner, to help protect the HPE SimpliVity infrastructure. This in turn gives you end- to-end proactive monitoring of your HPE SimpliVity environments. Whatโ€™s more, when HPE SimpliVity creates a secondary copy of data for added resilience, you can now view the virtual machine copy locations on the vCenter UI in a new tab.

Letโ€™s take a deeper look at these features.

Dual disk resiliency

When we first introduced the HPE SimpliVity platform, we started with hardware accelerated models that offered dual disk resiliency by default. It is important to remember that HPE SimpliVity systems are built around data resiliency not only at disk level, but at the overall platform level.

Some customer environments that are unattended remote sites or dark sites may require long lead times โ€“ ranging from a couple of weeks to a month โ€“ before a failed hard drive can be replaced. The same applies for two-node stretched clusters, where you donโ€™t have to worry about a second drive failure before you can replace an already failed hard drive (which could take as long as two-to-four weeks).

With dual disk resiliency available for software-optimized HPE SimpliVity 380 G and 325 Gen10 Plus v2 platforms, you can now be rest assured that your edge deployments are protected with an additional layer of resiliency, minimizing downtime and redundant deployments.

You can take advantage of this feature at the time of a new deployment, by choosing the option โ€œSelect disk resiliencyโ€ and select โ€œProtection again two drive failuresโ€ to deploy selected nodes to tolerate two drives failures per disk group. This option is not available for every platform as dual disk resiliency is not supported in all current HPE SimpliVity models.

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The best part is that all the features and functionalities of HPE SimpliVity remain the same, regardless of the disk resiliency option. No new SKUs are introduced, so the same configurations can be deployed with either of the disk resiliency alternatives. You can also have nodes with both resiliency types in the same cluster. Factory reset on a node will retain the previously selected mode of disk resiliencyโ€‹. Supported models today are:

  • HPE SimpliVity 325 x6
  • HPE SimpliVity 380 G x6
  • HPE SimpliVity 380 G x12

Note: This resiliency feature results in a trade-off between capacity and performance, and you need to make sure to use Dual Disk Resiliency only when required..

HPE InfoSight server integration

In the last couple of releases of HPE InfoSight for HPE SimpliVity, our customers benefited from predictive analytics into historical cluster capacity consumption and prediction to full, proactive automated wellness alerts, case creation and support automation, virtual machine resource utilization and overall visibility of all registered HPE SimpliVity hosts.

This allows the HPE SimpliVity virtualized environment to be monitored along with some parts of the HPE SimpliVity hardware that the HPE SimpliVity Virtual Appliance (SVA) recognizes, such as the accelerator card, battery, etc. The entirety of the server hardware was not monitored. This meant customers had to manually check for server hardware issues and as a result manually raise support tickets for this.

Now, from HPE SimpliVity 4.1.2 onwards, the integration of HPE Infosight server capability with SimpliVity infrastructure means that HPE SimpliVity server hardware is monitored periodically. Cases are created automatically for hardware failures with the option for customers to raise cases manually on the portal. You can also subscribe to email notifications to get notified of issues right in your inbox, without having to periodically check your environment. All of this without any new software or reconfiguration. Existing HPE SimpliVity customers on version 4.1.2 registered to HPE InfoSight just need to add the iLO details in the HPE InfoSight page on the vSphere Client.

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With this new feature, the entirety of the HPE SimpliVity environment is monitored: software and hardware, truly a global unified management solution, powered by the AI-driven intelligence of HPE InfoSight.

Available for all HPE SimpliVity Gen 10 hardware, with all capabilities integrated within the SVA, providing customers visibility, and the ability to do resource planning and predictive analytics.

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Virtual machine replica dashboard

HPE SimpliVity is built to be highly resilient and, as such, HPE creates two copies of data for High Availability by default. Until now this information about the location of the replica was not readily available, and usually customers would reach out to support to get the full information.

With this latest release, the Virtual Machine Replica Details dashboard under HPE SimpliVity Federation section shows details of the replicas for all virtual machines in the federation. Information related to the VMs โ€“ such as name, datastore, cluster, host, OVC(OmniStack Virtual Controller also called SVA) names of primary and secondary replicas locations, associated backup policy, and power state โ€“ clearly listed.

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This feature give you the information readily available in a table format from HPE SimpliVity v4.1.2 on the vSphere GUI. This allows customers to plan for VM replicas migration from nodes, in events such as hardware maintenance activities or upgrade planning, as well as move important VMs with single replicas to different datastores and clusters with high availability. Hence, they no longer need to contact support for this.

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Ready to learn more?

Check out this video for the HPE SimpliVity Overview Demonstration and the HPE SimpliVity: Managing Upgrades with Interop Catalog

Discover how Andelyn Biosciences is accelerating gene therapy with help from HPE. Read the article on Powering Gene Therapy Breakthroughs with Cloud Innovation and watch the video.


Meet Storage Experts blogger Shwetha Varsha, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, HPE

Shwetha Varsha - HPE SimpliVity.pngShwetha currently leads the HPE SimpliVity enablement, Hands-on-Labs and POCs for pre-sales, sales, and partners. She works with the field and engineering to bring in valuable feedback to the product.  

Connect with Shwetha on LinkedIn and Twitter.


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