In a recent interview with HPEs Joe Pemberton (UK Cloud & Data Partner Lead) and Nexstor, Joe explained,
‘Looking at the roadmap of what HPE are investing in, I would say that they are not slowing down. HPE expect ever-increasing swathes of data to be accessed and used, and customers want that quicker than ever before. So we’re investing in technology that ensures data is in the hands of people as quickly as it possibly can be, looking at latency, speed of disks, speed of connection, speed all the way from edge to cloud’.
The world of data infrastructure has undergone drastic changes over the past decade, with the increasing importance of data storage, analytics, and retrieval. Efficient, reliable, and scalable storage services have never been more critical. Leading the way in innovative storage solutions, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) recently unveiled a game-changing product — the HPE Alletra MP.
This blog post will explore the innovative aspects of HPE Alletra MP and why it is considered one of the most impressive product launches from HPE in recent years.
Suggested reading: Read the interview with Joe Pemberton to learn more about current developments in data and the cloud.
Introducing HPE Alletra MP
HPE Alletra Storage MP is a transformative data infrastructure solution that is part of HPE’s data services cloud console (DSCC). It seamlessly integrates with DSCC to offer cloud-native data infrastructure management across:
- Edges
- Data centres
- And clouds
This supports IT specialists by unifying disparate environments under one control plane. The Alletra MP offers a mission-critical block and file storage solution promoting agility, flexibility, and high performance.
With the rise in data-driven decision-making, the Alletra MP aims to simplify operations while ensuring maximum data availability and improved cyber security.
Exploring the technical architecture of HPE Alletra MP
To truly understand the capabilities of HPE Alletra MP, it’s crucial to delve deeper into its technical architecture. The hardware platform Alletra MP utilises state-of-the-art components and a meticulously designed framework to deliver on its promise of robust, flexible, and efficient data management.
The underlying structure
At its core, HPE Alletra MP is powered by an end-to-end NVMe architecture.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express): a protocol specifically designed for high-speed data transfer between storage devices and computing systems.
Unlike its traditional counterparts (SATA and SAS), NVMe can handle higher amounts of data at greater speeds, owing to its ability to process multiple queues and commands concurrently.
This all-NVMe structure of Alletra MP provides ultra-low latency, massive parallelism, and high throughput, significantly improving the overall performance of mission-critical applications. By optimising IO operations, it ensures consistent and predictable high performance, a critical requirement for real-time applications and databases.
Scaling mechanisms
Scalability is another key facet of the Alletra Storage MP platform’s architecture. The system scales up and out to cater to the varying needs of businesses, effortlessly handling changes in workload demands and common big data challenges.
- Scale-up architecture: With a scale-up design, HPE Alletra MP allows businesses to add resources such as processing power, memory, and storage to a single node in the system. This approach helps to maintain high performance, even as the workload increases.
- Scale-out architecture: Alletra MP enables expansion by adding more nodes to the system in the scale-out model. This horizontal scaling provides additional capacity and balanced performance while enhancing system resilience and availability.
These two approaches ensure that HPE Alletra MP can adjust and grow with your business, ensuring you always have the necessary resources for your mission-critical applications.
In-built intelligence with HPE InfoSight
Alletra MP incorporates HPE’s industry-leading AI platform, InfoSight, into its architecture. InfoSight uses advanced machine learning algorithms to:
- Monitor systems continually
- Predict potential issues
- And suggest optimisation opportunities
It even automates the resolution of common problems, freeing IT teams from routine troubleshooting tasks and enhancing the system’s overall reliability and performance.
Why is HPE Alletra MP groundbreaking?
HPE Alletra MP is an all-NVMe storage system designed for business-critical workloads requiring high availability, unparalleled performance, and a flexible operational model. It demonstrates groundbreaking enhancements over its predecessors and industry competitors for three key reasons:
1. Autonomous operations
One major feature that sets HPE Alletra MP apart is its independent operations. The system utilises AI and machine learning capabilities to self-optimise, reducing the time and effort spent on manual tuning and administration. It predicts and prevents disruptions before they occur, ensuring a fast, agile, and resilient infrastructure.
2. Cloud-native data infrastructure
Additionally, Zerto’s anomaly detection capabilities are crucial in combating ransomware. By continuously monitoring data for irregularities, Zerto can flag potential ransomware intrusions before they have a chance to cause significant damage, allowing IT teams to isolate affected systems and prevent the spread of the ransomware.
3. Predictive analytics
By leveraging HPE InfoSight’s predictive analytics capabilities, the Alletra MP provides visibility and insights across the stack. It anticipates and prevents issues, optimising performance and ensuring maximum resource utilisation. The AI-driven operations deliver 100% availability, so businesses don’t have to worry about downtime.
Suggested reading: Read our article on HPE Alletra vs Nimble to discover how the Alletra MP compares to other data storage and management solutions.
Unification across environments
With its integration with DSCC, HPE Alletra MP provides a unified data operations experience. It can also be used as part of a HPE GreenLake for Block Storage or GreenLake for File Storage solution for a more seamless hybrid cloud experience.
This unification isn’t just about having a single control panel. Instead, it’s about enabling a consistent data infrastructure management experience across various environments — edge, on-premises, and cloud. Few competitors offer this level of seamless integration and unification.
Unification across environments
The HPE Alletra MP’s integration with the DSCC is a significant step towards unifying data operations. DSCC, a suite of cloud services from HPE, provides a single platform for managing data and infrastructure. With HPE Alletra MP, the capabilities of DSCC are extended to mission-critical applications.
This integration enables businesses to manage and protect their data workloads from edge-to-cloud through a single SaaS-based platform. This way, users can streamline management tasks and make data more readily available across different environments.
By combining the power of Alletra MP’s mission-critical storage with the DSCC’s management capabilities, businesses can enjoy higher levels of data availability, reliability, and performance.
Looking ahead: The future of data infrastructure with HPE Alletra MP
The launch of HPE Alletra MP is a testament to HPE’s commitment to revolutionising data management. It represents a significant step forward in the company’s vision of creating a unified data operations experience that’s autonomous, efficient, and utilises cloud-based data storage.
In an increasingly data-centric world, the need for a solution like HPE Alletra MP is undeniable. The product’s combination of speed, resilience, scalability, and intelligence makes it a standout offering in the vast data infrastructure landscape, supporting and developing cloud operating models. Moreover, its seamless integration with DSCC sets a new standard for data management, unifying disparate environments and making it easier for businesses to drive insight from their data.
Build your HPE solution
HPE Alletra MP is indeed HPE’s best new product launch in years. It is poised to transform how businesses manage their mission-critical workloads, reinforcing HPE’s position as an industry leader in data infrastructure solutions.
At Nexstor, we have extensive experience implementing and managing HPE solutions. As a trusted HPE partner and cyber essentials certified vendor, we can help you procure, build, and maintain your custom HPE solution.
Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help your business.
