It’s time for another Around the Storage Block Chalk Talk. I’m your host and chalk
board writer the IT Oddfather Calvin Zito. In this Chalk Talk, we’re going to
do technical overview of the HPE Alletra 6000. I did a general overview of HPE Alletra family
when we announced it back in May 2021 and I also just recently did an HPE Alletra 9000 deep dive.
I have a playlist of Chalk Talks that go deeper than I can go in this Chalk Talk,
so click on “i" on the top right of the screen to see the play list.
HPE Alletra 6000 is based on the DNA of 10 years of proven market success
with HPE Nimble Storage. Let's look at 5 numbers: over 45,000, over 20,000, greater than 6-nines,
4.9 one out of 5, and top 1%. What are these mean? • Over 45,000 Solutions deployed globally.
• Over 20,000 customers deployed, • 6-nines guaranteed and measured
data availability across the installed base. • 4.91 out of 5 global customer support rating
• and top 1% business-to-business NPS in the storage industry.
With the 6000, HPE is delivering true hybrid and multi-cloud. We're doing it with primary flash,
secondary flash, and multi cloud storage. • Primary flash with all- flash arrays.
• Secondary flash with hybrid flash arrays. • Multicloud storage with HPE Cloud Volumes
• and the HCI experience with HPE Nimble Storage dHCI.
One of the important things to understand with the 6000 is we are delivering cloud
operational agility that is powered by Data Services Cloud Console. I've done a Chalk Talk
on that (click the "i"). Data Services Cloud Console is delivering simplified deployment,
intent-based provisioning, invisible upgrades, and manage from anywhere with a SaaS-based experience.
A really important technical element of Nimble Storage and HP Alletra 6000 is the OS,
based on Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout or CASL file system. It's a log structured
file system and always writes full stripes spanning the whole disk group. It uses a
lightweight sweeping process to consolidate small holes into a free full stripe write.
It doesn't fill holes and has very efficient snapshots.
It uses variable block sizes, with variable block size inline compression and inline deduplication.
As a result, you get predictable performance at high capacity utilization.
I think looking at IO really helps make this clear. The OS places all incoming writes into the
active controller non-volatile DIMM. It mirrors data to the standby controller DIMM and then the
standby controller acknowledges the write to the active controller. Then it gets acknowledged back
to the host. And in the background, it will move the data into DRAM where we apply a variable block
deduplication and variable block compression and blocks are formed into sequential stripe writes
that are then written to SSD and indexed. One of the other things that is critical
to the architecture is the golden rules of data protection,
a higher priority than anything else. • First there's data integrity.
Don't return incorrect data. • Two, data durability: don't ever lose data.
• Three, data availability: don't lose access to data.
Let's look at a couple of these in detail starting with triple+ parity RAID,
the industry's best protection for flash. Triple+ parity RAID uses multiple parity
calculations and can tolerate simultaneous failure of any three SSDs. And with virtual built-in
spares, you can sustain a fourth failure. There's intra-drive parity that fixes sector losses under
multiple failures. RAID rebuilds are quick and raw-to-usable capacity is around 75%.
If we compare that to RAID 5 and the level of availability that triple+ parity RAID provides,
it is over 450 thousand times more protection than a 6 disk RAID 5 group.
There's also cascading multi-stage checksums and this goes beyond per block check sums.
The result is that it delivers the most comprehensive checksums available today.
There's full protection against the most insidious silent array corruption. Together with triple+
parity RAID, this protection becomes the strongest data integrity offered by any storage device.
And there are leading enterprise-level data protection and efficiencies.
• SmartSnap are instant efficient granular and application aware.
• SmartReplicate are granular and efficient replications async and peer persistence.
• SmartSecure is FIPS 140-2 certified encryption at rest.
• Restore with near-instant and no data movement with less risk.
• SmartCopies - zero-data move, thin, higher utilization and lower costs.
• And SmartReduce: intelligent data reduction, smarter consumption, and lower costs.
What Nimble Storage was famous for and we've continued with HPE Alletra 6000
is global intelligence powered by HPE InfoSight: Self-managing, self-healing,
and self-optimizing. One of the Chalk Talks I have is HPE InfoSight so be sure to check that out.
And it's also worth mentioning the transformed
support experience with the HPE Alletra 6000. • One call to level 3 with no support teirs.
• Average hold time is less than one minute. • 93% of cases are opened automatically.
• 86% of cases provide solutions automatically. • 54% of issues solved are outside of storage .
• and it all results in greater than six-nines availability for the platform.
This next graphic is one that I'll suggest you pause the video and read the details.
The integration with VMware and the Alletra 6000 is unmatched. You can see on the screen
many of the things that we've done to make the VMware experience the best that it can be.
And I can't leave the VMware discussion without bringing up vVols.
One point I want to make is that HPE is the market leader for vVols. Early in 2021, one
of our competitors was touting that they were the number one vendor. But that was Pure BS. Almost
50% of all vVols deployed are run on HPE Storage. I want also look quickly at the alliances and
solution ecosystem for the HPE Alletra 6000. Across the top you can see the business apps, VDI,
databases and private cloud environments supported with the 6000. And there's hypervisor
and containers from the major hypervisor and container platforms. And there's data
protection integration with several vendors that you can see at the bottom of the screen.
A couple more topics to touch on. Storage class memory has gone mainstream with the 6000.
With Intel Optane you get all-SCM-like performance at near all-flash array
pricing and 2 times faster response times with sub 200 microsecond average latency.
The Timeless storage program is also important to mention. You get perpetual refreshes without
caveats. You get family upgrades that bring your storage platform and data management to the latest
and greatest storage architecture offered by HPE every 3 years. It lowers your business risk,
guaranteed performance increases, with cloud like agility for on-premises storage.
HPE Alletra is timeless storage. This is another place to pause the video
to read everything I'm going to show you. It transforms stores acquisition, storage
maintenance, and storage modernization. Your investments with the HPE Alletra are timeless.
To learn more go to hpe.com/storage/alletra. You can find our blog at hpe.com/storage/blog.
Always love to hear from you on Twitter where you can find me as @CalvinZito.
Until next time, thanks for joining me on this Around the Storage Block Chalk Talk.