Living on the EDGE!
Transcript
>> Calvin: Hey, I'm Calvin Zito. Used to be known as the HPE storage guy. I am The Storage Godfather and we're going to get going in just a minute here. But before we do, I want to make sure to give you some URLs and places where you can find more of our content around HPE storage. com/Storage/blog You can always reach out to me directly on Twitter and I'm always happy to chat with people where you can find me as CalvinZito. I got a URL there for where you can find a playlist of all my videos that includes demos, chalk talks, and Q&A style things that I've done.
And then I've got some instructions how you can find my podcast, which is basically just go to either iTunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher, and Spotify and search for Around the Storage Block and subscribe to the podcast. And we'll get going here in just a second. (happy instrumental music) >> Hey everyone, I'm Calvin Zito. I am The Storage Godfather. I've been at HPE Storage for a long time. And welcome to our session today here at the CTO Advisor Virtual event. With us, our main presenter is Patrick Osborne.
Patrick, you've been a part of HPE Storage for a long long time too. Why don't you tell folks a little bit about your background and what you're doing at HPE Storage? >> Yeah, thanks for the intro, Calvin. My name is Patrick Osborne. I am VP and General Manager for our Hyper-converged infrastructure business. Here at HPE, Calvin said I've been in the storage industry for well over 20 years. I have a lot of experience in primary storage, secondary storage, big data analytics, and now the exciting world of HCI.
So, it's been quite a journey. >> So, you, Patrick, you're doing a session today talking about living on the edge. Without jumping in to too much detail too quickly. But why did you pick that as a topic here? >> So I think one of the things we've observed with the number of our customers recently is that there is an intersection between HCI as a technology and where some of these workloads are being deployed. And they're not necessarily in the traditional data center and not necessarily running in the cloud.
But they're being implemented at what people are calling the edge. >> So maybe let's define that a little bit more. What is the edge? Is it a physical location? Is it a virtual location? What do we really mean when we talk about the edge? >> Yeah, so for a lot of customers, it's essentially a physical location where things and people connect, right. So, we've got a lot of great use cases with edge and Aruba wireless, right. We have a lot of, you know, really cool things like (mumbles) per stadiums and the new stadium for the Warriors and, you know, places like some fantastic airport experiences.
So anywhere where people are like essentially looking for richer services but they're not necessarily right in the data center is where we see a number of these edge workloads being deployed and they're growing very quickly. >> So, speaking of edge workloads, what are we actually talking about when we talk about workloads? What kind of things are people running at the edge and what are maybe some of the emerging applications that people will be running at the edge? >> Yeah, so we see, you know, a couple different patterns.
We see things like multi site and connected systems, right. So when you think about someone like a very large retail chain, right, they have a lot of distributed systems that run in the stores or, you know, something like a, you know, grocery store chain. Places where you want to get these workloads very close to customers and remote sites. So one of the big workloads that we're seeing is around video and vision. You know, at the end of the day so you can give fans a better, you know, experience and different, sort of you know, new ways to serve up these workloads that are going to be like directly interacting with some of these customer experiences that they're using to augment actual, you know, reality.
We're seeing a lot of things around autonomous services so whether it's autonomous cars or, you know, autonomous drilling platforms. So, being able to have those services that are out, sometimes those are very data heavy. So being able to bring the data back to the data centers is not an option (mumbles) workloads. And you know, we're also seeing areas where maybe the network isn't great so you want to be able to run these services in a disconnected manner, right. So you wouldn't be able to get from your edge to the cloud or edge to the data center.
It's a very lossy, you know, networking protocol. And you want to be able to run those (mumbles). So, we're seeing lots of areas where those are some of the key used cases sometimes those will be implemented in, you know, you run those applications in virtual machines also we're starting to see the need for running some of these applications, especially AI and analytics in containers. So, lots of really interesting things coming around in these new patterns. >> So, one of the things I want you to kind of talk about because customers are always looking at how do you help solve my challenges.
What are the challenges that people have around the edge or in what I think I hear you describing as a distributed enterprise? What are the challenges they're facing? >> So, couple of the challenges that we see are certainly data growth that's always an issue for our customers. No matter if they're running in the traditional data center or at the edge. So, you have to be very efficient in how you store the data and also be very efficient on how you move data back and forth.
And how you can do that for not only things like DER and back up but just, you know, in terms of site and application federation. So that's definitely one of the areas. And then certainly complexity. So, in a lot of locations like this, you're not going to have a very, you know, expert driven trained IT staff. So a lot of these things need to be, you know, super easy to implement, right. So you know come out of the box, unbox it, plug it in, you know, you get your network and then it calls back to the cloud and you have a very easy deployment experience and a very easy management experience over time.
So, you want to have a really good customer experience and you want to avoid any complexity. And then also managing it at scale, right, so a lot of these are distributed systems, right. Tens, hundreds, thousands of sites and so being able to have a global view of all that infrastructure from simplicity standpoint is definitely a it's a huge requirement because you want to be able to manage those systems with essentially zero onsite IT staff. >> So, let's talk a little bit more, then, about what kind of solution we're talking about.
I don't want to turn this into a deep dive into technology of our products. But, you know, we're talking about hyper-converged and why hyper-converged is ideal for the edge. What is it about hyper-converged that makes it an ideal solution for the edge? >> Well, I think a couple of things that are endemic to the HCI architecture are really important, right. It's simple, right, easy to deploy, easy to manage, it's all in one and the fact that you can consolidate a number of different layers compute networking and storage into essentially an industry standard server form factor.
A lot of the things that come with HCI around, you know, very easy administration and built in powerful data services are things that really lend itself to being able to run in these, you know, two, four node configurations running in these, you know, data centers, micro data centers, computer rooms, and then being able to manage them at scale from a federated management perspective. So one of the things that we also provide at HPE, which I think is, you know, we're pretty famous for is around Infosite.
and then, you know, allowing us to essentially manage these systems through, you know, millions of points of telemetry and using, you know, techniques like AI ops and predictive analytics, you know, reduce the burden of administration on these systems. >> Well, let's dive a little bit deeper on Infosite, you know, from the storage perspective, you know, that we brought Infosite in when we acquired Nimble Storage a few years ago. Nimble's been around for about 10 years doing all of this work around gathering from all the units and the field and getting all this intelligence.
What is it that sets Infosite apart because, I mean, other people have this kind of intelligence that they're talking about. What is it that's going to make this so different, especially as you look at your portfolio with HPE SimpliVity? >> Yeah, I think, you know, the things that really bring a game changer for this tech-- even if you look at the investments lately from a venture capitalist's perspective. Many people are investing in AI ops and machine learning and, you know, we have one of the best platforms in the industry for this.
So this is definitely a key trend on how to essentially invest in and get into the hands of customers. Things around support automation, predictive analytics, and AI ops such that we can almost run their infrastructure for them autonomously. And so for and this becomes very important in a very large distributed environment that's running at the edge where you're not going to have trained IT staff, dedicated people to do storage, you know, you're more worried about plugging into an existing infrastructure and providing a new set of services and so for us, it allows us to, you know, essentially really really reduce the amount of support calls human interaction with the platform such that can manage that for customers and manage it for them at scale and give them a global view of all their assets and, you know, at the end of the day what people really love about it is our support automation we often quote over 96% of these cases are closed automatically and that releases a lot of IT staff to go do other things.
So for us it's all about unlocking the scale of these solutions through, you know, a very powerful platform like Infosite. >> So let me ask you another question about SimpliVity and where SimpliVity applies in this. I mean you talked about kind of helping reduce that complexity. What is it about SimpliVity, I mean, it's the all-in-one system and it can be managed by somebody who's not an expert but what really at the heart of this makes it such a great solution for the edge?
>> So, I think, you know, for edge infrastructure we kind of laid out what some of the requirements are. And the fact that it's a all-in-one system that is going to give you all of the things you need, right. It's going to give you the compute with your hypervisor, you can actually run hypervisors with containers today on SimpliVity. So if you want to take a look at some of those architecture running VMS and containers side by side. It's going to bring you your switching technology, your HA very resilient shared, you know, data storage.
It's also going to provide you built in back up deduplication in DR, right, which is super important for these environments. 'Cause a lot of them are going to be either edge to edge, or edge to core, or even edge to core cloud and that is going to provide you things like WAN optimization, caching, other sorts of things that really (mumbles) as you have a distributed environment. It's very secure, we have a ton of security capabilities built into the platform as well as on premises and off premises monitoring with Infosite.
So all of that in a very dense platform that's easy to scale so you can start off with two nodes and you can scale it out horizontally and that's, you know, the beauty of HCI. And that's going to, you know, essentially collapse all those silos, give you the footprint that you need, with the data services that you need. You don't need specialists from, you know, from an administration perspective. And ultimately at the end of the day, we're trying to get to the lowest dollar per workload for these workloads that are running on the system.
And so HCI is a great platform for that. >> I know you're out there talking to customers all the time. Maybe help us understand like a customer that you've been talking to that had challenges that they've gone to SimpliVity and it's really helped them address what it is they're trying to do. >> Yeah, so if you think about a vertical like retail, right, it's, you know, changing very quickly. So we have a very large retailer that is using SimpliVity and HCI at the edge.
They are using it in their stores to not only do things like collapse the stack that runs the number of their traditional applications, right. You think about something like their point of sale applications, database, active directory, you know, things that you need to, you know, run a very large store as well as some of their custom applications. But then giving them the ability to deploy new workloads that changes the the customer experience within the store itself. All right, so you think about things like AR, video, you know, things that they are probably planning for.
Like most retailers, different check out experiences, you know, things that are (mumbles). So , you know, it just changes the game for them in terms of how they interact with their customers while they're in the store and then you marry that with some of the greater things that we've done with, you know, the Aruba wireless platform. It essentially gives you a whole new way of interacting with your customers when they're in an environment that is, you know, quote unquote at the edge. And so for us, it's the ability to, you know, provide that infrastructure to them at scale for tens, hundreds, and, you know, planning on, you know, thousands of sites.
It's pretty exciting. >> Well, let me encourage people who are watching this during the virtual event, we do have a booth, we have a bunch of experts in our booth, and if you want to come over to our HPE SimpliVity booth, we've got experts in the booth that can help answer questions. So, come on over to our booth and let's talk about what your requirements are and see if HPE SimpliVity can help. Patrick, I really appreciate the time you spent today. For people that want to learn more, we also want to point them to where they can find it on our website.
com/SimpliVity easy to remember. So, again, Patrick thanks for the time today. Stay safe and healthy. >> All right you too, thanks everyone out there for attending today's conference and we look forward to interacting with you in the near future, thank you. [instrumental music]
