A New Compute Experience: An Exploration of HPE’s Gen10 Servers

By Rod Knowles

Is your business finding it difficult to adapt to industry and marketplace shifts, analyzing the customer experience and/or innovating products and services rapidly?  If so, then you’re probably not thinking about, or have a plan in place for your digital transformation.  In today’s economy, digital transformation is the key to a businesses success and remaining ahead of the competition.  Through 4 key transformation areas:  Protecting the digital enterprise, Empowering the data-driven organization, Enabling workplace productivity and Transforming to a hybrid infrastructure, companies can increase profits, agility, flexibility, employee productivity and the customer experience while reducing costs and risk.  For businesses to thrive and easily adapt to their digital transformation, they need a computing environment that will deliver a Hybrid IT infrastructure providing agility, security and economic control.  HPE’s new Gen10 server line accomplishes just that.  Automation, optimized performance of workloads, secure compute lifecycle and flexible capacity are just a few of the benefits your company can gain from switching to an HPE Gen10 server.  In the next few sections, I will break down the benefits on the Gen10 line as its related to agility, security, and economic control.

Obtaining a more agile infrastructure

Manual IT operation processes can be slow and error-prone.  With the new iLO5, being introduced in all Gen10 servers, you will be able to accelerate maintenance tasks, at scale, with automated scheduling and rollback.  iLO5’s RESTful API helps automate and operate server components in all Gen10 servers from staging and updating the server BIOS, iLO, Secure Boot and TPM.  With iLO5’s intelligent provisioning, IT departments can perform initial setup tasks 22% faster than with previous versions of IP on Gen9 servers. Gen10's new Intelligent Systems Tuning can harness the power of the next generation of Intel Xeon processors and balance workloads which allows you to run more workloads on more cores, up to 28 on Intel's New Xeon Platinum processors, resulting in reduced licensing costs and more power/cooling efficiency. Couple that with HPEs new NVDIMMs to utilize the fastest persistent memory available, while realizing the real-world benefits of memory backup power, OS & Application support, reduction of database licensing costs and the fastest tier of storage on HPE Servers.

Increasing security awareness and control

Gen10 security, a better way to stay one step ahead of increasingly sophisticated attacks and protect your business utilizing the world’s most secure industry standard servers. Let’s talk about that for one quick moment, “The World’s Most Secure Industry Standard Servers”.  As recently announced at HPE Discover 2017, HPE engaged InfusionPoints to conduct an independent assessment of the security of the Gen10 Server’s hardware and platform firmware against three of HPE’s competitors. The test consisted of attacks against physical interfaces, platform firmware, and network interfaces.  The results showed that HPE Gen10 servers are a significant step ahead of their competitors and that HPE’s introduction of silicon root of trust will set new standards in providing auditable control of the integrity of platform firmware.

The new Gen10 family of servers provides a host of security features:  firmware protection, run time attack detection, behavioral risk mitigation, data protection, compliance planning and End of Life disposal.  HPE’s new firmware protection is backed by HPE’s own silicon fingerprint unique to each and every server.  With HPE’s silicon root of trust, Gen10 servers WILL NOT boot unless the firmware matches the fingerprint and is protected through the entire supply chain: manufacturing, distribution, shipping, configuration, and installation. It’s locked and HPE is the only vendor who can do this.  When the server boots, millions of lines of firmware code run and verify before the operating system even boots.  Additionally, the firmware is checked every 24 hours verifying validity and credibility of UEFI, CPLD, iLO, IE and ME and reports any malware or compromised code.  Firmware can also be checked and validated on drives, NICs and other HPE server options containing firmware. When a detection of compromised firmware is discovered, the ability to send alerts and quickly recover to a good known state can be set to occur automatically or you can choose to take the compromised server offline.  The ability to recover other server settings can also be recovered as well as the future ability to recover operating systems. 

HPE’s Gen10 servers also offer advanced machine learning that identifies any malicious behavior.  Think of it like this:  The system endlessly trains itself and learns behavioral patterns.  It then analyses and identifies changes in these patterns that may relate to suspicious activity and informs you if there is a threat.  This advanced machine learning technology utilizing Niara’s behavioral analytics protects your organization from inside attacks.  Gen10 servers are protected from inception to their demise. When your server(s) are being disposed of, its embedded data cannot be reconstructed or accessed any longer, forever, utilizing enhanced data protection and encryption.

Managing Your Time and Money Productively

In addition to the Gen10’s server line agility and security features, Economic Control helps you control costs with over-provisioning, out-of-control public cloud costs and the pressures of transforming without the appropriate budget.  Utilizing HPE Flexible Capacity will help align your costs with monthly usage and requires no upfront payments.  Pay only for what you use and scale in minutes, not months.  If you're currently a legacy Gen9 server owner, there are several options for transitioning to a Gen10 server by utilizing one of HPE’s investment models for transforming from legacy IT to a hybrid IT model.

For more information on HPE Storage and Networking, please contact Convergent Technologies Group at 888-353-5307 or via our contact us page

 Rod Knowles is a solution architect with Convergent Technologies Group.

HPE OneView 3.0 Can Help You!

Solutions Lab Lets You See IT in Action

By Jeff Garell

Nearly every new technology acquisition is surrounded by unanswered questions, hopeful expectations and more than a little nervous concern before the purchase order is signed. Will this perform the way my sales guy says it will? Is this a gamble? How much will this change our operational processes? Should I update my resume just in case?

Yeah, I've been on both sides of that thought process in the past 33 years, first as the purchaser and now as the provider and consultant. There is a lot of gut-check that happens on that road depending on the scope of the change, the criticality or newness of the service needed, or sometimes just the dollars involved. We all have customers and don't want to let them down.

For these reasons and many more, CTG has been building up an infrastructure that will hopefully ease some of these concerns about potential RGEs (Resume-Generating Events).

Currently in our Solutions Lab, we have a variety of gear that lets us either demonstrate the potential and advantages of various tech or configure and use to mirror your planned infrastructure. The Solutions Lab currently houses the following “toys:”

• C7000 Bladesystem with 10 Blades and VirtualConnect 20/40 Modules 
• HP StoreServ 7200 with both 10GB iSCSI and FiberChannel connects (currently FlatSAN connected to the C7000). The StoreServ has 2 tiers of storage, FastClass (10k SAS) and NearLine (7.2k SAS).
• HP 5900 Core Switch with 48 10GB ports and 2x40GB ports that each connect to the StoreServ and to the BladeSystem for some pretty blazing throughput.
• Proliant DL360p with 3TB of internal disk and 196GB RAM. We often use this for onsite Proof of Concept (PoC) when you want to keep your information at your own site. These PoC are generally function-based more than performance-based. 
• OneView/IMC gives us the management and monitoring we need to keep things humming along smoothly.

This setup has allowed us to not only quickly reconfigure for a variety of customer challenges but also keeps us proficient on the platforms we stand behind. This has served us well for several years, but the times they are a-changing.

The current trends regarding the expansion of cloud adoption includes the growing understanding that often the cloud is really just another resource and may not be the full solution for everyone. The things we all like about cloud-based infrastructure is that we can shortcut the acquisition process by simply logging in to a portal and clicking a few buttons. A few minutes later we have a server spun up. I'll save the economics and potential lock-in conversation for another post, but I will stipulate that the speed and efficiency in firing up infrastructure is incredibly enticing. Thus the hybrid cloud is born.

With that in mind, we have begun the process of retooling our Solutions Lab. (You were wondering when I was gonna get back to this topic, weren't you?) We're adding several components listed below, but we will be augmenting the infrastructure with HP's Helion products that will include an OpenStack based set of services, Cloud Service Automation/Operations Orchestration (for that nice clickety-click spin up a server feel), as well as Eucalyptus that will allow us to seamlessly move workloads back and forth from our infrastructure to Amazon Web Services and back. The "and back" is what makes Eucalyptus full of awesome. Of course, we'll have accounts setup at both Amazon and Microsoft's Azure in order to demonstrate the hybrid-cloudiness.

In addition to being able to demonstrate hybrid-cloud and automation capabilities, the new setup will let us prepare for your demo workloads even faster. To facilitate this, we will be augmenting our lab with:

• HP StoreServ 8000 series - All Flash Array
• HP CS-250 Converged System
• Dual HP 16GB Fiber Channel Switches
• A pile of HP Helion Software
• HP Aruba Wireless

We'll also have the ability to demonstrate HP Catalyst, StoreOnce (Virtual Appliance), Veeam, and a variety of Fortinet products both physical and virtual.

So to sum up, we're working hard to reduce the stress, uncertainty and general guesswork that comes with any of these strategic technology changes we all get to shepherd. I'll continue to provide updates as we get the gear and integrate it into our Solutions Lab. If you see anything I've missed or that you would be interested in seeing, just drop me a line at jgarell@ctgva.com.

Jeff Garell is a co-founder of Convergent Technologies Group.

Giving Ourselves a Shout Out: CTG earns HP Platinum designation

By John Monahan and Jeff Garell

We have some big news to share: After years of investing a lot of time in training and building our hands-on expertise, CTG has been named a Hewlett Packard Platinum partner.

We’re even more proud to be among an elite group in the country to earn this designation, which reflects our expertise both in sales and service. In other words, we have a rare mastery of HP’s infrastructure products and how to put them to work for you. We’re also the only Virginia-based, exclusive HP provider to reach this top level.

We earned our Platinum Partner status as a converged infrastructure specialist, which covers the core areas of storage, networking, servers and infrastructure servicing – all products of what will become Hewlett Packard Enterprise this fall.

While this is certainly exciting news for CTG, this is great news for our customers. But what exactly does this mean for clients who choose to work with us as a Platinum partner?  Here are some key perks for you:

1.        Specialized skills: Our people have invested years in training programs, where we received hands-on education with every HP Enterprise product – from basic features to performance standards. As HP enhances existing offerings and launches new products, that training is continuing, ensuring that CTG’s team can share the latest technology and information with clients. Basically, we know every product inside and out – like no one else.

2.     Innovative solutions: Because we have the deepest knowledge of HP products, we can easily develop and implement strategic solutions that meet your IT needs today and for the future. There’s nothing across the HP Enterprise portfolio that we can’t deliver at the highest-quality standards. Our clients trust us to recommend what’s right.

3.     Personalized support: We know you – and we know the solutions we provide. Because of that, we can provide the tailored IT support you need for your business.

Of course, our customers have received many great benefits from our previous Gold Partner affiliation with HP. We’ll be able to build on those offerings, such as continuing to host clients at the HP Customer Experience Center in New York, holding private sessions at HP Discover with HP product specialists and much, much more. We also will continue to bring you cutting-edge HP products, solutions and services at the most-competitive rates.

Yes, we are pretty excited to share this news with you, largely because this news is about you. We didn’t strive for this certification just for CTG. Rather, we made this investment because we realized that achieving this elite skills-and-services designation would be the best way to demonstrate our commitment to delivering the highest-quality engagements with our customers.

John Monahan and Jeff Garell are co-founders of Convergent Technologies Group.

Looking for Nerds with Aspirations

By Jeff Garell

Convergent Technologies Group is looking for the right people to join our technical team. We need some utility players: people who are comfortable and confident working with both the network and servers/OS sides of the house. 

Do you look like that person?

You are probably working at a small- to mid-sized company with a relatively small IT staff comprised of talented jack-of-all-trades. You have an almost insatiable curiosity about technology and have a deep desire to get your hands on emerging tech that really wouldn't fit in your current environment. You occasionally reflect on the fact that most of your working hours are spent in maintenance mode and wish you could provide more direct impact on the business. You're as comfortable configuring a firewall, switch or router as you are working with Windows servers and Active Directory.  

We're not looking for rock stars; we're looking for future rock stars.

We offer the opportunity to not just work on a network, but to work on a hundred or more networks of varying size and complexity. There are no same-old, same-old kind of days. You will be exposed to the latest and greatest technologies, have opportunities for advanced training, and a skills and career path that can lead to senior-level consulting and architecture. Our customers range from very small to international Fortune 100 organizations whose names you know.

Convergent Technologies Group offers excellent compensation and benefits. An earlier blogpost shared more about our culture at CTG, as well as the great perks of working here.

If you're interested and up for the challenge, send your resume to resumes@ctgva.com and answer the question: Why you?

Jeff Garell is co-founder of Convergent Technologies Group.

Computing in the Cloud

Let’s start with the basics: What is the cloud? 

That's a really good question – but it doesn't come with an easy answer. The cloud means many things to many people, and you’ll often find the term used and abused by our industry’s marketing and advertising folks. 

To ground our discussion, let’s consider a common set of definitions, since this will be the first of many blog posts where we’ll be exploring the cloud, cloud services and where they might or might not fit in your environment.

So let's kick it off with a definition, ripped from Wikipedia.

Cloud computing is a computing term or metaphor that evolved in the late 1990s, based on utility and consumption of computer resources. Cloud computing involves application systems which are executed within the cloud and operated through Internet enabled devices. Purely cloud computing does not rely on the use of cloud storage as it will be removed upon users download action. Clouds can be classified as public, private and hybrid.

That clears it all up - thank you Virginia, good night!

Or perhaps not. Let's try to simplify this a little, but there’s no guarantee we won't get muddled up a little.

We should start with characteristics common to cloud technologies that carry across public, private and hybrid clouds.

Agility and Responsiveness are two words that you'll often hear cloudy sales people say. And while they sound kind of cheesy, when done correctly, they’re both absolutely  true. The ability to set up and tear down requested services – often via a self service portal – in a  matter of minutes (or an hour) is a big change to the monolithic change control process that many organizations have when requesting new services. 

CAPEX vs. OPEX is another driver for companies to move to a hosted (public) cloud solution regardless of their size. To dig a little deeper, CAPEX, or capital expense, is the use of your cash to buy physical things, such as servers and software.  As a business expense, you get to depreciate that spend over time.  OPEX, or operational expense, is what you pay to cover what it costs to operate. For example, a new copier is CAPEX, while paper and toner are OPEX. You can immediately write down OPEX instead of getting the credit over a multi-year period. Given that cash flow is king, many organizations prefer a monthly OPEX payment rather than a major CAPEX spend.

Scalability is another key characteristic of a good cloud solution. The ability to keep adding storage or compute power quickly and easily without having to re-engineer the whole thing is key to cloud provider growth.

Cost reductions are often touted as another reason to make the move, but this can be touchy. You need to conduct a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis to determine whether that will be true for your business. Cost should really be pretty far down on the list of reasons to go to the cloud unless you're hankering for some disappointment. When cost drives the cloud project, the results are often an under-provisioning of services (to meet a budget number) and unhappy end users.

Reliability and accessibility are another pair of words that those sales reps will toss out there without explanation. And once again, they're both enabled by the underlying architecture of cloud systems. Reliability comes in the form of hundreds or thousands (or, in the case of Microsoft and Google, 1,000,000 each of servers and the ability for various services to move seamlessly to a different physical server if one has a problem. Accessibility is delivered by having these services available on the Internet, which means if your office loses power, everyone can still work from home because the data is "in the cloud.”

Up next

Now that you have a framework for what a cloud and cloud computing can do for you, we’ll explore different types of clouds and how they could work in your business in our next post.

Jeff Garell is a co-founder of CTG.