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!

CTG Expands into North Carolina

By Caylor Feeley

Convergent Technologies Group is proud of our growth over the last decade and our customer-focused culture. And now, we’re moving ahead in a new direction, with our recent expansion into North Carolina. 

Expanding beyond our Central Virginia headquarters will allow us to strengthen our already existing relationships, and will also enhance our ability to effectively serve a new set of clients. Convergent Technologies Group has a tradition of growing businesses in Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland with our IT solutions that fit our customer’s precise needs. Our expansion into North Carolina will not only grow our clientele and market reach but will provide full-service technology solutions to our customers in the region. North Carolina's economy grew from tobacco farming and textiles into a leader in modern industries, such as aerospace, biotechnology, banking and energy. The fast-growing economy and the state's thriving technology-based industries create a strong fit for CTG's presence.

Convergent Technologies Group is dedicated to cultivating positive business relationships in North Carolina and providing organizations with targeted information technology solutions, particularly in the ever-changing digital economy. Technology allows us to connect with clients wherever they are. As we have developed new relationships, we want to ensure that our clients have a local account manager who can better understand their business and market they operate in. With solutions including cloud, collaboration, data center, disaster recovery, managed services and more, we analyze our clients’ specific wants and needs to create a tailored approach that will deliver against company objectives. 

Representing us in the North Carolina region is Bailey Mountcastle, who has joined CTG as a territory account manager. A Virginia Tech business management graduate, Bailey is highly motivated and dedicated, and looks to provide every business with the most effective keys to transform its IT department into a revenue-building department. Whether you need products, services or a mix of both Bailey can recommend and deliver solutions that will benefit both your current and future technology needs. Reach out to Bailey here. 

Caylor Feeley is a junior marketing specialist at CTG.

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.

4 Key Takeaways from HP Discover 2015

By John Monahan

Our CTG team left Discover 2015 just on Friday, and we're already working to bring the latest innovations from HP back to our clients along the East Coast.

While we hope you were following our social media updates about what was happening at this annual customer event, I wanted to take a moment to share some of the key takeaways from our days in Las Vegas:

       1. HP is focused on transformation.

On Day 1 of the conference, CEO Meg Whitman brought this front and center, particularly as the organization drives the evolution of two new companies. Her focus was initially on Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the arm that will continue to drive innovation within the IT industry.

“Technologies may change. Business models may shift. But one thing never changes for us, and that’s the importance of the relationships we build with our customers and our partners,” she said. “Thriving in the idea economy requires a new style of business, and this is where HP leads like no other company. … You have to pick a transformation partner with the vision and breadth to create the best possible future.”

The HPE strategy will focus on:

·         Transform to hybrid infrastructure

·         Protect your digital enterprise

·         Empower the date-driven organization

·         Enable workplace productivity

Check out this highlights video to hear more directly from Whitman about the transformation strategy. In fact, HP has an entire YouTube channel dedicated to presentations and more from Discover 2015, so we encourage you to explore topics of interest to you and your business. Our CTG team can help answer questions about how to bring new solutions to you.

       2. Storage is king.

Amidst many different production announcements and upgrades, one stands out: the HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage family. I don’t have enough room here to fully detail just how revolutionary this is to the industry, so I’ll focus on the key issues. As HP explains, this product brings a new class of massively scalable flash arrays, flash-optimized data services to accelerate IT-as-a-Service consolidation, a 25 percent lower cost for flash capacity and hybrid IT initiatives.

We saw this personally in an exclusive meeting we hosted for our clients with some of HP’s leading storage developers. For a rare hour, we discussed the real challenges that our customers face in their daily business, with HP’s top minds giving insight on effective solutions that work not just for today but can adapt and evolve as those businesses grow and tap into new opportunities.

3. New products are responding to the evolving economy.

To start, HP is getting into the movie business, with a five-year partnership to develop the next digital experience and technology to support a trio of upcoming “Avatar” sequels.

New products include HP LeanFT, which brings a test-and-learn methodology to application development. Products where updates are coming include the HP Helion portfolio, which supports your transition to a hybrid infrastructure, and HP will expand it's Converged Systems offerings, including a new partnership with Arista Networks.

The bottom line is that HP is applying forward thinking in creating and launching IT innovations that build on it's years of leadership, while recognizing that how we do business is changing every day. As those business models evolve, we need technology that is equally nimble and flexible to support ideas we haven't even yet considered.

4. Relationships matter.

To reiterate that last point, every industry is moving forward at lightning speed. And no one business can do it alone. Whom you select as your partners in those journeys is paramount to ensuring you get smartly and efficiently to your destination.

That’s why CTG looks to build a relationship with every client. We don't believe in simply selling you technology. Instead, we are bringing our unparalleled expertise across the IT infrastructure to guide you in making meaningful investments that work today and are scalable to your changing business. Some of the first customers we signed when we launched CTG a decade ago remain our closest clients today, because they see that we bring deeper value to the business.

John Monahan is a co-founder of Convergent Technologies Group. 

Test and Learn

Do you remember how some of the best days in high school science class were when you got to go in the lab? When you had a problem to solve and you got to roll up your sleeves and experiment until you got the answer?

We got to do the professional version of just that last week, when we brought a handful of customers and special guests to the HP Customer Experience Center in New York. This is a living production laboratory for testing and learning, featuring the latest-and-greatest technology from HP today.

What made the trip invaluable:

• We learned from the best in the business. At the Experience Center, HP offers its top subject matter experts to share new and emerging technology and answer questions on the spot. Technology represents one of the biggest line items for any company, and business leaders need to be confident that their suppliers and partners understand their needs and environment to offer the right resources at the right cost at the right time.

• We saw the latest technology in action. Nothing is more important than seeing first-hand how different products and software can perform. The demonstrations not only presented good introductions to different resources, but they illustrated how to make the most of your technology. (Dare I admit that being in a nearly 10,000-square-foot facility with all that cutting-edge IT brought out the best geeks in us?)

• We solved some vexing problems. A couple of clients came looking for answers to specific challenges with storage. In that real IT setting, HP experts were able to configure and demonstrate a storage array that would specifically eliminate those problems. Those clients now have a strategy to discuss with their business leaders and to use in determining how to prioritize the HP recommendations.

• We got a sneak peak at what’s coming next. Our visit last week allowed us a glimpse into HP’s next generation of products, and how they will integrate with existing platforms.

Unique opportunity for customers
This hands-on experience is a rare perk of collaborating with CTG, which is an HP Gold Partner. During our nearly 10-year history, we have worked with a host of technology manufacturers, but we have chosen this specific partnership for HP’s comprehensive and integrated product portfolio. We know that all technology has a lifecycle, and our clients trust us to recommend hardware and configurations that meet today’s needs and are scalable for future business growth.

What our customers and guests told us was that this hands-on day gave them better insights into how HP’s architecture and products can deliver on all IT needs, from security to software, hardware to mobility. Because HP is one of the biggest in the industry, we know it can be daunting for our clients to navigate through all those products. This visit allowed our customers to learn more about why we trust HP, which delivers products that are equally innovative and reliable.

What happens next?
Our CTG team will be meeting with local HP account teams to host a technical discussion, where we will dive deeper into the day’s learnings.

And in keeping with our commitment to be on the leading edge, we already are planning our next visit to the HP Customer Experience Center. If you've got an IT challenge that is continuing to haunt you, let our CTG team know – and join us on our next trip to this IT laboratory.

John Monahan is co-founder of CTG.