Author Bhumik Patel – Technical Alliances, VMware @bhumikp
Introduction:
Earlier this year we announced certification for HPE Synergy as the first composable platform for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). This provides customers the ability to leverage the benefits of a software-defined composable platform to build a secure and scalable private cloud based on VMware’s Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) stack. At its heart, this solution is powered by two software-defined elements – VMware SDDC Manager and HPE Synergy Composer which is powered by HPE OneView.
With this, customers deploying VCF on HPE Synergy have the ability to leverage both of these software components individually. A typical workflow would be to leverage the composer to deliver the fluid pool of physical resources – compute, storage & network for the SDDC Manager to create and build workload domains. This provides individual software-driven capabilities within both the physical and virtual environments.
Today both HPE and VMware are pleased to announce the integration of HPE OneView and SDDC Manager. With the launch of VCF 3.5, this unique integration will allow customers to dynamically compose software-defined and physical infrastructure within a single console using SDDC Manager to manage the demands of VCF workloads. The HPE OneView and SDDC Manager integration is the first and only solution in the industry to bring this level of simplicity and flexibility in managing SDDC environments by bringing the power of composability natively to VCF.
What is the Integration?
This is the result of a joint engineering effort between HPE and VMware developing seamless integration to bring composable private clouds to customers. Through this unique integration and enhanced automation customers can now dynamically compose physical resources within a single console using SDDC Manager to meet the needs of applications running on VCF Workload Domains. Thus saving time and increasing overall operational efficiency. Let’s look at the technical details.
With VCF 3.5, SDDC Manager can dynamically compose and decompose HPE Synergy compute and storage modules. SDDC Manager is now composable-aware.
As shown in the figure below, VCF 3.5 introduces a composability service component within SDDC Manager. This composability service communicates with HPE OneView via the HPE OneView connector for VCF. This HPE OneView connector for VCF is developed and will be managed by HPE and is powered by DMTF’s Redfish® APIs, which is designed to deliver simple and secure management for SDDC.
Integrated Composability with VMware Cloud Foundation and HPE Synergy
The following points highlight the workflow to enable Integrated Composability:
- Install HPE OneView connector for VCF: The connector is to be installed on a Linux instance (virtual or physical) out-of-band to VCF as a pre-requisite
- Bring-up SDDC Manager: Follow VCF 3.5 documentation to bring up SDDC Manager
- Compose/Decompose Synergy: Browse to Composability Infrastructure tab within SDDC Manager to connect to the HPE OneView connector
VCF 3.5 ( SDDC manager UI)
Once connected, HPE OneView will provide visibility into Available Resources from the pool that can be composed and a view into already Composed Servers that can be decomposed.
Since compute and storage modules are disaggregated within HPE Synergy, customers can choose the compute platform and the associated storage requirements to be configured when composing resources. When a new resource request is made, SDDC Manager communicates with HPE OneView via the HPE OneView connector for VCF. Upon selection of required resources, the connector will assign server profile templates to the compute modules and present them back to SDDC Manager to begin the OS provisioning and subsequent Workload Domain creation.
Similarly, after decomposing an existing resource, it can become available in the pool of available resources for future consumption.
Benefits
VMware Cloud Foundation delivered on HPE Synergy provides a flexible platform to build your next-generation hybrid cloud environments and offers following key benefits:
Automated SDDC Deployment and Configuration including automated day 0 to day 2 operations of the entire software and hardware infrastructure. HPE Synergy provides exceptional configuration management of the physical resources that VCF can use to build the software-defined datacenter by automating integrated best practices for VMware vSphere, Virtual SAN, NSX and vRealize Suite.
On-demand provisioning of Infrastructure: The integrated composability between SDDC Manager and HPE OneView provides customers with a unique opportunity to not only rapidly provision their applications but also leverage automation to rightly size the infrastructure eliminating the need for under or over-provisioning. Along with the cost benefits, this also future-proofs infrastructure to meet rapid changing business requirements and the ability to support traditional and cloud-native applications on the same set of cloud infrastructure.
Simplified Architecture: The joint solution reduces complexity with SDDC Manager leveraging standardized architecture and best practices and simplified lifecycle management of the entire software stack. In addition, networking is simplified with HPE Virtual Connect as part of the Synergy fabric eliminating the need for a top-of-rack (ToR) switch and the HPE Synergy fabric also ensures maximum data throughput and minimum latencies for applications by removing any oversubscription requirements.
Conclusion
This integrated composability is a key milestone in our journey of enabling customers to leverage maximum benefits from next-generation composable architecture with VMware Cloud Foundation. For more details on the joint solution, please refer the following assets:
Refer the VCF listing for HPE Synergy here and here.
To learn more about VCF, visit VMware VCF
To learn more about HPE Synergy, visit HPE Synergy
Follow @bhumikp
