That’s no spin.
In fact, there’s no other way to spin it.
In performance, reliability, manageability, and serviceability, HP Proliant servers are completely peerless, and make other look like befuddled arrivistes.
One of the reasons for this are the innovations that HP constantly adds to the Proliants.
These investments add immense value to an already special product, and constantly increase the distance between it and competing offerings.
In September 2014, HP unveiled the latest iteration of their server line, Proliant Gen9 series.
Coincident with the release, I had the opportunity to be briefed a day or so later that same September by Mike Gill, VP, Platform Engineering, HP Servers, on the new ‘new’ in Proliant Gen9.
According to Mike, Gen9 required a completely new way of thinking about servers by HP.
Servers had to stop being dumb, and begging to be part of the computing thought process, dynamically aligning pools of resources to a firm’s goal with laser-like precision.
The new Proliant Gen9 series are built for a software-defined world. They are cloud-ready, workload optimized, and fit into HP’s Converged Infrastructure offerings.
HP, I am reminded, is the only vendor able to deliver a full portfolio of servers to meet current and anticipated needs.
That said, what bottom-line benefits do the Gen9 bring to the table?
- 4x faster performance
- 3x compute capacity with a lower TCO
- 66x faster service delivery
- Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Boot Mode in addition to Legacy BIOS Boot Mode
- HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) 4 v2.00
- Smart array controllers: performance, data resilience & security
- iLO-based Agentless Management 2.0
- HP RESTful Interface Tool: use of RESTful APIs through UEFI for server configuration
- HP Intelligent Provisioning: supporting StoreVirtual Storage Appliance
- HP Smart Update Manager (SUM) 7.1.0: stability with iLO federation
- HP Insight Online: expanded device, configuration coverage and services support
- HP OneView: enterprise partner integrations and automated storage
For SMBs and the lower midmarket, it gets better: the target here by HP is to lower CapEX by 60% in 33% less time.
That, folks, brought out the sunshine smile to my face!
Then there’s HP OneView, which is HP’s converged management platform for Proliant Gen9.
It has been further simplified, beefed up, and made more intelligent.
OneView is now 66x faster, and coincidentally, 66% faster at problem resolution when used with HP Insight Online. It now allows automated firmware updates to be replicated across a ‘sea’ of hundreds of servers in conjunction with HP iLO Federation. Server profiles are integrated with storage volumes, SAN provisioning, and direct-attach storage devices. HP VirtualConnect is also amped up, supporting both FC and FlexFabric. OneView converged management supports Microsoft System Center, and server profiling has been extended to HP Proliant DL servers.
With all these enhancements, HP Proliant Servers were again selected unanimously the SmallBizWindows Servers of the Year 2014.
My thanks to Mike Gill for taking the time to converse with me on Proliant Gen9 five months ago.
Many thanks to HP’s Jill S. & Kristen R. for making the briefing with Mike possible.
John Obeto is CEO of Blackfriars Capital
© 2002 – 2015, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
