Today, most companies have an IT strategy that includes cloud (e.g. “Cloud First”, “Cloud Best”), but according to IDC, “…most Microsoft customers still run the vast majority of production workloads on Windows in the on-prem data center”. This is especially true for business and mission-critical workloads. The challenge customers face in moving them to the cloud includes the need for maintaining consistent performance and availability, maintaining control of the data, and lack of cloud system expertise. And when it comes to protecting data in the cloud, there are numerous considerations such as backup/restore performance, security and data sovereignty.
To address these challenges, new infrastructure offerings are evolving to add the best of Cloud to these traditional platforms. Today, HPE announced new pre-defined HPE GreenLake cloud services for Microsoft SQL Server. Key benefits of these new “as a service” offerings include just paying for the infrastructure that you use, while being able to maintain the hands-on control to run and protect your production workloads using familiar HPE storage, compute and networking hardware.
The full HPE GreenLake value includes even more, such as faster time to solution with pre-configured, ready-to-ship offerings in as few as 14 days, getting the capacity you need when you need it—in minutes, not months, accessing online pricing for simplicity and financial clarity, and having web access for self-service via HPE GreenLake Central. In addition, the offloading of routine operational tasks through GreenLake Managed Services is optionally available for these offerings.
The Scoop on the New as-a-Service Offerings
HPE GreenLake platform-as-a-service solutions offer customers a faster time to value with a turnkey cloud experience on premises. The solutions, in pre-sized but adjustable configurations, have been developed to deliver levels of availability, performance, functionality, and cost, to meet a range of needs.
Microsoft SQL Server is the most common workload deployed on HPE primary storage platforms, and now as a new HPE GreenLake service, available in four pre-defined configurations, customers have the option to refresh their environment with a workload-optimized and tested configuration, ready to support their database regardless of size. All of these new configurations feature HPE Alletra 6000 all-NVMe storage, recently proven to deliver increased database performance through the benefits of an All-NVMe array. It’s expected that this pay-per-use pricing, point and-click self-service and other cloud features will provide a 30-40% TCO hardware savings vs. the traditional upfront capex model.
There are also HPE GreenLake services available for Veeam and Splunk. Watch for more news regarding availability of pre-defined configurations.
Why HPE Storage and HPE GreenLake for running and protecting your business-critical databases and applications
Whether SQL Server or some other critical workload, HPE infrastructure delivers unmatched availability. HPE is the only vendor with a 100% availability guarantee on enterprise-class data storage. This is coupled with the unique HPE InfoSight that uses Predictive Analytics to ensure uptime. In addition, HPE storage, in partnership with Veeam, provides hybrid cloud data protection and mobility features that span on-premises and cloud.
HPE makes all your business databases and applications faster with leading all-flash, Storage Class Memory, NVMe media, and now All-NVMe storage arrays. This helps all your workloads run faster, lets users work faster, and enables businesses to create value and innovate faster.
HPE GreenLake for Microsoft SQL Server delivers the familiar benefits of HPE storage and HPE server platforms, a consumption-based pay-per-use model, plus additional benefits of the HPE GreenLake service:
- Cost savings from flexible, consumption-based model with simplified units of measure for billing
- Risk reduction from a validated full stack solution right-sized for your implementation
- Visibility of data, applications and infrastructure on-premises and under your direct control
- Business agility by leveraging scalable pay-per-use architecture with cloud-based administration
Through HPE GreenLake, customers can manage, pay for, and grow their environment over time.
Next steps on the road to HPE storage solutions with HPE GreenLake
Microsoft SQL Server was already available as HPE GreenLake service, but as of today, can be quickly ordered in pre-sized configurations using HPE storage infrastructure to serve a range of organizational sizes and application requirements. These services all provide superior uninterrupted operations for mission-critical environments while delivering cost savings from the ability of only having to pay for the infrastructure you need, as you use it, with on-demand scalability.
Get the details on today’s HPE GreenLake news here. Learn more about Microsoft Storage solutions from HPE here.
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