Hewlett Packard Enterprise Value For A Ceph Storage Environment; Suse Value; Server Platforms - HPE Apollo 4500 Reference Manual

Reference guide
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Hewlett Packard Enterprise value for a Ceph storage environment

Software0defined storage running on Linux servers can be deployed on a variety of hardware platforms. However, clusters built on a white-box
server infrastructure work for business at small scale, but as they grow, the complexity and cost make them less compelling than enterprise
hardware-based solutions. With white-box server infrastructure, IT has to standardize and integrate platforms as well as supported components
themselves, and support escalation becomes more complicated. Without standardized toolsets to manage the hardware at scale, IT must chart
their own way with platform management and automation. Often the result is the IT staff working harder and the businesses spending more to
support a white-box hardware infrastructure than the one-time CPAEX savings realized in buying the white-box servers.
Using an HPE hardware and software solution provides advantages that reduce OPEX spending not available in an infrastructure built on
white-box servers. Key OPEX savings from using an integrated HPE solution are:
• Platform management tools that scale across data centers
• Server components and form factors that are optimized for enterprise use cases
• Hardware platforms where component parts have been qualified together
• A proven, worldwide hardware support infrastructure
Disk encryption
In addition to the benefits above, all Apollo 4000 configurations include an HPE Smart Array card capable of secure encryption where
enterprise-class encryption is needed. Encryption is FIPS-2—certified for security, has been tested as not affecting IOPS on spinning media for
low-performance impact, and is transparent to the operating system for ease-of-use. This means any drive supported on the server can be used,
giving much more cost/performance flexibility than encryption on drive solutions. Key management is simple and can be managed locally or via
an enterprise key management system. hpe.com/servers/secureencryption
Multi-generational CEPH support
Ceph cluster support mixing multiple generations of x86 server storage nodes. Apollo 4510 Gen10 can be used to expand existing storage
cluster based on Apollo Gen9 systems.

SUSE value

As a provider of mission-critical open source solutions for over 20 years, SUSE is accustomed to ensuring customers have the best engineered
and supported solutions possible. SUSE Enterprise Storage is no exception. SUSE has been on the front edge of storage technology for many
years and is putting all of its expertise and experience behind making Ceph consumable by enterprise customers. Ensuring stability means a tight
marriage between the most reliable enterprise Linux® available and the industry-leading Ceph distribution, SUSE Enterprise Storage.
With SUSE Enterprise Storage, customers get a solid build of Ceph with additional feature add-ons by SUSE, including iSCSI support, encryption
for data at rest, and optional installation mechanisms. Backed by a world-class support organization, customers can have confidence that SUSE
Enterprise Storage is the best place to store data today and into the future.

Server platforms

This section provides some reasons and benefits around the industry-standard servers chosen for the reference configuration. Decisions made
for component sizing in the cluster (compute, memory, storage, networking topology) are described under the "Configuration guidance" section.