HPE Synergy Advantage for Software Defined Storage

Cloud Platforms requires massively scalable, programmable storage platform that supports cloud infrastructure, media repositories, backup and restore systems, and data lakes. HPE Syergy is an ideal plaform for such demands that provide a cost effective SDS storage solution; and introduce cost-effective scalability that modern workloads require.

HPE Synergy 12000 Frame forms an excellent platform for high performance SDS storage that scales to meet business demand. The Frame is the base infrastructure that pools resources of compute, storage, fabric, cooling, power and scalability. IT can manage, assemble and scale resources on demand by using the Synergy Frame with an embedded management solution combining the Synergy Composer and Frame Link Modules.

 The Synergy Frame is designed to meet today’s needs and future needs with continuing enhancements to compute and fabric bandwidths, including photonics-ready capabilities. Enhancements to the HPE Synergy 12000 Frame include several new capabilities:

 • Support for HPE Synergy 480 and 660 Gen10 Compute Modules.

 • Additional 2650W hot plug power supply options: HVDC, 277VAC, and -48VDC.

 • Product version to comply with the Trade Agreements Act (TAA).

 HPE Synergy is a single infrastructure of physical and virtual pools of compute, storage, and fabric resources, and a single management interface that allows IT to instantly assemble and re-assemble resources in any configuration. As the foundation for new and traditional styles of business infrastructure, HPE Synergy eliminates hardware and operational complexity so IT can deliver infrastructure to applications faster and with greater precision and flexibility.

D3940 Storage Module provides a fluid pool of storage resources for the Composable Infrastructure. Additional capacity for compute modules is easily provisioned and intelligently managed with integrated data services for availability and protection. The 40 SFF drive bays per storage module can be populated with 12 G SAS or 6 G SATA drives. 

Expand up to 4 storage modules in a single Synergy 12000 Frame for a total of 200 drives. Any drive bay can be zoned to any compute module for efficient use of capacity without fixed ratios. 

A second HPE Synergy D3940 I/O Adapter provides a redundant path to disks inside the storage module for high data availability. 

The HPE Synergy D3940 Storage Module and HPE Synergy 12Gb SAS Connection Module are performance optimized in a non-blocking 12 Gb/s SAS fabric.

Use Cases of Ceph Block & Ceph Object Storage

OpenStack Ceph was designed to run on general purpose server hardware. Ceph supports elastic provisioning, which makes building and maintaining petabyte-to-exabyte scale data clusters economically feasible.

Many mass storage systems are great at storage, but they run out of throughput or IOPS well before they run out of capacity—making them unsuitable for some cloud computing applications. Ceph scales performance and capacity independently, which enables Ceph to support deployments optimized for a particular use case.

Here, I have listed the most common use cases for Ceph Block & Object Storage.

Unified Storage with OpenStack Ceph

Open Stack Ceph Storage is a massively scalable, programmable storage platform that supports cloud infrastructure, media repositories, backup and restore systems, and data lakes. It can free you from the expensive lock of proprietary, hardware-based storage solutions; consolidate labor and storage costs into a single versatile solution; and introduce cost-effective scalability that modern workloads require.

OpenStack Cloud platforms is now becoming popular for enterprise computing. Enterprise customers are embracing OpenStack Cloud to lower their costs: License costs and eliminates the need for dedicated storage systems. From an enterprise workload perspective, there are multiple storage requirements: 

 1. High performance Block Storage

 2. High throughput File Storage

 3. Cost Effective Object Storage

 
In OpenStack, Ceph storage provides a unified storage interface for Block, File & Object Storage. This plus the ability to scale out to 1000’s of nodes makes Ceph storage a preferred SDS solution when implementing OpenStack Cloud Platform.  

 When OpenStack Solution is built on Scaleout servers like HPE Apollo platform which provides highest storage & compute density per rack, the cost economics of an on premise solution beats a public cloud offerings.

 
OpenStack Ceph Storage is designed to meet the following requirements:

 1. High availability

 2. Security

 3. Cost Effective

 4. Scalability

 5. Configurable

 6. Performance

 7. Usability

 8. Measurable

Bitcoin is not Anonymous

One of the commin misconception about Bitcoin is its supposed anonymity. In reality, it is not so. Though all users of Bitcoin take up a pseudonym which is their public key and this public key does not reveal the name or identity of the user. By using pseudonym, users tend to think that Bitcoin is anonymous - but it is not so. Let me explain below:

The pseudonym is now used for all transactions and all the transactions are recorded in a shared distributed ledger - i.e., everyone can see all transactions. This implies that all transaction data is available for any big data analytics.

By using transaction data with data from person's mobile: Locational data, Social network data, internet access data etc, it is possible to triangulate the pseudonym to the identity of a real person. With rapid advances in realtime bigdata analytics, it is now possible to link a bitcoin address to a real-world identity.

If one interacts with a bitcoin business: Online wallet service, Exchange, or a merchant - who usually want your real-world identity for tansactions with them. For example details like credit card information or shipping address; Coffee shop or resturants that accept bitcoins - then the buyer must be physically present in the store. The store clerk/attender know about the buyer - thus the pseudonym now gets associated with the real-world identity. The same information can be gleamed from digital trail in form of data from cell phone, CCTV grabs etc,. Information like geographic location, time of the day, social network postings (Twitter, Facebook etc) can all be collected remotely, analyzed and soon a pseudonym can be associated with a real-world identity.

Advantages of Serverless Computing

Storage Virtualization Solutions from HPE

Use Cases of Serverless Computing

Serverless Computing on Common IT Infrastructure

 Customers want flexible deployment options. In this configuration, IT can offer hosting traditional apps – running on VM. In addition, Container based workloads can be deployed on the same underlying infrastructure. The Openstack orchestration frameworks like Kubernetes and Cloudfourms allows great level of flexibility.

On top of Kubernetes cluster, one can also deploy Fission – to create a serverless IT servers to support new IoT & Mobile apps based on-demand services, while retaining a single plane of glass for management APIs – while providing unified multi-tenancy mechanism.

This unified platform provides IT to offer all three application deployment options: Traditional business applications running on VMs; Container Apps and Serverless Computing platform.

Customers want flexible deployment options. In this configuration, IT can offer hosting traditional apps – running on VM. In addition, Container based workloads can be deployed on the same underlying infrastructure. The Openstack orchestration frameworks like Kubernetes and Cloudfourms allows great level of flexibility.

On top of Kubernetes cluster, one can also deploy Fission – to create a serverless IT servers to support new IoT & Mobile apps based on-demand services, while retaining a single plane of glass for management APIs – while providing unified multi-tenancy mechanism.

This unified platform provides IT to offer all three application deployment options: Traditional business applications running on VMs; Container Apps and Serverless Computing platform.


Open source Serverless framework - Fission uses Kurbernetes to manage the serverless functions: Creation, Termination and if needed, parallel invocation of apps. While it is a major technological breakthrough - it is also a very important financial innovation on how compute resources are being offered over the cloud.

Kubernetes event handlers is used to create custom automation in form of backend APIs or Webhooks. Kubernetes cluster manager will then manage the backend delivery based on demand.

I expect to see a significant disruption of cloud service offerings with this serverless computing.

In my next few upcoming blogs, I will write more about the software layers and architecture needed to offer serverless computing.

Advantages of Corda - Distributed Ledger Technology

Blockchain & CorDapps Use Cases

R3 Corda Application Architecture

Corda is a distributed ledger platform designed to record, manage and automate legal agreements between business partners. Designed by (and for) the world's largest financial institutions, it offers a unique response to the privacy and scalability challenges facing decentralised applications

Corda's development is led by R3, a Fintech company that heads a consortium of over 70 of the world's largest financial institutions in the establishment of an open, enterprise-grade, shared platform to record financial events and execute smart contract logic.

Corda is now supported by a growing open-source community of professional developers, architects and hobbyists.

What makes Corda different?

1. Engineered for business
Corda is the only distributed ledger platform designed by the world's largest financial institutions to manage legal agreements on an automatable and enforceable basis

2. Restricted data sharing
Corda only shares data with those with a need to view or validate it; there is no global broadcasting of data across the network

3. Easy integration
Corda is designed to make integration and interoperability easy: query the ledger with SQL, join to external databases, perform bulk imports, and code contracts in a range of modern, standard languages

4. Pluggable consensus
Corda is the only distributed ledger platform to support multiple consensus providers employing different algorithms on the same network, enabling compliance with local regulations

Closing Thoughts 

Corda provides the opportunity to transform the economics of financial firms by implementing a new shared platform for the recording of financial events and processing of business logic: one where a single global logical ledger is authoritative for all agreements between firms recorded on it. This architecture will define a new shared platform for the industry, upon which incumbents, new entrants and third parties can compete to deliver innovative new products and services.

Implement Enterprise Grade R3 Corda Platform