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HPE Discover 2016 - Day 1

Dennis Faucher

• 10 min read


Good morning.  I have found that morning is the best time for me to write in Vegas.  I am still on East Coast time, so I awake around 4 or 5 AM Vegas time and catch up on the previous day.  If the 20 hour days don’t kill me, the blog posts will keep coming 😉  The other benefit of being up early is that the hotel WiFi is not as saturated as it is most of the rest of the day.  Here are the highlights of my Day 1 at HPE Discover 2016.  The post from Day 0 can be found here.

9:00 AM Exploring the new Composable Infrastructure with HPE Synergy (Hands-on Labs)


As I wrote in the Day 0 post, I am focusing on cloud, DevOps and automation this trip. A lab on OneView management and automation of HPE’s new “composable” offering, Synergy, is a good start. The lab guide is very good at explaining the architectural components of Synergy as well as important HA and redundant architectural decisions. Some changed terms to get straight are frame (not chassis), compute module (not blade), fabric module (not IO module), and frame link module (not management processor). Some new terms to understand are composer, image steamer, and storage module.

A few key points from the architectural discussion are that a composer pair supports up to 21 frames and an image steamer pair supports up to 60 compute modules. Notice that I said pair. Synergy is meant to be highly available and these automation modules are meant to be installed in pairs in separate frames. The recommended minimum configuration for HA is three frames. Also, there are twelve compute modules per frame (not 16) and 6 fabric modules per frame (not 8).

OneView runs on the composer module and manages and automated Synergy. Only Synergy in this release. For a single screen to manage Synergy and everything else your existing Synergy is managing, install the Global Dashboard which is included in the OneVew Advanced license. Creating networks and server profiles in OneView on Synergy is just like in OneView on C7000. 

You can pick up a copy of the lab guide here 

11:00 AM Meeting with Jim Meyer, HPE Vice President Engineering, Cloud

Jim Meyer runs engineering for the Cloud business at HPE and was nice enough to carve out an hour of his time to speak to Rolta AdvizeX about helping our joint customers develop and implement a successful cloud strategy.  Jim shared some excellent insights for companies building cloud strategies. 

  • Full “cloud native” does not need to be the initial step on a cloud journey. Start small, but pick an architecture that can take you where you need to be long-term. 
  • OpenStack is very flexible but may not be a fit for every customer. For insurance, if a customer is all Microsoft, AzureStack could be a better solution. 
  • Standardizing on HPE Helion OpenStack is a good idea if:
    • Cost is a key driver.  Pure OpenStack is less expensive to purchase than other private cloud solutions
    • You require Linux-based ephemeral compute such as temporary Hadoop workloads
    • You require ephemeral block storage
    • You run many lightweight jobs
  • HPE Helion as a family is a good idea if you have a need for:
    • Multiple hypervisors. Helion OpenStack supports KVM, ESX and Hyper-V
    • You are interested in HPE Stackato PaaS application platform that enables applications to be deployed to multiple clouds.  Stackato is the easiest method to enable existing enterprise application developers to become cloud developers.
  • HPE Helion on-premise can be less expensive than public cloud for Dev/Test when amortized over a 3-5 year period.




11:30 AM Composable Infrastructure ecosystem in action; Chef (Hands-On Lab)


 A lab on Chef integration with Insight Control for Server Provisioning fits in perfectly with my goal to learn more about DevOps and cloud. 


 This was my first introduction to Chef and was fascinating.  HPE has performed an incredible amount of R&D that they have given back to the community through Github to automate OneView supported platforms.  During this lab, we created a OneView server profile, added some Chef-specific configuration instructions to an Insight Control Server Provisioning build plan and then kicked off a complete server hardware build, OS build and Chef configuration from a single Chef command.  Extremely powerful.

 You can pick up a copy of the lab guide here 

1:15 PM HPE Video Interview About HPE Partnership and Certifications

Hewlett Packard Enterprise was nice enough to ask Rolta AdvizeX to be interviewed on video to discuss the value of being an HPE partner for over 30 years.  I sat with a very nice video crew, including and HPE friend of 20 years, for about 30 minutes discussing the value HPE and Rolta AdvizeX bring to our joint customers.  We spoke about the value of our strong partnership, the value of our numerous advanced HPE certifications and the support HPE provides to Rolta AdvizeX customers and future customers through many events including the very successful IT Leadership Forum. 

2:00 PM General Session and Meg Whitman Keynote

Thankfully, I ran into Marc, my good friend of 20 years and HPE Director, as I was walking into the general session and Marc got us excellent seats right up front.

The prelude to Meg’s appearance was a mix of talented acrobats and musicians performing in front of, and interacting with, HPE images and messages.  The opening was pretty cool and inspiring.




 Boy was this an inspiring and jam-packed keynote.  I will attempt to summarize without being too lengthy.

 Meg came right out and spoke about the theme of Discover being digital transformation.  She spoke about the recent ES spin-off to CSC and the value that merger creates for customers and then went into some of HPE’s strengths such as:

  • The four HPE pillars
    • Transform to a hybrid infrastructure
    • Protect your digital enterprise
    • Empower the data-driven organization
    • Enable workplace productivity
  • Secure, next generation infrastructure
  • Multi-cloud data centers
  • Aruba
  • Technology Services
  • Financial Services and consumption-based models
  • Cloud
  • Converged
  • Machine learning
  • Internet of Things
  • AI and HAVEn
Meg then introduced some fantastic customers driving digital transformation

Drew Houston, Founder of DropBox

Drew discussed how, at their scale, a move from the public cloud to their own data centers running on HPE made sense for their bottom line and for their growth.  One highlight was the live migration of 2 Pb of data to HPE 3PAR. 

Ted Colbert, CIO Boeing Company

Ted was a great speaker and stressed how a 100 year-old company is leading the way in digital transformation.  Boeing is a data company.  Each 787 flight creates 1/2 TB of data that is stored and analyzed. Boeing’s digital transformation is powered by HPE Apollo servers for design and HPE Helion Cloud for data analytics.  Boeing now hosts a petaflop of compute power that they use to certify new platforms digitally.  

Ben Golub, CEO Docker

Talk about a technology taking the technology world by storm!  Docker and containers are huge and growing.  I can see containers quickly replacing virtual machines for fast, lightweight application delivery.  Some highlights from Ted and Meg’s container discussion were:
  • Containers increase agility and efficiency
  • Application environments can be created 13X faster with 3X fewer errors and 80% better resource utilization
  • “VMs are for servers, containers are for apps”
  • All HPE servers will now be bundled with Docker
  • HP-UX has been “Docker-ized”

Bret Arsenault, CISO Microsoft

Bret delivered a great discussion around security.  He mentioned that security discussions have definitely moved from the computer room to the boardroom.   Microsoft updates 1M machines a month to close security gaps.  Internally, Microsoft uses HPE Fortify and Arcsight to protect its users.

Toby Bloom, Deputy Scientific Director, Informatics, New York Genome Center

Toby was an inspiring speaker.  The New York Genome Center is working to cure disease every day through the analysis of genes.  The Center uses HPE Vertica to analyze 12 TB of gene sequencing data every day.

Matt Carey, CIO Home Depot

This was a fun conversation and Matt and Meg donned Home Depot aprons in front of a huge photograph of a Home Depot aisle.   Home Depot is a very strong HPE customer running their business on HPE NonStop, HPE Aruba, HPE Clearpass and HPE Proliants.  Home Depot has a strategy of interconnected retail. One of their competitive advantages is that 40% of online orders are fulfilled in a physical store.  Home Depot is in the process of refreshing the wireless in all stores with HPE Aruba wireless.  This is a very aggressive roll-out of 12 stores every week.

Antonio Neri, EVP HPE Enterprise Group

Antonio came on stage a few times before and during the customer conversations.  His first discussion was around HPE Cloud and a few HPE Helion announcements:
  • HPE Helion Cloud Suite
  • HPE Helion CloudSystem 10
  • HPE Helion Stackato 4.0 multi-cloud application platform
Antonio mentioned 20th Century Fox’s use of HPE Cloud that enabled them to reduce their data center footprint by 70% and reduce time to provisioning from 5 weeks 5 minutes.

When Antonio returned to the stage, he focused on composable and converged.  He covered HPE Synergy including announcing HPE OneView 3.0 and the OneView Global Dashboard for consolidating multiple OneView appliances into a single screen.  Antonio closed with the powerful private cloud message of customer choice and control using “Your management, your infrastructure, your data.” 

Mike Negkens, EVP Enterprise Services

Mike’s organization is merging with CSC, but Mike took some time to share the strength of the combination of HPE’s 5,000 security professionals, global Security Operation and Management Centers as well as expertise on and use of HPE Fortify and Arcsight.  The HPE Security Centers detect security issues in 11.8 minutes on average and 92% of incidents are resolved within 2 hours.

Robert Youngjohns, EVP HPE Software

HPE Software includes some impressive solutions around enterprise security, ITSM and Big Data.  Robert focused on augmented human intelligence and applied machine learning and unveiled the HavenOnDemand.com platform which is free to developers.  15,000 developers are already using HavenOnDemand. 

4:00 PM Quick Walk Around the Trade Show Floor

I ran into my brilliant, kind colleague, Amar, on the show floor sporting his spiffy “First 100 people to pass the new Synergy certification” hat.  Amar is one of the smartest, and nicest, people I know.  The trade show floor is a big place.


HPE Discover 2016 with my friend Amar – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

HPE and Star Trek have teamed up.  If you have not watched the great YouTube video about Star Trek and The Machine, you should.



4:30 PM Tips from the experts on HPE Helion OpenStack® and HPE Helion CloudSystem (Discussion Forum on Show Floor)

This 30 minute discussion on the show floor was led by an HPE Engineer from the Cloud Center of Excellence.  They key success criteria learned from supporting global OpenStack customers are:

  • Settings for networks, interfaces and VLANs
  • Date and time, NTP
  • Helion Lifecycle Manager, Ansible playbooks
  • Monasca Monitoring Service
  • Storage (Swift, Ceph)
  • LDAP Integration
  • Security and Patches

6:00 PM Rolta AdvizeX Customer Reception at LAVO Italian Restaurant

My wonderful colleague, Lauren, arranged an excellent customer reception on the outside patio of LAVO.  The staff was excellent and attentive as was the food and customer conversations.  I got to catch up with some customers I have not seen in a while and some customers from other regions I had not met before.  



8:00 PM Avnet Party at Tao


Our partner of over 15 years, Avnet, held a very nice party at the Tao club.  The DJ and lighting were great and customers, partners, and Avnet personnel got a chance to have some fun on the dance floor.  Thank you, Avnet. 




Other Items from the Day


During one of my lab session at HPE Discover, the instructor handed out USB keys so that we could save the lab guide.  The key was full of great public domain information that I have shared here.  Here are the contents:
  • 4AA5-7828ENW Top 5 Reasons to move to HPE BladeSystem_Nov2015.pdf
  • Adaptability In Backup Whitepaper (Jan 2016).pdf
  • Ansible – HPE OneView integration.mp4
  • Automated Deployment of Docker Hosts 4AA6-2595ENW.pdf
  • Barrett Jackson Customer Reference (Feb 2016).pdf
  • BL660c_Gen9_MSFT_SQL_2014_technical_brief_4AA5-9057ENW_TWP.pdf
  • BL660c_Gen9_with_HPE_PCle_Workload_Accelerators_4AA5-8713ENW_HPE.pdf
  • Brain Farm Protects Valuable Assets (Nov 2015).pdf
  • Chef – HPE OneView integration.mp4
  • Chef and HPE OneView Integration 4AA6-1024ENW.pdf
  • Demartek_HP_BladeSystem_Gen_8_Gen_9_Comparison_2015-07.pdf
  • Docker – HPE OneView integration.mp4
  • Eight_steps_infographic_4AA1-0903ENW.pdf
  • Eight_steps_to_Building_BladeSystem_4AA1-4286ENW.pdf
  • ESL G3 with LTO-7 Refresh for Installed Base Quick Reference Card (Nov 2015).pdf
  • ESL G3 with LTO-7 Refresh for Installed Base Sales Guide (Nov 2015).pdf
  • Futureproofing Montana’s Date Centre (Jan 2016).pdf
  • HEIDELBERG Customer Reference (Jan 2016).pdf
  • HPE Hyper Converged 380 Management User Interface demonstration guide.pdf
  • HPE IMC – HPE OneView integration.mp4
  • HPE LTO-7 Ultrium Tape Drives family datasheet.pdf
  • HPE OneView 4 Microsoft System Center.mp4
  • HPE OneView 4 VMware vCenter.mp4
  • HPE OneView solution brief 4AA4-6214ENW.pdf
  • HPE Recovery Manager Central Data Sheet (April 2016).pdf
  • HPE_3PAR_Storage_Brochure_4AA3-2542ENW.pdf
  • HPE_3PAR_Storage_Data_Sheet4AA5-9493ENW_2804.pdf
  • HPE_3PAR_StoreServ_20000_Data_Sheet_4AA5-8338ENW_2804.pdf
  • HPE_Virtual_Connect_data_sheet_4AA4-8302ENW.pdf
  • Hyper_Converged_380_solution_brief_4AA6-4713ENW.pdf
  • Hyper_Converged_380_VMw Horizon_RA_4AA6-5204ENW.pdf
  • Hyper_Convergence_FAQ_4AA5-5917ENW.PDF
  • IDC composable and Synergy.pdf
  • IDC-BV_Nov2015_4AA5-6519ENW.pdf
  • Integration with HPE OneView 4AA5-8669ENW.pdf
  • Lowering the cost of running Oracle by upgrading to HP Gen9 servers 4AA6-1030ENW.pdf
  • Path-to-composable-infographic-4AA6-4330ENW.pdf
  • ProLiant_Gen9_c_Class_server_blades_technical_white_paper_4AA5-4485ENW_Gen9_TWP.pdf
  • RA slides for Discover-Vegas-Final.pdf
  • Recovery Manager Central Brochure 4AA5-5173ENW June 2016.pdf
  • Recovery Manager Central Data Sheet 4AA5-5172ENW June 2016.pdf
  • Synergy at a glance.pdf
  • Synergy family guide.pdf
  • Synergy white paper.pdf
  • TEI_HP ProLiant BL660c Gen8-4AA5-2822ENW.pdf

Well, that about sums up Day 1.  I’ll do my best to get my Day 2 updates out tomorrow.