With “the only custom-designed secure silicon chip” to thwart firmware attacks, and other new innovations delivering “enhanced agility” coupled with “flexible payment models”, HPE’s servers are ready to serve.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced the availability of “the world’s most secure industry standard servers with the introduction of its next-generation ProLiant portfolio.”
The company bases this claim on “new silicon root of trust technology and other comprehensive security features”, which it says is “verified by InfusionPoints.”
Naturally, there’s plenty more. HPE proudly boasts that it is “the first vendor to put silicon-based security into its industry standard servers, addressing firmware attacks, which are one of the biggest threats facing enterprises and governments today.”
{loadposition alex08}Standing on the shoulders of this “new secure foundation,” is HPE’s additional “advancements in software-defined infrastructure that deliver new levels of agility and economic flexibility.”
As you can imagine, and hopefully haven’t as yet had to experience, HPE points to cyber-attacks having “increased significantly as hackers become more sophisticated,” with “security breaches and vulnerability discoveries” having been “repeatedly attributed to firmware attacks.”
The company points to Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) research dubbed “ISACA Study on Firmware Security Risks and Mitigation: Enterprise Practices and Challenges, 2016” which reveals “more than 50% of cyber security professionals reported at least one incident of malware-infected firmware in 2016.”
So, HPE says it is “the first company to respond by developing the ‘silicon root of trust’ – a unique link between the custom HPE silicon and the HPE Integrated Lights Out (iLO) firmware to ensure servers do not execute compromised firmware code.”
We’re told that building this firmware security directly into the HPE silicon “provides the ultimate protection against firmware attacks, as well as the ability to recover the essential server firmware automatically.”
What is more detail on HPE’s “silicon root of trust?”
HPE explains that its “silicon root of trust designs security directly into the iLO chip, creating an immutable fingerprint in the silicon, preventing servers from booting up unless the firmware matches the fingerprint.”
And, because HPE has total control of its own custom-made silicon chip and the server-essential firmware, HPE is shouting from the rooftops that it is “the only vendor in the industry that can offer this advantage.”
Thus, the company claims that its new silicon root of trust protection “includes state-of-the-art encryption and breach detection technologies and is complemented by HPE supply chain security and HPE Pointnext security assessment and protection services.”
It is at this point that HPE turns to an analyst, Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst of technology analyst and advisory firm Moor Insights & Strategy, who states: “A security breach in firmware is one of the most difficult to detect but can be one of the most damaging. Unfortunately, firmware is often overlooked in c-suite conversations about data centre security, and cyber criminals are targeting this as a new attack surface.
“While many servers have some level of hardware security already built-in, HPE is creating firmware security inextricably tied with its custom made silicon, to help customers protect against these malicious attacks.”
So, what is this “New Compute Experience” that HP says it is creating?
Well, having the world’s most secure industry standard servers is just one part of HPE’s new compute experience, which also includes the aforementioned enhancements to its “software-defined infrastructure and flexible payment models.”
HPE explains that through this new generation of capabilities powered by its ProLiant Gen 10 servers, HPE’s customers “can accelerate business insights across a hybrid world of traditional IT, public and private cloud.”
Meanwhile, HPE says its “pay-as-you-go options” mean that “customers can scale up or down based on their businesses’ need and only pay for what they actually use.
Paul Haverfield, HPE’s CTO for its Data Centre Hybrid Cloud in the APJ region, whom we last met waving goodbye to HDDs in servers and data centres, said: “Customers shouldn’t have to compromise when it comes to security, the agility of software-defined infrastructure and the flexibility of cloud economics.
“With our ProLiant Gen 10 portfolio, HPE is offering customers the best compute experience in the industry with unmatched security, new ways to accelerate insights and payment models that allow customers to choose options that work best for them.”
And what of the agility-laden software-defined infrastructure coupled with the new compute experience of which HPE speaks?
We are told that HPE’s new compute experience “offers customers the ability to accelerate applications and business insights through software-defined infrastructure,” and that the following new updates will be of interest, including:
A new experience in software-defined infrastructure advancements:
"HPE OneView 3.1 supports the end-to-end Gen 10 server platform and will transform compute, storage and network into software-defined infrastructure. The next generation, version 3.1, delivers composable storage capabilities, improved firmware management, extended support for a broad range of HPE compute platforms and support for new composable ecosystem partners including Mesosphere DC/OS. HPE and Mesosphere recently announced a strategic alliance that will help customers benefit from joint engineering, reference architecture and improved time to value.”
"HPE Intelligent System Tuning offers a dynamic experience around applications in partnership with Intel on the Intel Xeon Processor Scalable family. These unique functions include modulate frequency (jitter smoothing), increased performance (core boosting), and tuning of the server to match workload profiles."
A new experience in “time to insight” to enhance development and productivity:
"HPE Synergy for Gen 10 including HPE Synergy 480 and HPE Synergy 660. These compute modules deliver increased performance across compute-and data-intensive workloads, such as financial modelling. In addition, they deliver breakthrough Ethernet 25/50 GB connectivity and a 2.8x increase in direct-attached storage (DAS) capacity."
A new experience in workload optimisation accelerating data-driven applications:
"HPE Scalable Persistent Memory, an integrated storage solution that runs at memory speeds with terabyte-scale capacity, unlocking new levels of compute performance with built-in persistence. With up to 27 times faster application checkpoint operations and 20 times faster database restores, HPE Scalable Persistent Memory delivers the fastest persistent memory in the market at scale."
Economic Control: Pay-as-you-go Options
"Customers want the flexibility to choose whether they pay for their IT solution as a monthly operating expense or a capital expense. HPE offers consumption-based IT payment models that deliver the tangible business outcomes customers need – whether it’s cash flow improvement, accelerated deployment or cost effective capacity management. HPE Flexible Capacity changes the way customers consume IT to align with actual business needs. By paying only for what they use and leveraging an on-site buffer to scale up or down on demand, customers can save money by eliminating over-provisioning."
To help customers align IT to business needs, HPE says it is introducing two new offerings:
- HPE Capacity Care Service enabling mid-sized companies to control utilisation and capacity management in order to reduce over-provisioning and raise utilisation levels.
- IT Investment Strategy Workshops which are designed to help companies develop an IT investment strategy with funding models aligned to an IT investment roadmap.
And, as part of the new compute experience, HPE says its new storage offerings were announced on May 24, 2017.
Scale: High Performance Computing Solution
As part of the upgrade across the HPE compute portfolio, HPE introduced a new generation of High Performance Computing (HPC) solution, the new HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10, which is workload-optimised to deliver faster, more efficient insights while reducing vulnerability to cyber-attacks and improving economic control.
HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10 is the next generation of HPE’s large commercial, air-cooled, HPC platform, which was redesigned to deliver more than 300 teraflops per rack, higher rack-scale efficiency and exceptional price performance. The HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10 is also the most secure HPC system in the world leveraging the unique “silicon root of trust” technology for security threat protection. Key new capabilities of this system include:
- Industry leading reliability, accessibility, serviceability and manageability
- Greater application licensing efficiency
- Reduced latency and higher IOPs performance
- Reduced power consumption and cooling requirements
Chemical company BASF, one of the first users of the HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10 system, jointly developed a supercomputer for the digital transformation of chemical research with HPE. This is the largest supercomputer used for industrial chemical research and enables BASF to reduce computer simulation and modeling times from months to days, accelerating time to market and lowering costs.
Availability
The new HPE ProLiant Servers, HPE Synergy Compute Modules, HPE Converged System and HPE Apollo 6000 Gen10 System are now available in Australia.