Primer Series: HPE OneView
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This was originally published in October 2020
Have you ever been sitting in a meeting when the conversation turns to a type of technology with which you are unfamiliar? Suddenly, a bunch of acronyms are being thrown around, and you have no idea what they mean. As you scan the rest of the room confused, you notice everyone else is nodding their heads as if they know exactly what is being discussed.
We have all been there at one time or another. To help our valued customers, the engineers at WWT have set out to write a series of 'primer articles' to provide basic information on various products and technologies. This article will cover the basics of HPE OneView.
General overview of HPE OneView
As mentioned in our introduction to infrastructure management, HPE OneView is comprised of three individual components that work together to enable a single pane of glass IM solution. OneView is a virtual appliance that manages HPE servers, storage arrays and switches. OneView Global Dashboard is a second virtual appliance that links all OneView instances under a single pane of glass. Finally, the OneView plug-in for vCenter is a third virtual appliance deployed to link vCenter to the OneView appliance for the management of all ESXi servers.
OneView features support for the following HPE data center product lines:
- Compute: Synergy, BladeSystem, ProLiant, Apollo, Superdome X and SuperdomeFlex.
- Storage: Primera, 3PARStoreServ, Nimble, StoreVirtualVSA and ConvergedSystem.
- Networking: VirtualConnect and Arista ToR.
Additionally, OneView can provide monitoring for some third-party products such as select Cisco Nexus 5K/6K models, as well as Cisco ACI fabrics and policies.
Specific features and benefits of HPE OneView
The software-defined data center is the cornerstone of modern IT infrastructures for a litany of reasons. OneView provides the foundation upon which a software-defined infrastructure is composed, deployed and automated.
Enable software-defined infrastructure
OneView transforms an IT organization's rigid on-prem infrastructure into an agile entity. Less time spent deploying infrastructure and managing lifecycles enables the organization to focus on delivering valuable IT services.
The way OneView accomplishes this transformation is through templates. Rather than an IT organization spending full days configuring every individual component in the infrastructure, workload-optimized infrastructure templates are created. These templates include most aspects of the configuration and allow generalists to provision compute, storage and network fabric resources reliably, in minutes and at scale.
Furthermore, these templates simplify the management of this infrastructure. IT administrators leveraging the OneView global dashboard now have a single pane of glass from which they can proactively monitor the health of the entire infrastructure and gain insights on current firmware and driver versions. OneView allows the application of firmware and driver updates within the templates in a non-disruptive manner.
Remote support is also integrated into the global dashboard, streamlining the process of engaging HPE for replacement parts.
Workload-optimized composable infrastructure
An infrastructure that is defined in software is one that is inherently programmable and composable. HPE has enabled this through the OneView Unified API. The need for clunky, manual scripts that only affect a single piece or type of hardware is eliminated, as a single line of code is now capable of fully describing and composing all the resources required for a given host, application or even container.
Composing and managing physical infrastructure as code opens the door to a wide range of automation tools such as Ansible, Puppet and Terraform. Leveraging the OneView Unified API alongside an automation tool not only grants increased speed and agility to the infrastructure, but predictability. Automation removes human error from the equation, further increasing reliability and productivity.
Connecting your core to the cloud
The journey from the core to the cloud can be a challenging one, especially when it comes to integrations. HPE OneView enables IT to connect their software-defined infrastructure to the cloud via their partner ecosystem, allowing the provisioning of a turnkey private cloud infrastructure integrated with HPE OneView under a single API and UI.
The ability to utilize existing management frameworks and preferred platforms enables IT to consistently deliver on projects that facilitate business outcomes for key stakeholders.
Rapid release schedule
With the release of OneView version 5.2 in May 2020, HPE has accelerated its release cycles. Traditionally, several months would pass between new milestone releases and improved feature sets. HPE has realized two such updates in four months, with OneView 5.3 released in July and OneView 5.4 released in September.
Accelerating the delivery of new features, especially those based on customer feedback, has brought a significant value-add to the table. Compounding this value-add is that OneView releases are now independent of Synergy SPP. Flexibility is a critical component of software-defined infrastructure, and it's a welcome sight to have that strategy applied to infrastructure management components like OneView.
Learn more
Are you interested in learning more about HPE OneView and how it could benefit your organization? We're here to help. Our subject matter experts are available to answer your specific questions.
Contact your WWT account team today to schedule a lab with this product, proof of concept (POC) or health check to evaluate your organization's current HPE compute environment.