WWT Builds Lab for Google Cloud's Anthos Featuring Intel Select Solutions

Another ATC first in the making: Cisco Hyperflex powered by Intel® Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos 

For every IT organization, modernization is a must. But it's a major challenge to transform infrastructure when staff is limited, timelines are unrealistic and higher-ups are constantly expecting you to cut expenses and do more with less.

Hybrid clouds are seen as a sensible way to introduce the flexibility required for digital transformation, but there's no clear path to achieving a secure, scalable infrastructure that also reduces total cost of ownership—not without considerable time and effort spent selecting, testing and deploying each individual element.

To address this challenge, WWT is pleased to soon offer the Cisco Hyperflex platform powered by Intel® Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos, an optimized, tested and scalable solution that can ease configuration and deployment as organizations move to a hybrid cloud or multicloud for demanding workloads like machine learning, AI, data analytics and more. 

Over the years, WWT has solidified its reputation as the "Silicon Valley in St. Louis," building out one breakthrough reference architecture after another. These are showcased for customers, partners and colleagues in our Advanced Technology Center (ATC)—WWT's collaborative ecosystem where we design, build and deploy innovative technology products and integrated architectural solutions. The ATC is where amazing solutions prove their value, undergoing stringent testing and validation on their path to market. The development of Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos is a standout example of one such ATC endeavor. 

Understanding the advantages Anthos brings to cloud deployment

As we've described previously, Google Cloud's Anthos comprises an array of innovations to support and integrate with Google Cloud and it promises to bring a new edge to the market for organizations in virtually every market segment offering several key benefits: 

• Fully managed Kubernetes – The platform offers a single point for managing, monitoring, logging and securing the Kubernetes footprint from a single control point, a major boon in a hybrid cloud environment.
• Application modernization – Legacy applications can be difficult to move to the cloud. Now, Anthos enables application modernization with specialized developer tools.
• Consistent development and deployment – IT teams are no longer limited to a choice between on-prem Kubernetes distribution or whatever's running in the cloud. "Develop once, deploy anywhere" with open standards that allow for deploying and maintaining either option.
• Security policy and automation – Anthos Config Management is built to automate simple (and often error-prone) tasks, as well as creating and deploying policies across an entire Kubernetes landscape.

In addition to supporting high performance requirements, this solution offers numerous advantages, including making use of existing VMware vSAN and VMware vSphere environments. 

What is the Cisco Hyperflex™ platform?

Cisco HyperFlex is an essential building block to evolve your applications and on-premises infrastructure. It works with a variety of hybrid cloud and container management services to provide you with choice. Your enterprise applications can run consistently and securely in both on-premises and public cloud environments. Powered by Intel Select Solutions, VMware vSphere and Google Cloud the Cisco HyperFlex™ hyperconverged infrastructure provides a common building block for Kubernetes-based as well as virtualized workloads. When a HyperFlex system is used with Google Cloud's Anthos, they work together to provide a consistent experience whether on premises, in the Google Cloud, or in other public clouds.

The value of Intel® Select Solutions

For those unfamiliar, Intel Select Solutions are pre-defined, workload-optimized solutions to help reduce the complexity and time spent on infrastructure evaluation and deployment. OEMs and ODMs validate all solutions, which are certified by ISVs and finally verified by Intel. Intel collaborates closely with its ecosystem partners—hardware, software and OS vendors, as well as leading data center and service providers—to develop every Intel® Select Solutions offering. Each one is a specialized and tailored compilation of Intel® technologies for data center compute, memory, storage, and networking, proven to provide consistent, compelling performance.

Compatibility without complexity and verified performance

To help transform IT operations and assist DevOps in building applications on premises and in the cloud more easily, Intel has architected a hardware stack optimized to run Anthos.

Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos employ Intel® technologies specified on the VMware hardware-compatibility list. Those solutions are developed using Intel-verified platforms and reference designs for vSAN, built to exacting specifications from Intel and VMware. For those needing to migrate to a hybrid cloud or multicloud operation, Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos can make use of your existing VMware vSphere and VMware vSAN environment, easing deployment and management. In fact, this latest Intel Select Solutions set is based on Intel® Select Solutions for VMware vSAN.

Google and Intel have chosen configurations that are ideally suited for multi-purpose, multi-tenant virtualized environments. They employ hardware and software optimizations created to take full advantage of a VMware vSAN environment; they were then tested using VMware VMmark on Intel Select Solutions for VMware vSAN.

Intel Select Solutions are tested and verified to meet certain targeted standards of workload-optimized performance and reliability for single-instance Redis database deployments over containers or bare metal, achieving less than 1 ms latency more than 99 percent of the time. To gain extra capacity and/or performance, organizations can upgrade or expand on either configuration. The Plus configuration uses higher performance 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Optane DC persistent memory, as well as the newest VMware software release, resulting in a 15 percent greater database throughput versus the Base configuration.

Intel also tests and verifies these resources for balanced and optimized performance, top to bottom – from hardware to firmware to vSAN software and GKE On-Prem. Quickly implement a hybrid cloud without an exhaustive selection and system-level testing process using readily available solutions. Deploy and manage apps and workloads quickly and effortlessly using Kubernetes containers across the on-prem environment, on hybrid clouds, or other cloud providers. What's more, using a VMware vSAN hyper-converged infrastructure can contribute to a reduced TCO, versus a converged solution. 

Solutions built on a platform of reliable performance

For the hardware component, Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos features Intel's recently launched 2nd generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, specially designed for highly demanding, data-centric and in-memory database workloads. Other standout hardware components from Intel that are incorporated into various Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos include:

• Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory, providing the system with large-capacity memory, in either memory mode or app direct mode.
• Intel® Optane™ DC Solid State Drives (SSDs) at the cache tier provide low latency and high endurance.
• Intel® 3D NAND SSDs, for optimized read performance, data integrity, and drive reliability.
• The Intel® Ethernet 700 Series, for data resiliency, service reliability and broad interoperability.

These all contribute to a performance-optimized platform with large pools of available memory for demanding workloads, all quickly deployed on VMware hyperconverged infrastructure with the Anthos software stack.

Demonstrating outcomes with Cisco Hyperflex™ and Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos in the ATC

For businesses and organizations of every kind, moving to a hybrid cloud/multicloud environment is key to succeeding in a highly competitive and data-driven landscape, but getting there has been a complex and costly challenge—until now. 

CIsco Hyperflex™ and Intel Select Solutions for Google Cloud's Anthos enables IT organizations to deploy hybrid cloud platforms quickly, ensuring optimized performance and extra memory capacity for hyperconverged infrastructures without having to test, tune or take additional time. WWT is available to demonstrate this leading architecture that will deliver scalability and performance, enabling developers to build powerful applications within Kubernetes.

We invite you to check out more information around the WWT Google Cloud's Anthos Lab for yourself, and reach out to your account manager for more information on scheduling time to discuss how this solution may benefit your environment.