HPE launches two-pronged attack on hyper-converged market

Analysis #HP has two #hyperconverged systems for two different but overlapping markets – SMB, ROBO, and LOB at the low end, and LOB/data centre at the high end. Both the #HC250 and #HC380 are based on #ProLiant server hardware and have different software environments layered on the common Store #VirtualSAN. Their branding seems the opposite of what one might expect, though. Back in 2011 and earlier, the ProLiant server line had its mainstream DL, or data centre line. One of these models was the #DL380, and another was the DL2000. This was a 2U rackmount box with four half-width servers (cartridges) in it, in two rows of two; a pretty dense server box. Once hyper-converged systems from #Nutanix and #SimpliVity started to get market traction with their siren song of simplicity by way of one order number for a combined, resilient, and scale-out product, HP, as it then was, realised it had the right server hardware ready to build its own hyper-converged system running #VMware 's #VSAN. Around this time the #EMC #EVORail bandwagon started as well. Thus was born the 2013 era ProLiant SL2500 – SL standing for Scalable Line. It had up to four independent SL210t Gen 8 hot-pluggable server nodes in its 2U chassis, with no shared interconnect back-plane. Each node had dual Xeon E5-2600 v2 processors. At that stage HP also had an HPC and supercomputer line, with the rack-scale Apollo 6000 and liquid-cooled #Apollo8000. It wanted entry-level scalable systems and came up with the storage-dense Apollo 4000 and compute-dense Apollo 2000. The 2000 system was based on the ProLiant SL2500 hardware.

2014, HP decided to start using its own #StoreVirtual #VSA, virtual SAN software it acquired when it bought #LeftHand Networks. So the ProLiant SL2500 became the Converged System 240 (CS 240) in a CS 200-HC Store Virtual product category. There was a Converged System 200-HC EVO:RAIL configuration as well.

The CS 240 had HP #OneView InstantOn software, a deployment function enabling customers to spin up #vSphere with #StoreVirtual #VSA in a matter of minutes. The #EVORail version went away in July 2015.

While this was going on the continued and remorseless generational ProLiant progress was ongoing. Gen 5, 6, 7, 8... and so on to the current Gen 9. As part of this process the CS 240 was upgraded to the CS 250 in 2015, which supported both VMware vSphere and #Microsoft's #HyperV. And then, this year, that system was renamed the #HC250, using Gen 9 ProLiant server nodes, and given a software makeover.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/05/the_state_of_hpes_hyperconverged_play/