Adding to the slate of Hewlett Packard Enterprise announcements today is a strategic alliance with Docker, which will cover sales, go-to-market, engineering, support, services and knowledge sharing. This collaborative effort will focus on helping customers to transform and modernize their datacenters so they can leverage a more agile development environment.
Adding to the slate of Hewlett Packard Enterprise announcements today is a strategic alliance with Docker, which will cover sales, go-to-market, engineering, support, services and knowledge sharing. This collaborative effort will focus on helping customers to transform and modernize their datacenters so they can leverage a more agile development environment.
HPE’s Docker ready server program is the front and center of this unique partnership, as it ensures HPE servers are bundled with both Docker Engine and support. HPE hopes to give customers the ability to create portable distributed applications, which can be located across any infrastructure. In addition, HPE and Docker promise to deliver hybrid infrastructure solutions, as well as an application portfolio, which include fully supported legacy and microservices applications.
HPE and Docker indicate the following commercial solutions and services through all major HPE channels:
- Docker ready HPE Servers: HPE will offer pre-configured server platforms ready for Docker Engine and Docker containers. These pre-tested server models, including HPE ProLiant, HPE Apollo and HPE Cloudline, will be delivered ready for container environments, resulting in greater optimization of hardware, improved time-to-application performance and greater portability.
- Docker ready Converged and Composable HPE Systems: HPE Synergy, HPE BladeSystem and HPE Converged System come ready for Docker deployments across compute and are integrated for storage and interconnect for simplified deployment and scalability. In addition, customers can deploy Docker in hyper-converged environments to enable DevOps in virtualization clusters.
- Joint go-to-market for Docker Datacenter: Organizations looking to build, ship and run Docker at scale in multiple different environments will be able to do so using Docker Datacenter. HPE and Docker will work together on joint sales and support programs across HPE customers and channel partners and will ensure that Docker Datacenter works seamlessly for containerized applications deployed across public cloud, composable infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastructure, converged storage and Docker ready HPE servers.
- Enterprise-grade Docker support and consulting services: HPE now offers technology assessments, design and implementation services for Docker containers and microservices (platform security, workload modernization consulting). In addition, HPE will provide a single source of enterprise-grade support for Docker in alignment with HPE’s technology solutions with a single point of contact for access to a global network of specialists, 24×7.
Not only that, HPE and Docker will also release new HPE container-enabled technologies, all of which are integrated and tested with Docker. This includes the HPE Reference Configuration for Docker Datacenter on HPE Hyper Converged 380, which displays how fast customers can deploy Docker Datacenter in a production environment. It can accomplish this by leveraging the Hyper Converged 380’s virtual machine vending capabilities. Additionally, it describes how to take full advantage of HPE SiteScope and HPE AppDefender to monitor and protect Dockerized applications in production.
Other HPE container-enabled technologies include:
- HPE Reference Architecture for Docker Datacenter for the Converged Architecture 700: Provides one consistent management view for adopting private cloud and container environments. Customers can start with a small proof of concept and easily grow to an enterprise scale production private cloud environment using HPE technologies.
- Docker-integrated Native Volume Plugin for HPE 3PAR StoreServ all-flash arrays: Flash-optimized HPE 3PAR StoreServ arrays provide persistent storage for container environments via a new Docker-integrated Native Volume Plugin. This native plug-in adds to customer choice and flexibility by enabling the use of HPE 3PAR StoreServ arrays as the underlying storage for non-VM (or “bare-metal”) container environments where containerized applications require persistent storage, such as SQL databases.
- Docker-integrated Networking: The addition of Docker container support to the HPE Distributed Cloud Networking (DCN) solution enables dynamic programmability of heterogeneous and HPE FlexFabric network infrastructures, reducing time for application deployment from months to minutes.
- Docker-integrated HPE SiteScope: HPE SiteScope is an agentless software for monitoring the availability and performance of distributed applications and IT infrastructure. HPE SiteScope’s enables monitoring of the health and performance of Docker nodes or clusters in a Dockerized environment – from the cluster manager level, to the Docker daemon layer, to the container level, including the applications running inside the containers.
- Docker-integrated HPE OneView : Through the integration of the unified API in HPE OneView, customers can quickly deploy and manage the infrastructure that Docker Engine, and Docker containers run on.
- HPE Linux Docker support: The HPE Linux distribution is now a supported operating system by Docker. Docker’s support of HPE Linux gives customers more options to use the Linux “flavor” of their choice with Docker.
HPE is also working to Docker-enable both its cloud and software portfolio by using application programming interfaces (APIs), the Docker plugin framework, and Docker Datacenter development licenses. These include:
- HPE AppDefender: Delivers runtime protection for application security in a Docker environment to prevent security by protecting production applications from the inside, across all levels of a software stack.
- HPE Operations Bridge monitoring: Delivers comprehensive monitoring of Docker containers and as well as the payloads running in the containers.
- CMS and Universal Directory configuration management: CMS can discover and display information related to Docker topology, including Docker Application, Docker Container, Docker Image, Docker Image Template, Docker Registry, Docker Volume and more.
- HPE Helion Cloud Suite: Provides a full range of hybrid cloud capabilities in a single software offering. HPE Helion Cloud Suite includes full-stack automation to enable rapid delivery of IT services and applications, as well as a complete development environment with HPE Helion Stackato, supporting DevOps processes for traditional and cloud-native applications.
Availability
Docker ready HPE Servers (including HPE ProLiant, HPE Apollo and HPE Cloudline and Docker-integrated Converged and Composable HPE Systems) are slated for general availability sometime during the fourth quarter of 2016. Docker-integrated solutions spanning HPE’s storage, networking and software assets are available now.
