Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) announces the enhancements to HPE SimpliVity for the enterprise edge, including advancements in data protection with native backup to cloud and centralized backup for compliance. Additionally, HPE also announces support for containers to run cloud-native applications at the edge, and drive business transformation.

The new capabilities include Kubernetes CSI Plugin for HPE SimpliVity that provides streamlined management and resilient, all-in-one hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) to run both container and virtual machine (VM) workloads on a unified platform at the edge; and HPE SimpliVity enhanced integration with HPE StoreOnce that protects distributed edge sites with automated, app-aware policies to easily and efficiently replicate apps and data directly to a centralized HPE StoreOnce appliance for compliance and long-term retention.

“If you’re a retail company or a business with many stores and locations, I would highly recommend HPE SimpliVity for your branch offices and warehouses,” said Aleh Sadaunichy, Infrastructure Solutions Architect, Staples Solutions. “The simplicity, scalability, reliability, transcendent speed, and the ease of the restores are why we choose this product. The comprehensive data protection capabilities that include native backup to public cloud are very compelling.”

Organizations are witnessing unprecedented application and data growth at the edge, creating new opportunities to extract value from data by running applications and processing data locally. They are also bringing new, cloud-native applications to the edge, while still supporting existing virtualized applications at edge sites.

To harness this opportunity, HPE has delivered an intelligent and complete edge solution, including HPE Aruba secure wireless and wired networking and workload-optimized infrastructure, to address the varying performance, resiliency, scale, and data requirements at the edge.

The enterprise edge is a critical segment represented by distributed sites including retail, hospitals, financial services, and manufacturing. Organizations need edge computing infrastructure that is radically simple to manage, with built-in resiliency and efficient data protection to ensure apps are always-on and able to rapidly recover data across sites.

HPE SimpliVity is a market-leading, intelligent HCI solution optimized for the enterprise edge, with an efficient, all-in one appliance with high availability delivered in the smallest footprint. The solution provides built-in data protection with zero administration enabled by centralized management and automation, along with industry-leading, guaranteed data efficiency for better economics. HPE is now enhancing data protection and its flexibility to run containers alongside VMs at the edge.

”Our customers with businesses in edge environments turn to HPE SimpliVity for its ease of use and outstanding economics,” said Omer Asad, VP & GM, HCI, Primary Storage and Data Management Services, HPE. “We’re continuing to invest in and develop new capabilities for HPE SimpliVity that enable customers to leverage edge and container based data to innovate, accelerate delivery of new applications, and provide differentiated experiences to customers.”

“New age applications and traditional workloads have driven the accelerated adoption of HCI technologies in the India Market. Most Industry segments in India run several workloads on HPE SimpliVity solutions which is a testimony of growing HCI presence,” said Kamal Kashyap, Director, India – Storage Business Unit, HPE India.

HPE SimpliVity is architected with resiliency and data protection capabilities that deliver high availability and instant recovery for workloads at the edge, including databases and general virtualization. Built-in, remote backups across a multi-site HPE SimpliVity federation enable efficient, rapid recovery for applications across distributed sites. With HPE SimpliVity, VM data is rapidly and automatically backed up to another node, so if one node goes down, businesses never experience a disruption. In fact, a 1TB VM can be backed up or restored in <60 seconds. This is critical in ensuring business continuity in the event of natural disasters or protecting data against security threats such as ransomware.

HPE SimpliVity enhanced integration with HPE StoreOnce reduces complexity, cost, and risk by protecting distributed edge sites with automated, app-aware policies to easily and efficiently replicate apps and data directly to a centralized HPE StoreOnce appliance. HPE SimpliVity with HPE StoreOnce is ideal for customers with strict compliance or long-term retention service level agreements (SLAs) on data. Businesses can create or update edge to core backup policies in less than one minute for thousands of VMs across dozens of sites, easily backup and restore data in three simple clicks, and routinely achieve 20:1 deduplication ratios resulting in high data efficiency.

HPE SimpliVity now supports the Container Storage Interface (CSI) Driver for Kubernetes to run container-based workloads at the edge. HPE offers a simple and unified experience across HPE SimpliVity to Kubernetes to accelerate the journey to a container-based architecture. Having support for CSI and persistent volumes enables both VMs and container workloads to run on the same HCI platform at edge sites, which eliminates the need for dedicated infrastructure for containers. For edge and remote sites, customers gain a simplified management experience and differentiated data protection with the ability to backup or restore persistent volumes in less than one minute4, enhancing cloud native applications deployed on containers. Customers can now modernize applications at the edge with a unified HCI solution while ensuring apps are always-on and always-protected.