Augment Your Data Infrastructure with HPE GreenLake Block Storage

Exponential data growth, the rise of AI-driven workloads, sustainability demands, and fast-evolving cyber threats make the IT landscape more complex than ever. While data storage may sound mundane when more exciting or urgent topics like AI and security dominate IT conversations, it’s nonetheless the foundation of every operation that uses data. 

According to research commissioned by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), 76% of organizations’ ability to protect, mobilize, analyze access, secure, and govern data can’t keep pace with stakeholders’ demands. Furthermore, enterprises realize they can’t rely solely on the public cloud for data storage as their data grows and becomes more distributed. 

Today's data storage challenges point to the need for a hybrid approach, and block storage solutions are emerging as the preferred strategy for many. Let’s examine what it is, how it works, the benefits, and how to support your data strategy with block storage. 

Top Data Storage Challenges and How To Overcome Them 

Data storage must evolve with how companies use data in various business operations. Organizations that fail to adopt their approach face these challenges: 

• Management Inefficiencies: While there are various storage options, each has its challenges. On-premises data storage lacks agility, slowing down innovation. Complex hybrid cloud storage could lead to operational silos, low visibility, and cost inefficiencies while hindering data mobility. Meanwhile, the public cloud lacks enterprise-grade data services, restricting the deployment of critical apps. 

➡️ Overcome this challenge: Implement a hybrid storage solution supported by an AI-driven operational experience to simplify management and increase flexibility, speed, and agility across on-premises and cloud environments. The right solution brings a cloud experience to on-prem storage, streamlining operations and enabling self-provisioning for faster app deployment. 

• Infrastructure Complexity: Diverse storage platforms may create infrastructure silos, leading to operational challenges and inefficiencies. Legacy storage architecture lacks the flexibility and scalability to help modern organizations drive growth and support unpredictable workloads. Yet, tech refreshes are often costly and involve disruptive downtime. 

➡️ Overcome this challenge: Achieve better performance and economies with a disaggregated, scale-out storage solution where you can unify multiple workloads and data types on a single storage platform without sacrificing agility. A disaggregated approach allows you to scale capacity and performance independently to meet evolving needs while maximizing cost savings and efficiency. 

• Constant Firefighting: Modern, mission-critical applications require high data availability. Yet, traditional storage solutions lack the reliability to support these operations. App downtime and support escalation hinder IT’s ability to meet SLAs, leading to constant firefighting, disruptions, and infrastructure tuning — diverting resources from strategic initiatives. 

➡️ Overcome this challenge: Seek a trusted solution with a 100% data availability guarantee, ultra-fast performance, and industry-leading AI for infrastructure management. It should provide the capabilities to predict and prevent disruptions so that you can maintain high performance and availability at scale with a proactive approach. 

Address Modern Data Storage Challenges with Block Storage

Block storage has emerged as a preferred approach to addressing modern data storage challenges in enterprise environments where large amounts of data must be stored and accessed efficiently. This method divides data into fixed-sized blocks, each with its unique identifier, to enable fast and flexible data access.  

Unlike file storage, which organizes data in a hierarchical structure (e.g., folders and files), block storage manages and accesses data in chunks (blocks) without a file system layer. You may store the blocks across different servers or storage devices and manage them through storage area networks (SANs). 

Applications and operating systems interact directly with block storage at a low level, allowing for greater agility and performance optimization in use cases like databases, virtual machines, and high-performance applications where speed and flexibility are crucial. 

The Benefits of Block Storage for Enterprise IT 

Block storage improves performance with low latency and faster input/output (I/O) operations — ideal for high-performance workloads like databases or transaction-heavy applications. 

You may increase capacity by adding more storage devices to the network to meet fast-growing data requirements without an infrastructure overhaul. Additionally, the distributed architecture increases resiliency and scalability.  

Since block storage is file system agnostic, it offers more flexibility than file storage. You can adapt it for databases, email servers, virtual machine disks, and more and configure it to meet specific application needs. 

Most block storage solutions include built-in redundancy features to ensure data remains available even if one storage device fails. They also support efficient data replication and backups to safeguard against data loss and improve business continuity. 

Block storage supports thin provisioning, allocating storage capacity only when needed to optimize storage usage and reduce costs. You can also create snapshots and clones for quick backups and testing to improve operational efficiency. 

Furthermore, block storage systems often include security features like encryption to protect data at rest and in transit. They provide fine-grained control over how information is stored, accessed, and protected to ensure data security and integrity. 

Enterprise Block Storage Solution From HPE 

HPE GreenLake Block Storage built on HPE Alletra Storage MP helps simplify data management and maximize infrastructure efficiency. The AI-managed, self-service, intuitive cloud experience unlocks agility and speed to support new apps, services, and initiatives.   

The solution provides a unified experience across hybrid clouds to shift operations from infrastructure-centric to app-centric. Organizations can empower lines of business with intelligent, on-demand provisioning while managing their global storage environment via a single cloud console from anywhere. 

HPE GreenLake Storage also offers the industry’s only disaggregated, scale-out block storage with a 100% data availability guarantee — helping you meet SLAs across your hybrid cloud. You can count on it to accelerate your most demanding apps with fast performance and ultra-low latency. 

The AI-managed service puts your storage on autopilot while industry-leading AIOps ensure your apps are "always on" and "always fast." It helps you predict and prevent disruptions proactively and pinpoint issues to minimize time-consuming and frustrating escalations. 

Moreover, the solution incorporates modern elements to minimize energy consumption and support your sustainability initiatives. The disaggregated, scale-out storage allows you to upgrade your capacity without scraping the entire system, reducing e-waste. You can also easily track your consumption and emissions through unified reporting. 

Maximize the Benefits of HPE GreenLake Block Storage with a  Holistic Hybrid IT Strategy 

As a long-time HPE Platinum partner, we’ve helped our clients implement holistic hybrid IT strategies and augment them with best-of-breed solutions from HPE. Our process starts with your business vision. Then, we design and deploy an infrastructure to protect, analyze, and act on all your data and applications wherever they live to capture their full value. 

As your Technology Ally, we help you simplify the management of the entire data lifecycle and future-proof your IT infrastructure with HPE’s advanced solutions. Learn more about our partnership and get in touch to see how HPE GreenLake Block Storage can support your data strategy.

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