HPE and Docker Partner to Power Distributed Applications Across Hybrid Infrastructure

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced a strategic alliance with Docker, a company behind the open platform that enables organizations to build, ship and run distributed applications on any infrastructure.

Through a joint worldwide enterprise alliance agreement covering sales, go-to-market, engineering, support, services and knowledge sharing, HPE and Docker are collaborating to help customers transform and modernize their datacenters to benefit from a more agile development environment. At the heart of this alliance is HPE’s Docker ready server program, unique to the server industry, which ensures HPE servers are bundled with Docker Engine and support. This enables customers to create distributed applications that are portable across any infrastructure. By combining the strength of the number one cloud infrastructure provider with the leader in containerization, HPE and Docker will deliver hybrid infrastructure solutions and an application portfolio ranging from legacy to microservices applications, fully supported by HPE.

“In order to survive and thrive in the idea economy, companies must transform the IT experience so that lines of business and developers can innovate faster, smarter and fearlessly,” said Vikram K, Director, Servers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India “Hewlett Packard Enterprise is innovating across its entire datacenter portfolio to help customers with that transformation. Together with Docker, we are making it easier for IT to deploy and manage containers, while giving organizations solutions that optimize their investments and power a new generation of applications that are the business.”

“By 2018, more than 50 percent of new workloads will be deployed into containers in at least one stage of the application life cycle.”1 The joint HPE and Docker solutions will help fuel this trend by delivering HPE’s Composable Infrastructure combined with Docker’s Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) approach to provide the kind of predictability and management enterprise IT expects. This will be accomplished by the creation of a bi-directional application lifecycle that fosters a shared partnership between developers and operations teams.

“The default availability of Docker’s technology on every HPE server and HPE’s hyper-converged platform enables enterprises to take advantage of the benefits of containerization while leveraging their investments in existing systems and process,” said Ben Golub, CEO of Docker. “Having a strategic alliance that starts with Docker Engine but extends to include our commercial end-to-end platform, Docker Datacenter, provides HPE customers with a comprehensive solution that covers all of their requirements over time. Enterprises leveraging this joint solution can achieve immediate efficiencies while focusing on existing applications, which can include a 20X optimization on their infrastructure, while shipping their applications 13X faster.”

As part of the strategic alliance, HPE and Docker will deliver unique, value-added, commercial solutions and services through all major HPE channels, including:

· 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, as well as ensuring 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, 24x7.

In addition, HPE and Docker are collaborating to introduce new HPE container-enabled technologies that are integrated and tested with Docker, including:

· HPE Reference Configuration for Docker Datacenter on HPE Hyper Converged 380 – Describes how quickly customers can deploy Docker Datacenter in a production environment by leveraging the Hyper Converged 380’s virtual machine vending capabilities. It also describes how to leverage HPE SiteScope and HPE AppDefender to monitor and protect Dockerized applications in production.

· 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.

Finally, HPE is making investments to Docker-enable its cloud and software portfolio through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs), the Docker plugin framework and Docker Datacenter development licenses, including:

· 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.