Jeff Kyle

If there is one realization enterprises around the world reached last year, it is the fact that digital transformation can’t wait. In responding to the COVID-19 crisis, companies faced starkly different realities based on how much—or how little—they had advanced their digital transformation journeys. Some were caught without any scalable remote working technologies, while for others, even if disruptive, the move to a working-from-home model was relatively straightforward. The amount of change companies experienced this year exposed gaps and put into focus the need to accelerate transformation while at the same time maintaining agility and resiliency.

At HPE, we are committed to help you transform your business. A few months back, HPE introduced our new building block for digital transformation: HPE Superdome Flex 280.

This platform addresses several requirements that are directly connected to transformation projects, and therefore should be high in your priority list. These include application modernization, developing new methodologies to extract value from vast amounts of data and providing a secure and reliable environment for critical workloads—regardless of size.

The right foundation for your transformation projects

Designed for enterprise environments, HPE Superdome Flex 280 can handle SAP HANA^®, Oracle Database, SQL Server, and Epic user demand, while delivering real-time analytics. Comb through massive IoT and AI datasets at the edge or in the core. And tackle complex problems holistically as a standalone HPC workhorse or within petascale clusters.

The platform is based in a modular architecture and features the 3^rd Generation Intel^® Xeon^® Scalable Processors, announced last June by Intel^®. This new addition to the HPE Superdome Flex family is HPE’s answer to customer demands for a mission-critical platform that—while smaller in size—retains the unique RAS capabilities the Superdome family is well known for. Customers can start at 2 sockets and scale up as a single system up to 8 sockets, and in terms of memory, the server is designed to deliver 64 GB to 24 TB of shared memory using DRAM only or in combination with Intel^® Optane^® Persistent Memory 200 series for HPE. Extreme Superdome RAS features such as advanced memory resiliency, analysis engine, and self-healing are embedded in the server. We also are conscious of the security threats you continuously face, and therefore, the platform is designed and delivered with superior security capabilities, including silicon root of trust, TPM 2.0, and more, so you can reduce exposure to threats and protect against firmware attacks and malware.

And as with all of our portfolio, we know you want to consume on your terms. That’s why as-a-service consumption of the platform with HPE GreenLake gives you the flexibility you need—while maintaining on-premises control.

Delivering high performance at scale

We recently published results for a number of standard benchmarks with HPE Superdome Flex 280. The benchmarks include SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) edition for SAP HANA Standard Application Benchmark Version 3 and SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark. We also published results for the SPECjbb® 2015 and SPEC CPU® 2017 benchmarks. These resulted in 25 leadership results, compelling proof that HPE Superdome Flex 280 delivers the performance you need for any demanding workload.

Accelerating your SAP HANA^® and S/4HANA^® transformation journey

As the market leader in infrastructure for SAP HANA, HPE has unique experience when it comes to developing and delivering systems designed for in-memory databases, to perform real-time analytics, and to minimize risk in mission-critical ERP environments.

HPE Superdome Flex 280 is the newest addition to the SAP HANA solutions portfolio, a flexible and highly versatile platform that can power the large majority of SAP use cases, from the application tier to running SAP Business Suite, SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW, and SAP BW/4HANA environments, both on premise and in the private cloud. The platform is SAP certified^[1 up to 8 sockets and from 1.5 to 12 TB of shared memory for scale-up workloads. It can be deployed in scale-out configurations up to 16 nodes.

In keeping with our tradition of engineering the most scalable and performant systems, we recently published record breaking results with the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) edition for SAP HANA^® standard application benchmark Version 3. These benchmarks assess performance across three KPIs, including the data load phase, which measures the latency and load performance, query executions per hour, which is a measure of throughput, and the time it takes to run complex queries.

HPE Superdome Flex 280 achieved two #1 8-processor results in the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) edition for SAP HANA standard application benchmark Version 3, as of November 20, 2020. One of those is on 11.7 billion initial records, and the other on 20.8 billion initial records. The platform was configured with 6TB and 12TB of memory respectively. You can read more about these incredible results in this performance brief.

High-performance platforms are a key component of our solutions for SAP environments, but not the only one. In August of this year, we announced our partnership with SAP to deliver SAP HANA® Enterprise Cloud (HEC) Customer Edition with HPE GreenLake, a fully managed service at the edge, in your data center or colocation facility of your choice. Powered by HPE Superdome Flex 280 for the database tier, this offering gives you the best of both worlds by having HPE power your mission-critical landscapes with world-class offerings, and SAP Enterprise Cloud Services support the day-to-day running of your applications.

We believe HPE is an ideal partner to transform your SAP environment for many reasons, including our deep expertise, differentiated technology, and comprehensive services. For a handy summary, check out this infographic, and if you want to find out what your peers think about our solutions for SAP HANA, download this short compilation.

Tackle complex data-intensive HPC problems holistically

Certain types of complex, data-intensive HPC problems are challenging to run across multiple nodes and are best tackled holistically using a single node. Examples can be found in the areas of Genomics, Computer Aided Engineering, Cybersecurity, large data visualization, real-time analytics, fraud prevention and more. Some of the benefits of having a single node with a large amount of single-system compute and shared memory for this type of problems include: lowering the risk of jobs failing due to memory exhaustion; not having to divide your models and simulations into smaller pieces; and avoiding jobs having to compete and wait for nodes to be available. This all means faster discovery and higher productivity.

Many research institutions and universities around the world already are leveraging the scale and power of HPE Superdome Flex to speed up time-to-discovery and increase results accuracy. For example, the Czech Technical University is powering up its research capacity, and The Institute of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Vienna in Austria  is leveraging our technology in research simulations. Also, the University of Edinburgh’s International Data Facility will offer researchers access to HPE HPC and AI technologies to apply analytics to modeling and simulation. Related to this project, Cerebras Systems and EPCC, the supercomputing center at the University of Edinburgh, recently announced the selection of the world’s fastest AI computer based on HPE Superdome Flex.

The HPE Superdome Flex 280 will offer the same value HPE Superdome Flex delivers today, but at a smaller scale extending the technology—and its benefits—to a wider range of environments and customers. These benefits include high performance at scale, corroborated by recent top 4-socket and 8-socket results achieved by the platform in the SPECjbb^® 2015 benchmark, which measures Java server performance. Additionally, HPE Superdome Flex 280 achieved record results in the SPEC CPU^® 2017 benchmark, demonstrating high performance for compute-intensive workloads.

Advancing digital transformation

Regardless of where you are in your digital transformation journey, HPE Superdome Flex 280 can add value and accelerate progress in key areas. For application modernization projects, including Unix to Linux migrations, this platform can provide a reliable and secure foundation for critical workloads. In consolidation projects, where you look to reduce server sprawl and complexity, Superdome Flex 280 can provide the room for growth and scale required. If you have an environment based on HPE ProLiant DL580, HPE Superdome Flex 280 is the upgrade path and will deliver even higher levels of reliability and scalability than you have today. And as you look to derive valuable insights from growing amounts of data, the large single compute and shared memory capacity of the platform can enable true real-time analytics.

Take the next step on your digital transformation journey, explore with HPE Superdome Flex Servers. And ask your HPE representative about solutions based on the HPE Superdome Flex family.

Benchmark configuration fair use and trademark information

SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW), edition for SAP HANA® standard application benchmark V3:

HPE Superdome Flex 280 at 11.7 billion initial records, Certification # 2020044: Intel Xeon Platinum 8380H 2.90 GHz processors: 8 processors / 224 cores / 448 threads, 6 TB memory; SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP 2; SAP HANA 2.0, SAP NetWeaver® 7.50. Scores: Data load 15,596 seconds; Query executions per hour 6,841; Runtime of complex query 107 seconds.

HPE Superdome Flex 280 at 20.8 billion initial records, Certification # 2020045: Intel Xeon Platinum 8380HL 2.90 GHz processors: 8 processors / 224 cores / 448 threads, 12 TB memory; SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15; SAP HANA 2.0, SAP NetWeaver® 7.50.

Scores: Data load 15,161 seconds; Query executions per hour 4,569; Runtime of complex query 131 seconds.

All competitive claims as of November 10, 2020. Intel and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft, SQL Server, Windows, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. See sap.com/benchmark for further details and sap.com/corporate/en/legal/trademark.html for additional trademark information and notices. SPEC and the names SPEC CPU and SPECjbb are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC); see spec.org. All rights reserved; reprinted with permission. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. See Fair Use slide for additional details and disclosure information. Do not delete notes as it contains required fair use information.

Any statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties described in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including its most recent annual report on Form 20-F, that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. SAP cautions readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which SAP has no obligation to update and which speak only as of their dates.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

¹https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/#/solutions?filters=appliance;v:deCertified;v:ca16&id=s:170 ↑