DPUs accelerate data centres

The AMD Pensando Distributed Services Card, powered by what is said to be the industry’s most advanced data processing unit (DPU), will be one of the first DPU solutions to support VMware vSphere® 8 available from leading server vendors including Dell Technologies, HPE and Lenovo.

As data center applications grow in scale and sophistication, the resulting workloads increase the demand on infrastructure services as well as crucial CPU resources. VMware vSphere 8 aims to reimagine IT infrastructure as a composable architecture with a goal of offloading infrastructure workloads such as networking, storage, and security from the CPU by leveraging the new vSphere Distributed Services Engine, freeing up valuable CPU cycles to be used for business functions and revenue generating applications.

The fully programmable AMD Pensando DPU is at the core of this shift toward software-defined infrastructure. The VMware vSphere Distributed Services Engine and AMD Pensando DPUs can help customers reduce operational costs by unifying workload management, improving performance by freeing up CPU resources, and providing an added layer of security by isolating infrastructure services from server tenant workloads. Early customers of vSphere Distributed Services Engine, accelerated by AMD Pensando DPUs, include a leading financial services provider, a multi-cloud solutions hoster and a leading business applications company.

“Performance, efficiency and security are integral components of competitive offerings within cloud computing and hyperconverged infrastructure,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD. “VMware vSphere 8, running on AMD Pensando DPUs, is a key step in bringing the industry closer to composable hardware systems and truly pervasive heterogeneous computing. AMD is uniquely positioned in the industry to deliver performance, efficiency and security with a distributed services platform that is currently deployed with major customers including Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Azure, NetAPP, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud.”

“Modern applications are driving workload specific requirements into the infrastructure. This has given rise to the need to reimagine data center architecture with mainstream support for accelerators such as DPUs,” said Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VMware Cloud Platform Business, VMware. “With combined solutions featuring VMware vSphere 8 with Distributed Services Engine capabilities and AMD Pensando DPUs and EPYC CPUs, customers can improve infrastructure performance, boost infrastructure security and support the evolution of cloud infrastructure for modern applications.”

“Together with VMware and AMD, HPE continues to define the enterprise architecture of the next decade,” said Krista Satterthwaite, senior vice president and general manager, Mainstream Compute, HPE. “The HPE ProLiant, with vSphere Distributed Services Engine, optimizes resources for data-intensive applications by relieving the CPU of networking services, all with zero-trust security and high-performance. The new integrated solution offers customers a simplified operational experience combining networking, security, storage, management, and lifecycle services to boost application performance and improve TCO.”

“Organizations are increasingly seeking IT infrastructure that is composable and delivers a cloud-like experience wherever their data lives,” said Ashish Nadkarni, group vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies and BuyerView Research, IDC. “AMD Pensando’s volume deployments with cloud providers are a clear indication of the capabilities of the platform, we expect to see a high degree of interest from enterprises interested in vSphere Distributed Services Engine deployments.”

VMware also introduced several new features to their enterprise workload platform, VMware vSphere 8. The deep collaboration between AMD and VMware continues to deliver on the security customers have come to expect from the AMD Infinity Guard set of features, including the AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) and Secure Encrypted Virtualization – Encrypted State (SEV-ES) advanced technology features of AMD EPYC™ processors. Finally, VMware announced the latest update to their software defined storage solution, vSAN 8. AMD EPYC processors continue to offer exceptional performance for traditional and next-gen workloads on VMware HCI powered by vSAN 8.

VMware vSphere 8 solutions from Dell Technologies and HPE, accelerated by AMD Pensando Distributed Services Card, will be available in the coming months. AMD EPYC processor support for VMware vSphere 8 will be available upon launch.