Brian connected with HPE’s Dan Gardner to follow up on HPE Discover and go into more detail on the HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000.
Dan is the Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and considers himself a security nerd. Dan joined HP in 2017 in hardware technical support, then moved into a technical support role in network and security. He moved to HPE in his current capacity in 2023. Dan is based in Birmingham, England, where, as he puts it, he would probably rather be up a mountain. He is also an ultra-runner.
Dan was instrumental in supporting our recent deep-dive coverage of the Alletra Storage MP B10000, making the conversation relaxed and informative. Following a brief overview of HPE Discover, Brian and Dan delve into the B10000’s internal workings. There is an obvious focus on cybersecurity, given the role the Alletra Storage MP B10000 and X10000 play in protecting enterprise data.
This is a great follow-up to our B10000 review published earlier this month. If you have 40 minutes, give this a watch or listen. If you are strapped for time, we have broken the podcast into five-minute sections below, so you can hop around to the topics that interest you.
There are several links after this transcript that provide more detail on the HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, covering cyber resilience, ransomware, administrative tools, and more.
0:00 to 5:00 | HPE’s Unified Storage Vision and the Shift to Cyber Resilience
- A look back at HPE Discover and why the B10000 and X10000 platforms were among the event’s biggest infrastructure announcements.
- How HPE consolidated multiple storage platforms into a common hardware architecture that supports both structured and unstructured workloads.
- The differences between the B10000 for block and file storage and the X10000 for object and file storage, while sharing the same scale-out foundation.
- Why HPE believes cyber resilience has overtaken raw performance as the top priority for enterprise storage customers.
- The discussion shifts from preventing ransomware attacks to recovering quickly with trusted restore points.
- New legal and regulatory requirements are making cyber resilience a board-level business issue, not just an IT concern.
5:00 to 10:00 | Detecting Threats Earlier and Building Smarter Storage Security
- Why enterprise databases and block storage remain some of the most valuable ransomware targets.
- How HPE is working to bridge the gap between storage administrators and security operations teams.
- The three pillars of HPE’s cyber resilience strategy: protect infrastructure, protect data, and detect threats in real time.
- Moving beyond traditional ransomware indicators like exploding capacity usage to behavioral analytics.
- Detecting suspicious activity, such as failed logins, privilege escalations, and snapshot deletion attempts, before encryption spreads.
- An introduction to HPE’s ransomware detection capabilities built directly into the B10000 platform.
10:00 to 15:00 | Inside HPE’s Cybersecurity Lab and Continuous Ransomware Testing
- An inside look at HPE’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and its isolated ransomware testing environment.
- How engineers continually test against roughly 200 ransomware variants to improve detection algorithms.
- Why ransomware detection is a constantly evolving process rather than a one-time feature.
- What’s new in the latest B10000 software release, including improvements for file workloads and integrated data protection.
- The role of HPE Morpheus and VM Essentials in helping organizations modernize virtualization alongside storage security.
- Why HPE views cyber resilience as a full-stack challenge spanning compute, networking, virtualization, storage, and backup.
15:00 to 20:00 | Faster Recovery Through Automation and Security Hardening
- How the B10000 automatically preserves snapshots when ransomware activity is detected.
- New automation extends immutable snapshot retention to increase the chances of finding a clean recovery point.
- Automated security hardening simplifies deployment of consistent security configurations across multiple arrays.
- Built-in auditing continuously checks for configuration drift and alerts security teams when systems deviate from policy.
- Why centralized audit logging is becoming essential for meeting modern compliance requirements.
- An overview of emerging regulations, such as DORA and NIS2, and their impact on storage infrastructure.
20:00 to 25:00 | Practical Cybersecurity Advice for Organizations of Every Size
- Why cyber resilience requirements are expanding well beyond finance and healthcare.
- The growing influence of cyber insurance on backup, recovery testing, and operational readiness.
- Practical recommendations for smaller IT teams looking to strengthen security without enterprise-sized budgets.
- Why the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 provides a useful roadmap for organizations just getting started.
- The importance of establishing a common cybersecurity language across executives, IT, security, and compliance teams.
- Centralizing logs from every device becomes the foundation for meaningful threat detection.
25:00 to 30:00 | Building Visibility Across Hybrid Infrastructure
- Open source tools such as Graylog provide accessible entry points for centralized security monitoring.
- Why hybrid cloud environments require the same security discipline as traditional data centers.
- Avoiding the assumption that cloud providers handle every aspect of security.
- The importance of maintaining complete visibility across on-premises and cloud environments for governance and audits.
- Security remains focused on protecting the entire attack surface, regardless of where workloads reside.
- Discussion returns to how ongoing B10000 platform enhancements continue to improve scalability and resiliency.
30:00 to 35:00 | Security Fundamentals That Scale With the Business
- Why basic security practices, such as monitoring privileged access, remain some of the most effective defenses.
- The realities that smaller organizations face as infrastructure grows organically over time.
- How B10000 delivers enterprise cyber resilience features even in entry-level deployments.
- Organizations can expand protection over time with replication, backup appliances, immutable storage, and cyber vaults.
- The concept of a “vault in a box” combines encryption, immutability, and integrated security in a single platform.
- Good security hygiene today creates the foundation for future AI initiatives and regulatory compliance.
35:00 to 40:30 | Disaster Recovery, Performance, and Final Takeaways
- Revisiting the 3-2-1-1 backup strategy and how B10000 supports modern disaster recovery architectures.
- Using Metro Cluster, Active Persistence, remote replication, and StoreOnce to build resilient multi-site environments.
- Why restore performance has become just as important as backup performance.
- High-speed recovery places new demands on server, storage, and networking infrastructure.
- Additional HPE resources, white papers, architecture guides, and demonstration videos are available for deeper learning.
- Closing thoughts on why organizations of any size can benefit from adopting a more comprehensive cyber resilience strategy.
Additional Material
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 – Cyber resilience with data-adaptive ransomware detection
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 ransomware protection framework
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 SIEM integration
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 – Administrative hardening guide
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 security guide
Videos
HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 ransomware detection with CrowdStrike
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