For workloads like NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra), Big Data analytics (e.g., Hadoop, Spark), and high-throughput data lakes, the primary performance bottleneck is often the latency and bandwidth between the compute and the storage media. When a customer specifies they are running on bare-metal servers to achieve "most efficient performance," they are looking for a solution that minimizes the overhead of hypervisors and provides direct, high-speed access to storage.
The HPE Alletra Storage Server 4000 series, and specifically the Alletra 4110, is purposefully engineered for this "Data-First" server-based storage market. The Alletra 4110 is a 1U, all-NVMe ultra-dense storage server that supports dual 4th or 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and PCIe Gen5 throughput. Unlike traditional storage arrays that connect via a SAN, the Alletra 4110 functions as high-performance Software-Defined Storage (SDS) infrastructure. It is designed to run the application and the data storage on the same high-density nodes, or to act as a high-speed storage tier for bare-metal clusters.
Other options are less suitable for this specific "bare-metal NoSQL" requirement:
HPE SimpliVity (B) is a Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) solution that is inherently tied to a hypervisor (VMware or Hyper-V), which contradicts the customer’s bare-metal requirement.
HPE Alletra dHCI (C) is a disaggregated HCI solution that automates a SAN environment but is also centered around VMware virtualization.
HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition (A) is a service-oriented offering primarily for managing virtualized private clouds.
The Alletra 4110 provides the massive I/O throughput (up to 315 GB/s of PCIe Gen5 bandwidth to SSDs) and the low-latency NVMe performance that NoSQL and analytics workloads demand, making it the superior architectural choice for bare-metal, data-intensive environments.