SOLUTION BRIEF

Supermicro SuperBlade with AMD EPYCTM processors powers Google Distributed Cloud Virtual deployments on-premises

Table of Contents

Modern Apps Demand Cloud NativePlatforms

Modern Apps Demand Cloud Native Platforms. . . . . . . . . 1

The transformative impact of the cloud on businesses has
prompted a rapid migration and adoption of cloud-first
Drivers of On-Premises Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
strategies. As a result, many enterprises are looking intoSolution Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
application modernization strategies to meet customer
Workload Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
expectations, keep business operations agile, and accelerateinnovation. Cloud-native application development empowers
Key Takeaways and Business Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
enterprises to capitalize on the full power of the cloud by
delivering faster time to market, improved efficiency, increased
scalability, and better consumer experiences while optimizing cost compared to legacy, on-premise development
infrastructures. A cloud-native approach accelerates the application development lifecycle by consuming independent
components called microservices, which break large monolithic applications into smaller components.
Cloud-native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic public, private,and hybrid cloud environments. Modern cloud-native applications evolve rapidly; leveraging a hybrid cloud platform helps
integrate variants of applications across different cloud platforms and/or on-prem environments.
Google Distributed Cloud Virtual (GDC Virtual) is a hybrid cloud management platform that manages containers across multiple
cloud platforms and legacy VM workloads.

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Businesses can leverage the benefits of GDC Virtual by deploying it on a self-managed Supermicro® SuperBlade® environment
to directly run cloud-native applications with CPU, GPU, and other hardware resources.

Drivers of On-Premises Cloud
The cloud has recently become popular for deploying new and existing applications. The simplicity and ease of using a service
can offer significant time and cost optimization compared to building your own infrastructure. Many organizations are now
adopting cloud-first strategies to leverage these advantages.
Cloud-native approaches are also increasing in popularity and encompass a broadening array of use cases from refactoring
existing applications and/or creating container-based microservices architectures. The cloud can even run legacy applications
while offering cost savings compared to on-prem deployment models.
Expanding cloud use cases empowers cloud-first organizations to run most of their application landscapes in the cloud, withfewer non-migratable exceptions. However, there is no one simple "lift-and-shift strategy" that meets the needs of every app.
Thus, no large organization currently relies solely on modern, cloud-based applications; they must work the cloud into andaround existing systems and applications, some of which do not support immediate migration to the cloud. These
applications are often the mission-critical systems at the heart of an organization's commercial operations.
The key drivers behind deciding to deploy an on-premises cloud may include:•

Data security, compliance, and data sovereignty requirements: Data sovereignty, security, and/or similar
restrictions in place because of laws, security policies, or compliance rules may prohibit an application from runningin the public cloud. This prescription often extends to Personally Identifiable Information (PII), medical, and/or othersensitive data.

•Monolithic application design: Some legacy application architectures don't align with cloud computing pricing
models, and the resulting costs and timelines of refactoring prevent organizations from migrating to the cloud.

•Demand for very low networking latency: Highly transactional. Low-latency application systems (e.g., banking ortransportation) take an unacceptable performance hit if they are too far away from their users, data, or the next-hop
data processor in the application flow.

•Protecting legacy infrastructure investments: Enterprises often look to optimize costs by leveraging their
existing data center investments in servers, networking equipment, and storage devices. Migrating from CapEx toOpEx is simply not viable when the application is economically best served on existing on-premises infrastructure.

One application modernization strategy leverages on-premises cloud solutions such as GDC Virtual to extend cloudcapabilities and services to an on-premises data center. This allows the application to leverage many of the advantages ofcloud computing while maintaining consistent operations across locations.
GDC Virtual is especially interesting to organizations already using Google Cloud Platform while seeking a seamless solution
for integrating their remaining on-premises applications into their cloud operations framework. GDC Virtual empowers
organizations to derive the benefits of cloud-based architectures while significantly reducing the costs associated with a DIY© 2024 Copyright Super Micro Computer, Inc. All rights reserved

April 20242

approach across operations, lifecycle management, monitoring, and visibility—all traditionally difficult aspects of IToperations.
GDC Virtual can deploy both traditional and cloud-native applications. Figure 1 shows a single GDC Virtual cluster supporting
deployments across multiple cloud platforms, such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. GDC Virtual also
includes a bare metal deployment option that delivers many cloud benefits to self-managed Supermicro SuperBlade servers.

Figure 1 – Sample Google GDC Virtual Deployment.

Solution Overview
Supermicro SuperBlade servers deliver advanced Bare-Metal-as-a-Service (BMaaS) solutions for AI inference, visualcomputing, Data Center, Cloud, Enterprise, Big Data, and HPC markets. SuperBlade is an ideal platform for running GDC
Virtual on bare metal. This Solution Brief presents a solution stack that allows you to deploy a cloud-managed platform using
Supermicro SuperBlade servers powered by GDC Virtual.

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The Supermicro SuperBlade is powered by AMD EPYC™ ProcessorsSUPERMICRO AMD SUPERBLADE

8U SuperBlade Enclosure

Supermicro's high performance, density
optimized, and energy-efficientSuperBlade® can significantly reduce initial
capital and operational expenses.

SUPERBLADE MODELSSupermicro's new-generation blade portfolio helps optimize the TCO of key data
center components, such as cooling, power efficiency, node density, andnetworking management. Supermicro SuperBlade, powered by 3rd Gen AMD
EPYC™ processors, is built for the most demanding workloads that require highCPU density and the fastest networking available today in a trusted platform thatmeets enterprise customer demands for on-prem private/hybrid clouddeployments.
The Supermicro SuperBlade comes in an 8U enclosure that accommodates up to20 hot-pluggable single socket nodes and delivers high performance with AMD
EPYC 7003 Series Processors with AMD 3D V-Cache™ technology, DDR4 3200MHz
memory, and fast PCIe® Gen4 I/O. Supermicro offers three SuperBlade models
powered by AMD EPYC processors: a SAS model, a SATA model, and a GPUaccelerated model, all of which can be mixed in a single 8U enclosure. The 8USuperBlade can support up to 40 single-width GPUs or 20 double-width GPUs.
SuperBlade SAS/SATA models support AIOM for front I/O, which extends the Open
Compute Project 3.0 specification to support a wide range of networking options
in a small form factor. The 8U SuperBlade also provides customers with advanced
networking options, such as 200G HDR InfiniBand and 25G Ethernet switches.
Each SuperBlade enclosure contains at least one Chassis Management Module(CMM), which allows administrators to remotely manage and monitor server
blades, power supplies, cooling fans, and networking switches. SuperCloud
Composer (SCC) is a composable cloud management platform that provides aunified dashboard for administering software-defined data centers. SCC canorchestrate cloud workloads via the streamlined industry-standard Redfish API.
SCC can also monitor and manage a broad portfolio of multi-generation
Supermicro servers from a single pane of glass, including SuperBlade.

SBA-4114S-C2N/T2N
OCP 3.0 Mezzanine Cards

SBA-4119SG
GPU /PCIe Cards

The AMD EPYC 7003 Series Processors with AMD 3D V-Cache technology are built
around the "Zen3" core and contain up to 64 cores per socket and deliver
breakthrough per-core performance with 3X the L3 Cache (768 MBs per socket) ofgeneral purpose AMD EPYC 7003 CPUs. SuperBlade, powered with AMD EPYC 7003
processors, enables exceptional HPC performance thanks to high frequencies,
core counts, high memory bandwidth and capacity, and 768MB of L3 cache.
Supermicro GPU SuperBlade SBA-4119SG supports 3rd Gen AMD 7003 Series EPYC
with 3D V-Cache technology processors and the AMD Instinct™ MI210 accelerators.
These GPU-accelerated SuperBlade servers are ideal for running AI inference,visual computing, and HPC workloads. SuperBlade systems help organizations
reduce time-to-solution for a wide range of applications, add advanced security
features, and allow all workloads to run either on-prem or in a public or private
cloud. Supermicro SuperBlade offers high density, excellent performance, highpower efficiency, and low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

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Figure 2 – Google GDC Virtual Hybrid Cluster Architecture deployment on Supermicro SuperBlade.

Figure 2 shows a typical GDC Virtual hybrid cluster architecture deployment on a Supermicro SuperBlade platform wherecustomers can choose SAS, SATA, and GPU accelerated SuperBlade nodes in an 8U enclosure. SuperBlade offers a "privatecloud in a box feature" where you can mix and match CPU-only and GPU accelerated nodes in the same 8U enclosure.
Customers can use SuperBlade to deploy the admin workstation that hosts command-line interface (CLI) tools andconfiguration files to provision clusters during installation and CLI tools for interacting with provisioned clusters postinstallation. SuperBlade can also host the Control Plane node that includes the Kubernetes API server, etcd storage, and othercontrollers. You can host the worker nodes that run the actual cloud native applications on CPU- and/or GPU-powered
SuperBlade as needed for your workload(s).

Workload Examples
You can quickly deploy various workloads (AI inference, visual computing, 5G/Edge, or any other cloud-native application) in
your on-prem environment using Supermicro SuperBlade servers with GDC Virtual via the GKE console. AMD GPU accelerated
SuperBlade can be used to perform performance intensive tasks such as AI inference and large scale data processing. GKE offers
GPU-specific features, such as time-sharing and multi-instance GPUs, that can improve the efficiency with which your workloads
use the GPU resources on your nodes. Local users can visit services via exposed cluster ports. Google Container Registry also
provides different images to help rapid deployment and securely manage private images. GDC Virtual on bare metal clusters
sends regular health messages to update the health status on Google Kubernetes Engine. Google Cloud Console can display
detailed information and perform further operations, such as deploying and deleting workloads.

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NGINX is a well-known, free, and open-source web server that can also function as a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTP
cache. Figure 3 shows a sample NGINX deployment on bare metal SuperBlade servers powered by GDC Virtual.

Figure 3 – Sample workload deployment of GDC Virtual on SuperBlade bare metal

Solution Benefits:
Deploying GDC Virtual on Supermicro SuperBlade offers the following benefits:•••••••

Hardware agnostic: Customers can leverage existing on-prem SuperBlade servers to drive data center efficiency.
No hypervisor layer overhead: Deploying GDC Virtual on SuperBlade has reduced complexity.
Rapid deployment: Both developers and dev-ops teams benefit from increased productivity because GDC Virtualenables rapid cloud native application development and delivery.
Superior performance: Supermico SuperBlade, powered by AMD EPYC CPUs and/or AMD Instinct accelerators plus
the advanced networking described above, delivers the performance needed to run today's and tomorrow's mostdemanding workloads on GDC Virtual. A large L3 Cache also reduces memory bandwidth pressure and reduces
application latency barriers.
Easy manageability: SuperBlade CMM manageability coupled with GDC Virtual management enables increased
operational efficiency (offers a dashboard with a range of health checks, logging, and monitoring).
Optimal TCO: Supermicro SuperBlade offers a building block solution with a Resource Saving Architecture that
optimizes precious data center resources, such as power, space, and cooling.
Scalability: SuperBlade enables GDC Virtual to deploy at scale across development, test, and production clusters.

© 2024 Copyright Super Micro Computer, Inc. All rights reservedApril 20246

Key Takeaways and Business Benefits
Organizations that need to keep some applications on-premises canturn to Supermicro SuperBlade servers running GDC Virtual on baremetal to transform their on-premises data center into a fully
managed, fully integrated cloud region. GDC Virtual is a cloud-native
application modernization platform that helps organizations move
applications from legacy environments to container-based
microservice architectures to reap the full benefits of cloudcomputing for both cloud-native and legacy applications. GDC
Virtual offers a ready-to-go, on-premises platform that helps
optimize setup and operating costs while extending the power of
Google Kubernetes Engine to Supermicro SuperBlade servers,
virtualized on-prem environments, and other public clouds. The
Supermicro SuperBlade GDC Virtual solution is ideal for cloud-native
workload management. Supermicro SuperBlade servers can be used
as control panel nodes and worker nodes to create a GDC Virtual
hybrid cluster. GDC Virtual on SuperBlade delivers consistentmanagement, robust security features, out-of-the-box observability,and more. Supermicro SuperBlade, powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYCprocessors, runs GDC Virtual with the operational efficiency andconsistency needed to meet various SLAs and IT initiatives andempower increased productivity, optimized TCO, and scalability inyour data center.

BENEFITS OF DEPLOYING GDC VIRTUAL ON
SUPERMICRO SUPERBLADE
Improved productivity for development andsecurity• Faster application development, testing, anddeployment. Developers can write once anddeploy anywhere.
• Consistent, unified security policy creation andenforcement.
Streamlined Operational Efficiency• Reduced complexity with simplified management.
• Faster migrations – IT can quickly containerize,lift and shift applications.
• Reduced effort for releases and patching.
Greener environmental impact and lower TCO• SuperBlade offers a high-density platform with
96% efficient power supplies there by reducing
the carbon footprint.
• Cost optimized building block solution for GDC
Virtual with lowest TCO.

As a Google Distributed Cloud Virtual Ready Platform Partner, Supermicro offers a GDC Virtual Ready Platform to run GKE onBare Metal. We offer a robust application modernization strategy with GDC Virtual on SuperBlade. Deploying GDC Virtual on atested and validated SuperBlade yields faster time-to-market for new features and increased customer revenue by increasing
release frequencies compared to legacy approaches. GDC Virtual on bare metal SuperBlade servers helps future-proof
applications by placing them adjacent to Google's cloud services, including advanced machine learning and artificial
intelligence options. SuperBlade offers high density, high performance, optimum power efficiency, and ideal Total Cost ofOwnership (TCO) for fast, power efficient GDC Virtual deployments on bare metal.

SUPERMICROAs a global leader in high performance, high efficiency server technology and innovation, we develop and provide end-to-end green
computing solutions to the data center, cloud computing, enterprise IT, big data, HPC, and embedded markets. Our Building BlockSolutions® approach allows us to provide a broad range of SKUs, and enables us to build and deliver application-optimized solutions
based upon your requirements.

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April 20247