One of the promises of hyperconverged infrastructure is that the data center becomes easier to manage. Because the compute, storage, and networking elements are designed to work together, they can be viewed and managed as a single unit, rather than a set of possibly incompatible subcomponents. Look for these features in your hyperconverged systems management software in order to make sure you make management as easy as possible:
- A single pane of glass view. Your data center management software should give you a single view across all your clusters and all of their components. This includes hardware elements, software-defined components, and even backups and snapshots, whether local or remote. You should be able to customize or drill-down your view so you can focus on specific areas of concern.
- Single-click common hyperconverged infrastructure operations. The fewer clicks it takes to perform common systems tasks, the less likely your operations team will make mistakes. You should be able to see and manage VMs, storage, network, and backups. Adding capacity, removing a node, or restoring a snapshot should require almost no effort.
- An API to integrate with other data center operations. You’ll want the ability to automate as many operations procedures as possible. This requires an API that provides hooks for your other operations software to leverage. For the longer term, you may need to build interfaces into your applications or containerize them to support automated management.
- Detailed alerting. Look for an interface that finds the sweet spot between overwhelming you with false alerts and not alerting you soon enough or not providing enough detail at a glance to help you respond to system problems. Because of the high availability built into hyperconverged infrastructure, you should make sure you can readily identify automatic system responses to issues as well as those that require your team’s attention.
- Analytics that provide insight to help you manage your system now and plan for the future. Your management software shouldn’t just help you keep an eye on how things are going now; it should help you make plans for the near future and for further-off events. This means it should provide performance metrics that help you manage clusters and make decisions in terms of workload management. It should also offer smart, predictive analytics that let you see when you’ll need to expand capacity and help you make plans.
With hyperconverged infrastructure and smart management software, data centers can simplify their operations and require less staff to oversee the systems. Make the most of your hyperconverged infrastructure and your IT resources with insight and support from the experienced team at dcVAST.
We partner with Nutanix and Cohesity to offer hyperconverged infrastructure designed to support both primary workloads and secondary storage. Our services include design, implementation, and full management of hyperconverged infrastructure. Contact us to learn more about simplifying your data center management with hyperconverged infrastructure.
