Hyperconverged infrastructure is gaining in popularity for several reasons. The technology offers a streamlined approach to implementation and maintenance, with a single vendor responsible for compute, storage, and network capability. The systems are designed for easy expansion, allowing companies to quickly add capacity as they need it.
Different vendors have different implementations of the hyperconverged infrastructure model, and enterprises will want to be aware of the impacts those implementations may have in their data center.
Hyperconverged Platform Choices
Hyperconverged infrastructure relies on easily expandable, commodity nodes. Some vendors, such as Nutanix, offer appliances with all-in-one server, storage, and network elements. Other vendors offer software-based solutions.
Appliances are easy to get started with, and the vendor provides full support; for many enterprises, that level of simplicity is the main driver of the hyperconverged infrastructure choice. Other businesses may seek the flexibility of a software-based solution that lets them integrate multiple vendor products and customize their implementation. Such a tailored implementation requires more knowledgeable in-house staff to support.
Storage Technologies
Because hyperconverged infrastructure combines compute and storage capability into a single device, it changes the way companies need to think about and manage their storage capacity.
Rather than massive SAN and storage arrays sized to handle anticipated growth, hyperconverged infrastructure offers the needed storage with the ability to easily extend when capacity requirements increase. There is built in support for replication and high availability, along with other data protection requirements, although backup and disaster recovery plans are still needed. As a result, a thorough re-thinking of your data protection strategy is required when you implement hyperconverged infrastructure.
Data Center Management
Consolidation of storage, compute, and network into a single hyperconverged appliance can simplify data center management, but this benefit doesn’t come automatically. The teams that currently support your data center may need to be reorganized to eliminate separate support teams into a unified team that supports all elements. In addition, there may be challenges integrating the hyperconverged storage with the remaining legacy hardware in the data center, and your team may need to use different tools to monitor and maintain the two sets of equipment.
It’s important to review the solutions offered by your hyperconverged platform to determine how it will integrate with your virtual machine management and to understand the orchestration and automation it supports. You may want to develop your own custom integrations using API interfaces in order to get the single-pane view you need.
Make Smart Choices to Get the Most from Hyperconverged Infrastructure
When you choose the right hyperconverged infrastructure and think through your storage and management needs before implementing it, you can succeed in streamlining your data center support. dcVAST’s expertise can help you identify your requirements and understand the best ways to leverage hyperconverged infrastructure. Contact us to learn more about your hyperconverged infrastructure options for both primary and secondary workloads and to get the information you need to make smart choices about using this new technology option.
Learn about Hyperconverged Infrastructure:
9 Strong Use Cases for Hyperconverged Infrastructure
When The Cloud Decision is “No”, Consider Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Simplify Backup and Disaster Recovery with Hyperconverged Infrastructure
