All About Hyperconverged Infrastructure

If you work in an enterprise, we bet you know that data centers can be complex to set up and operate. The issue starts with choosing from a multitude of vendors, each delivering different hardware, software and IT services. This leads to challenges with interoperability and performance issues for the entire tech stack and you’re back to square one, choosing a vendor for upgrading your inefficient data center stack. As optimization of data centers is the need of the hour, businesses need to know about the latest tech that can resolve their woes!

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined system that unifies all the elements of a traditional data center: storage, computing, networking, virtual resources, etc., as well as its management. HCI enables businesses to operate their data center stack with simplicity, agility and higher reliability. If your business runs critical workloads such as database software, collaborative applications, data analytics and testing environments, Hyperconverged Infrastructure should top your shopping list.

Here's all you need to know about it – let’s start by diving deeper into the technology!
 

Understanding Hyperconverged Infrastructures

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a distributed infrastructure platform that creates scalable building blocks for data centers. Its goal is to essentially replicate a data center in a virtual box. To replace outdated infrastructure made up of separate servers, network elements, storage array, etc., it creates flexible building blocks. If you’re thinking of LEGOs, you’re not far off!

More specifically, HCI integrates hardware, software and servers needed for data centers into a single consolidated solution. To get rid of the typical pain points associated with legacy infrastructure, it is powered by a distributed software layer that provides more consistent access to resources. Consequently, various data center components can be seamlessly combined under one roof.

We know this sounds super-futuristic but that’s because HCI is a pretty modern technology – let’s look at how it came about.
 

Let’s Talk About The Origins Of Hyperconverged Infrastructures

Since the 1990s, the infrastructure of data centers had been built around SAN (storage area network) models to house business data and run vital databases. This enabled access to unified, block-level data storage. However, as virtualization technology advanced rapidly in the early 2000s, traditional SAN-based infrastructure was unable to meet growing business demands. As IT teams had to adapt to new business goals, they relied on the virtualization of IT resources to address the problems of complexity and flexibility.

Then, in 2009, engineers from several web-based businesses realized that the virtualization technology they had created to address their operational problems could also be used to address market-wide issues. The idea of HCI came into existence and virtualization technologies were introduced to enterprise data centers. This novel strategy used "aggregation” to put everything in the same virtual box to deploy it easily and quickly. This led to the major adoption of Hyperconverged Infrastructure in place of traditional data center technology stacks.

Yet, the biggest obstacle to HCI adoption is that businesses don’t understand how it works – we’re here to simplify it!
 

How Does A Hyperconverged Infrastructure Work?

Well, not really!

Hyperconverged Infrastructures rely on virtualization to pool together computing, storage and networking resources. Another aspect is the unified management of these resources which allows users to discover, organize, divide and then seamlessly provision virtual resources to tackle workloads, regardless of where the resources are located. Naturally, this offers a major advantage over traditional data center environments.

HCI can operate either as a hardware or a software deployment:
 

• Hardware Deployment

  The first iteration of HCI was a hardware platform that combined network, storage and computes capabilities into a single device called an "appliance." Hardware-based HCI offers high degrees of integration and optimization in areas such as storage-to-CPU data transfers. For workloads which require high performance, hardware HCI is most suitable. Examples of hardware-based HCI include Dell's VxRail systems (operating on VMware virtualization) and the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) SimpliVity platform.

• Software Deployment

  HCI can also be used as a software layer to identify, virtualize, manage and provision pre-existing hardware parts utilized in data centers. However, software-based HCI might be more challenging for smaller organizations to implement, deploy and manage than hardware-based HCI. The software method enables a business to create an inexpensive Hyperconverged Infrastructure without the need for additional hardware. HCI software examples include Microsoft's Azure Stack, VMware's vSAN, and Nutanix Acropolis.

Regardless of whether you choose a hardware or software option, HCI has several advantages. Interested? Scroll on!
 

What Are The Benefits Of Hyperconverged Infrastructures?

HCI provides several significant benefits to organizations looking to upgrade their data centers technology:
 

• Quick Deployment

  Hardware-based HCI solutions allow organizations to quickly deploy extra storage, computing, or processing capacity as required by the business. This leads to lower downtime and faster provision of resources.

• Workload Mobility

  HCI's dynamic nature makes it simple to move IT workloads and functionalities between platforms when conditions and demands change.

• Efficiency

  HCI can provide better performance in the form of a smaller virtual data center. It increases storage efficiency, allowing data to move across various touchpoints with higher effectiveness and flexibility.

• Better Scalability

  Hyperconverged Infrastructures enable IT teams to accommodate and scale with dynamic business requirements by assigning resources on demand.

• High Resource Availability

  HCI provides an extra layer of reliability by enabling enterprises to enhance the availability of resources. Thus, organizations can eliminate redundant hardware and virtual deployments.

• Cost Efficiency

  Thanks to optimized provisioning of resources, HCI reduces the chances of overprovisioning. This enables the organization to deploy resources across workloads to satisfy peak demands without paying for idle storage and computing.

 
We agree! With so many benefits, you can bet that HCI is critical to modern-day businesses and data centers – read on to understand how vital Hyperconverged Infrastructures are.
 

Why Do We Need Hyperconverged Infrastructures?

By now you know that HCI virtualizes the elements of a conventional "hardware-defined" data center. It does this by leveraging a virtualized computing system (called a hypervisor), virtualized resources and virtualized networking elements (also called software-defined networking). How different is this from using a traditional, physical data center?

Well, businesses no longer need to rely on distinct resources (computing, networking and storage) with the implementation of Hyperconverged Infrastructures. HCI addresses the demand to quickly provision new resources for workloads on demand. Another IT challenge is to keep all enterprise data centers secure and operational. Although HCI cannot entirely replace data centers, it simplifies data center stack administration, bolsters security and enhances resource utilization rates.

Additionally, Hyperconverged Infrastructures are essential because they enable businesses to address problems with deployment speed and agility. HCI solutions are essential for any rapidly expanding enterprise since they are lightweight, highly integrated, simple to install and remotely manageable.

Speaking of “rapidly expanding,” the future Hyperconverged Infrastructures are no different as it is rapidly expanding to include innovations – read on!
 

What’s The Future Of Hyperconverged Infrastructures?

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) is enabling innovation in virtualized applications across industries. Using HCI, businesses will develop better data center automation capabilities, where virtualized software layers will easily provide access to resources, monitor capacity, assist with upgrades, handle provisioning and detect potential issues independently. That’s what the future is all about, right? #AutomateEverything

HCI will also enable businesses to rely entirely on virtualized resources, phasing out the reliance on hardware-based systems. Newer software driven HCI will be able to accommodate a diverse servers and storage array. Moreover, HCI will gain traction as a valid backup or disaster recovery platform for enterprises as it will not be susceptible to damage like hardware-based data centers. The future looks virtually awesome!
 

Conclusion

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) use cases are evolving as organizations look to relocate to software-defined data centers from traditional ones. This transition will be driven by HCI as it is simplifying data center operations, enabling IT teams to enhance business performance and scalability, while reducing expenses and risks. Have you adopted HCI solutions yet?