As an IT expert, if you ever work with a data center, you undoubtedly hear about hyper-converged infrastructure. So, let’s see how hyperconvergence works.
What is hyperconvergence?
Hyperconvergence is an IT framework that combines storage, computing, and networking into a single physical solution fully managed by software through a single interface, reducing data center complexity and increasing scalability.
Hyperconverged platforms have:
- hypervisor for virtualized computing
- software-defined storage
- virtualized networking
- off-the-shelf servers
What is the difference between converged and hyper-converged infrastructure?
- Converged infrastructure relies on hardware and building blocks, while Hyperconverged infrastructure is software-defined.
- Hyperconverged infrastructure is more flexible and scalable than Converged infrastructure.
- Converged architecture storage is attached directly to the physical server while Hyperconverged while Hyperconverged storage to all compute and virtual machines (VMs)
- Hyperconverged infrastructure has a more simplified scale-out architecture with commodity servers.
- Converged infrastructure has a large rack scale, while Hyperconverged consists of a 1U or 2U (rack-unit)
Hyper-converged infrastructure HCI technology
What is Hyperconverged Infrastructure?
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) represents a software-defined IT infrastructure. It has data center hardware and uses locally attached storage resources. HCI creates flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure, such as storage networks, separate servers, and storage arrays. The underlying storage abstractions are implemented virtually in software rather than physically in hardware (the traditional way).
So, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined, unified system that combines all the elements of a traditional data center: storage, computing, networking, and management benefits, including lower TCO, increased performance, and greater productivity within IT teams. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional “hardware-defined” systems. At a minimum, HCI includes virtualized computing (a hypervisor), software-defined storage, and virtualized networking (software-defined networking).
What can be done with hyper-converged infrastructure?
True hybrid cloud can be achieved: Manage a mix of VM—and container-based applications, public cloud, deployed across a mix of data center and edge environments with VMware hybrid cloud.
Extend to the public cloud: Choose an as-a-service option from the largest HCI cloud ecosystem for less time spent managing infrastructure and faster deployment.
HCI Cons and Drawbacks:
Everything in the world has advantages but some disadvantages. With all the benefits of Hyperconverged Infrastructure, will customers want to use HCI in all cases, whether having some drawbacks? While HCI has numerous tremendous benefits, there are certainly cons and disadvantages to consider when looking at HCI solutions. What are these? Are there drawbacks to choosing HCI as a platform for virtualization infrastructure? We will take a look at the following disadvantages:
Hyperconverged Infrastructure cost
As we have already found, many of the advantages of HCI can also be disadvantages. Due to the lack of granular scaling of resources with HCI, any realized cost savings may be offset by wasting resources from the inability to scale those resources in an HCI environment granularly. Over time, public cloud service costs have steadily increased. In some cases, the total annual cost of utilizing a cloud-based service has become comparable to hosting the service locally, which has recently caused some organizations to take a more objective look at their cloud strategy.
Organizations will need to consider their resource and capacity needs and determine whether the proposed HCI solution scales linearly with those requirements.
IS HCI solution black box?
It means a lack of transparency of what is in the box and increased vendor lock-in. This is not a particular issue for prime use cases of HCI. Still, it becomes a limiting factor for many larger deployments or more sophisticated IT users, which require control over the building blocks used.
Hyperconverged Infrastructure Cloud affinity:
If different manufacturers and different equipment generations are in use, it’s far more likely that the system won’t effectively share resources in a fully elastic manner. Hence, these capabilities should not be confused with those of an actual cloud environment.
Learn more about authors in Nimblefreelancer's team biography page.