The IT environment is more complex than ever, with virtual machines (VMs) running diverse workloads distributed across the corporate data center and multiple branch locations. Deployment and management challenges are inevitable — complex implementation and configuration delay time to value, and in-house IT staff must devote significant time to ongoing maintenance. Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) can help overcome these challenges.
HCI has been referred to as “infrastructure in a box” because compute, storage, networking and virtualization are tightly integrated into a single solution and managed through a common interface. When more resources are required, nodes are simply added. Unified management and automated provisioning enable the efficient discovery, configuration and pooling of resources, which shortens deployment times and accelerates ROI.
The modular architecture of HCI makes it easy to scale, but older versions of the technology forced customers to scale all IT resources. A customer who needed to add more storage had to add more compute resources as well, even if they weren’t needed.
Independent Scalability
Disaggregated HCI (dHCI), also known as HCI 2.0, addresses the drawbacks of traditional HCI. With dHCI, storage is no longer integrated at the node level. Organizations can add storage modules without adding other resources.
It sounds like an oxymoron. After all, the primary selling point of HCI was the integration of resources. dHCI would seem to eliminate that benefit. However, the ability to scale storage independently allows organizations to support growing data volumes without adding node count. This conserves capital and reduces “node sprawl” and wasted resources.
Organizations lose a little of the simplicity of HCI with a disaggregated solution, but the flexibility gains make the tradeoff worthwhile. Overprovisioning compute to gain additional storage creates stranded resources that can’t be used elsewhere. It also increases power, cooling and licensing costs. Compute, storage and networking must be refreshed at the same time, which can cause budgetary challenges.
Benefits for SMBs
dHCI retains the inherent benefits of hyper-convergence, which are particularly valuable to SMBs and branch locations. Implementation of new infrastructure is faster, and the cost of purchasing, installing, deploying and maintaining infrastructure is dramatically reduced. Hyper-convergence also reduces your data center footprint, which brings down power and cooling costs and frees up physical space.
Management of HCI 2.0 doesn’t differ much from HCI 1.0 — HCI 2.0 products also have a management layer that provides single-pane-of-glass visibility and administration across all nodes. Functionality such as data de-duplication, compression, backup, snapshots, disaster recovery and WAN optimization can also be included with a hyper-convergence solution and managed through the same interface.
If anything, management has gotten more sophisticated. Some HCI 2.0 solutions incorporate machine learning capabilities, enabling them to detect potential problems and take corrective action. These tools can also forecast resource consumption for capacity planning.
The Value of an MSP
Legacy IT infrastructure typically involves a wide range of tools that have been pieced together over time. Hyper-convergence allows you to replace this complex collection of technology with a simple, flexible solution. SMBs can then manage hyper-convergence systems without highly specialized technical expertise while dedicating more time to high-value business tasks.
However, SMBs can still benefit from partnering with a managed services provider (MSP) to handle ongoing administration of the hyper-converged platform. The MSP will ensure that patches and updates are timely applied, and monitor the system to identify and troubleshoot potential problems before they cause downtime.
SMBs need simpler IT infrastructure and management in order to spend less time keeping the lights on and more time on initiatives that deliver competitive advantages. Let us show you how hyper-convergence provides enterprise-class infrastructure in a simple, highly scalable solution.
