Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions emerged more than a decade ago and have seen broad adoption in organizations of all sizes. The value proposition remains the same: HCI makes good business sense for organizations with limited IT resources and the need to respond to changing business demands.
HCI tightly integrates compute, storage and networking functionality in a seamless, modular system. It can be implemented as a hardware-based appliance or as a software-defined solution deployed on standard, off-the-shelf servers. Either way, resources are pooled, and the platform can be scaled simply by adding more modules.
HCI has become mainstream because it enables faster deployment while reducing the data center footprint. It also streamlines management and can scale easily to meet growing demand. That continues to make HCI a compelling option for small to midsize enterprises (SMEs) as well as a growing number of use cases.
What Makes HCI Different?
Converged infrastructure, the precursor to HCI, also combines data center resources in one preconfigured, pretested solution. It eliminates the slow, painstaking process of assembling best-of-breed components from multiple vendors, and the management headaches that result from ever-increasing complexity. However, its components are distinct and can be separated.
HCI solutions, in contrast, provide compute and storage functionality through the same x86-based resources, in a highly virtualized, scale-out architecture. The software-defined elements are integrated into a distributed plane that delivers all operating functions across all nodes. A native hypervisor also enables more efficient storage access and higher levels of automation.
HCI solutions feature advanced management tools that go further to streamline administration. IT teams gain a single-pane-of-glass view of all HCI systems in the environment, even if they’re spread across locations.
What Are the Benefits of HCI?
The traditional three-tier IT architecture requires significant time and effort for procurement, installation, integration, configuration and testing. It typically involves multiple vendors, which only adds to the management complexity. By combining all resources in a single solution, HCI enables rapid deployment and simplified management so organizations can optimize their IT environments. HCI also offers lower total cost of ownership through reduced IT overhead and software licenses.
HCI can deliver increased performance due to the ability to pool resources across multiple appliances. The scale-out architecture of HCI makes it possible to start small and add nodes as needed. Today’s HCI solutions allow for independent scaling of compute and storage resources while maintaining tight integration.
What Are Some HCI Use Cases?
Traditionally, HCI has been used in small, remote offices and for specialized applications such as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). However, HCI has become an indispensable part of the IT environment. Today, it is also used in several key use cases.
Hybrid cloud. Almost all organizations use the public cloud, but some workloads need to remain on premises. HCI offers seamless scalability, making it a good option for a hybrid cloud environment. Some vendors also offer software that makes it easier to move workloads between public and private clouds.
Data protection. HCI is ideal for data protection, offering easily scalable storage capacity that’s available to all workloads in the environment. It can also be used to create a failover environment for disaster recovery, with production workloads and data continually replicated to the HCI platform.
Edge computing. Increasingly, organizations are moving workloads to the edge of the network, closer to devices that collect data. HCI is an ideal choice for edge computing because of its fast deployment and simplified management. It’s also highly available and can be clustered for mission-critical applications.
How Verteks Can Help
Verteks can help you evaluate the various HCI solutions and choose the right deployment model for your environment. We can assist with procurement, implementation, data migration and decommissioning of old equipment. We will also perform a knowledge transfer so your IT team can manage the solution going forward, or handle ongoing management as part of our managed services offerings.
The Verteks team has specific expertise in HPE’s industry-leading HCI platforms, which offer higher availability, faster performance and greater flexibility than competitive solutions. Let us show you how HCI can simplify and streamline your IT infrastructure and provide the performance and agility needed for today’s applications.
