As an IT expert, if you ever cooperate with the data center,s you surely hear about hyper-converged infrastructure. Let us 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
Hyper-converged infrastructure HCI technology
What is Hyperconverged Infrastructure?
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined IT infrastructure that combines common datacenter hardware using locally attached storage resources with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays. Hyper-converged infrastructure has the storage area network and the underlying storage abstractions implemented virtually in software rather than physically in hardware (traditional way).
So, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined, unified system that combines all the elements of a traditional data center: storage, compute, networking, and management benefits include lower TCO, increased performance, and greater productivity within IT teams. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is software-defined as an IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional “hardware-defined” systems. HCI includes, at a minimum, virtualized computing (a hypervisor), software-defined storage, and virtualized networking (software-defined networking). HCI generally performs on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) server hyper-converged infrastructures were heralded as a means of easing the complexities of platforms that depended on different discrete systems for computing, storage and networking by bringing everything together in a single, fully provisioned and managed chassis. However, times have been changed, and although hyper-converged still has a part to play under certain circumstances, the benefits aren’t as clear-cut as they once were.HCI infrastructures are generally made up of server systems that are-equipped with Direct-Attached Storage (DAS).
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 the 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 the faster speed of deployment.
HCI Cons and Drawbacks:
Everything in the world has advantages with some disadvantages. With all the benefits of Hyperconverged Infrastructure, will customers want to use HCI in all the cases, whether having some drawbacks too? While HCI has numerous tremendous benefits, there are certainly cons and drawbacks to being considered 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 drawbacks:
Hyperconverged Infrastructure high power
Overall power densities in data centers have increased as IT managers have sought to cram more workloads into the existing facility’s available space. Hyper-converged systems can bring this issue to a head, with kW/m2 power requirements outside of original design specifications. This is less of a pressing issue for many now, as more workloads can be offloaded onto third-party cloud platforms.
Indeed, some organizations are finding that the problem they are actually facing is that the data center is too large for their needs — with the concomitant impact on the costs of cooling such a facility if an overall space cooling approach has been taken. Therefore, it has been concluded that executing highly power-dense systems where a new implementation and redesign of power distribution within an existing facility may not be cost-effective.
Hyperconverged Infrastructure cost
As we have already found, many of the advantages of HCI can also be disadvantages too. Due to the lack of granular scaling of resources with HCI, any realized cost savings may be offset by wasting resources that may arise from the inability to scale those resources in an HCI environment granularly. Over time, public cloud service costs have steadily increased. In at least 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 if the proposed HCI solution scales linearly with those requirements are enough or not.
IS HCI solution black box?
It means a lack of transparency of what is in the box and increased vendor lock-in. For the prime use cases of HCI, this is not a particular issue for HCI. Still, it becomes a limiting factor for many larger deployments or more sophisticated IT users, which require control over what building blocks are being 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 a true cloud environment.
The capacity to apply available resources on one physical system against being able to do this across multiple systems is where hyper-converged systems can come undone. Again, it might be possible when all available hyper-converged systems are from the same manufacturer and have the same generational specification.