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Hyper Converged vs Converged Infrastructure: What Are the Best Options?

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Hyper Converged vs Converged Infrastructure: What Are the Best Options?


Overview

Normally, CI is used on Platform 2.0 applications such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), database grids, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), enterprise messaging, and SAP workloads. On the other side of the fence, HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) is a decent fit for a platform such as a Platform 3.0 application needing flexibility and the capability to scale swiftly at the least possible cost per unit. Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is created in modules by means of rack-mounted servers.

The CI and HCI market were non-existent years ago. Now because of continuing technological advancement, demand for a new type of hardware has seen unprecedented growth in recent years. Now it often overcomes IT professionals with a lot of options. Today’s businesses also seek IT to possess fewer moving parts while still offering the same or even broadened resources to users. This has brought about a shift away from a one-to-one correlation between physical servers and storage to a several-to-one affiliation between virtual appliances and a single storage controller.

Convergence is the minimalizing or prepackaging of several layers inside the data center, typically computing, networking, and storage into a single unit. Choosing a system that fits in the right category is essential for IT planners so that they can complement present IT investments and meet the long-term objectives of the organization. One foremost impediment is that virtualizing workloads elicits expanded storage capacity requirements, which results in a huge volume of superfluous data. This conundrum further results in heaps of pointless efforts, time, unnecessary work, and other inept issues.

The Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)

The Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, or HCI, similarly known as Ultra-Converged Infrastructure and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, is considered the future of data center designs. This is because HCI is a software-defined approach. This software approach, which controls and influences all the resources that are on the top of the hypervisor, allowed the emergence of new data center concepts to materialize. HCI infrastructures can be implemented and positioned on any type of hypervisor and on any fragment of hardware via virtual appliance translation technologies and APIs. Additionally, if a second location is operating a different hypervisor, convergence software can translate virtual appliances from one hypervisor to the other, any fundamental hardware preconditions simply need to be met.

When is the use of converged infrastructure and hyper-converged infrastructure a better option? It depends on what IT workloads are running, how much resiliency is required, and how is the guaranteed performance versus agility and scalability.

The Converged Infrastructure (CI)

The Converged Infrastructure Evolution

The objective of CI or Converged Infrastructure is to streamline IT and enhance the time to value, a methodology for data center administration that intends to minimalize compatibility concerns among servers, storage, and network appliances that are enticing to overtasked and undermanned data centers. Simultaneously, it seeks to cut expenditures that are associated with cabling, cooling, floor space, and power usage. Furthermore, CI brings together storage and compute into one physical appliance that is dynamic, small, and powerful. This method brings many advantages, including decreased expenses of deployment, stress-free management, and reduced upkeep and support costs. Luckily, converged infrastructure has emerged as a feasible solution to these issues, but even in that solution, there are still multiple options and approaches that exist.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Pros and Cons

A hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is another option. One of the fastest growing solutions for an evolving next-generation data center. Instead of integrating typically three distinct hardware-based data center resource components - compute, storage, and networking – are virtualized and collapsed into an industry-standard x86 server, meaning that the storage software is running either alongside or is integrated into the hypervisor. Since the resources are software-based and administered from a single admin console, HCI can significantly increase efficiency, improve agility, and reduce TCO across the data center minus any trade-offs on availability and performance.

Hyper-converged architecture is marketed and implemented in nodes that house all components. Storage software will typically aggregate storage from each node in the cluster. Thus, HCI provides several benefits over converged architectures, specifically: HCI is often cheaper and easy to deploy. When weighing the CI vs. HCI, HCI systems are uncomplicated and easier to manage since storage, compute, and network administration is integrated. Moreover, HCI is scaled easily. As a result, if adding compute or storage performance is necessary, all IT professionals should do is just install another node to add resources to the cluster.

Though HCI seems to be perfect in all aspects, there is a downside to it, specifically: Hyper-converged architecture may be more selective to hardware choices, and unlike a typical CI system, many HCI systems oblige organizations to procure all the hardware and software altogether and expect nodes in the cluster to be identical. This will result in agility limitations of the system during a modernization or expansion. It is also difficult to just scale one component of the HCI since a node comes with supplementary compute, storage, and networking. It is at times hard to guarantee accurate levels of performance to a particular application. This complexity in guaranteeing service excellence emanates from the reality that HCI is a “shared-everything” environment. The identical compute that drives the hypervisor also powers up the application the hypervisor runs on, aside from storage software services that can be exacting.

All told, HCI systems alter how storage is run and managed. Hyper-converged infrastructure is tailored-fit for platforms such as Platform 3.0 applications needing flexibility and the capability to scale swiftly at the least possible cost per unit. It is built in modules by means of a rack-mounted server.

Converged Infrastructure (CI) Pros and Cons

When considering the top advantages of CI, it is easy to understand why many organizations are so resolute in adopting this technology. But the most logical first step is to decide whether a converged or a hyper-converged architecture will work best for your environment. CI prepackages the three tiers but uses separate components that are normally from distinct manufacturers. Typically, these products are pre-integrated and, in theory, all that is left for IT administrators to do is plug them in and start installing an application or start creating virtual machines. CI is made of individual components that can be decoupled from the infrastructure and be used discretely. Individual blocks can be snapped together.

Functionally, CI systems are like an environment in which the components are bought separately. This approach has had two especially important advantages: A CI system always complements an existing architecture, after all, it is made of alike, if not identical, components. These products can be more granularly well-tuned given that each layer is still a distinct component. If more storage capacity is necessary or more performance is required, an administrator can just add it without upgrading CPU performance, as is frequently required with HCI systems.

Moreover, given that all units are housed in a single box, purchasing, deploying, and using CI architecture is unbelievably streamlined in contrast to conventional, non-converged architectural environments. CI removes silos of technology, procedures, and people. Such silos are principally why data center management has regularly been tortuous and difficult, this epitomizes a big step onward.

Also, there are many converged infrastructures that are not prepackaged. These are reference architectures. Providers for reference architecture typically give an installation guide that will make it simpler to deploy. These systems afford greater agility in terms of blending and matching hardware, but also reintroduce the complexity of installation. These providers also must concur to deliver seamless technical support among the components installed, which would diminish any debate among customers and vendors as to who is at fault for any breakdown for the duration of the installation process.

The Hyper-converged infrastructure systems: Appliance vs. Software-only

HCI systems are software-defined at their core. HCI vendors often stay focused on the development of storage software to be precisely scalable within the hardware nodes and unlike long-established scale-out storage approaches, runs as a VM within the hyper-converged cluster.

In marketing this software, vendors take two routes, namely, the appliance approach and the software-only approach. In the appliance approach, the entire system is bundled with hardware and software, delivered as a single unit. This approach may just simply be an ingredient of expediency for the customer and the vendor… streamlining support and simplifying deployment or it may also be for convenience. This approach may require every node in the cluster to be identical, thus, it only makes sense for them to deliver the nodes. In the software-only approach, the vendor will provide the software and allows the consumer to choose the server hardware of their choice. This alternative offers the utmost agility in terms of hardware choice. It is also typically the least pricey since organizations can leverage present hardware or buy the latest hardware from priced sources. The disadvantage of a software-only approach is that it requires more forthright preparation and a lengthier implementation process.

In the end, HCI cannot replace CI, but let us IT to better tier the IT architecture to their ever-changing application requirements. Most often than not, IT processes will profit from a combination of these two options that can change as exigencies of their customers see to.

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References:

  1. Converged vs. Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions
  2. Converged Infrastructure vs Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
  3. Hyper-Converged Vs. Converged It Infrastructures



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