Category: Hyperconvergence News

3 Mar

11 main benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure

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Benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure include simplified deployments and management, easy upgrades, scalability and flexibility, improved performance, agility and more.

Source: TechTarget
By Robert Sheldon

A hyper-converged infrastructure can offer an organization several benefits, not only simpler deployments and management, but also better reliability, scalability, data protection and resource utilization, to name a few. That’s not to say HCI is for everyone, but for the right workloads, HCI can prove a useful addition to the data center or edge environment, reducing costs and simplifying IT.

Here, we look at 11 of the most important hyper-converged infrastructure benefits.

Simplified deployments

One of the primary reasons that organizations turn to HCI is the ease of deployment, which starts with procuring the system and continues through standing up the virtual workloads:

  • Decision-makers don’t need to waste time researching products to ensure compatibility.
  • IT works with a single vendor from procurement through workload deployment.
  • Components are pre-integrated and preconfigured, avoiding the overhead that comes with acquiring, integrating and implementing traditional infrastructure.
  • HCI’s software-defined capabilities simplify resource allocation and workload deployments.

Simplified management

IT personnel can manage and monitor HCI systems much easier than traditional infrastructure:

  • Software manages the environment and automatically carries out daily operations such as resource provisioning and load balancing.
  • Administrators work from a single management platform that consolidates administrative tasks, eliminating the management silos that come with traditional infrastructure.
  • Admins can perform common tasks such as backing up or restoring VMs with simple point-and-click operations, and they can manage the infrastructure remotely.
  • HCI frees up IT personnel for other tasks, such as managing security or focusing on new initiatives, while reducing the need for specialized personnel.
Hyper-converged infrastructure benefits include simplified management and improved performance.

Easy upgrades

An HCI platform provides a unified environment that makes upgrading software and hardware much faster and easier than traditional infrastructure:

  • The single-vendor delivery model streamlines and simplifies upgrades, eliminating the need to balance independent systems.
  • The software-defined infrastructure provides a flexible and adaptable environment for restructuring systems or adding hardware, without the complexities and risks that come with other systems.
  • HCI offers a unified platform that uses common protocols and integrated technologies, making it easier to implement performance upgrades.

Scalability

For many organizations, scalability is one of the top reasons they choose an HCI platform:

  • An HCI cluster is made up of self-contained, preconfigured building blocks called nodes, which can be added to or removed from the cluster as needed.
  • IT can start out small when first implementing an HCI appliance and then add nodes as needed, without investing in infrastructure that might not be used.
  • Because nodes are preoptimized and preconfigured for the HCI platform, admins can add them without having to contend with integration issues.
  • Admins can rapidly add nodes to existing HCI clusters, reducing the delays that come with scaling traditional infrastructure.

Reliability

The multinode architecture inherent in an HCI platform offers a highly reliable and available system:

  • An HCI cluster contains multiple nodes that distribute functions across the cluster to provide resiliency and high availability.
  • Fault tolerance and disaster recovery are built into an HCI platform so if one node fails, the other nodes can take up the slack.
  • The software-defined environment includes self-healing capabilities that automatically identify and address issues.
    -Admins can add or replace nodes without incurring downtime or workload disruptions.

Improved performance

An HCI platform includes capabilities that can help improve workload performance, even when running multiple application types:

  • An HCI system can include both SSDs and HDDs, helping to meet the performance demands of varying workloads, including virtual desktop infrastructure.
  • Software-defined storage can accommodate changing performance requirements without needing to reconfigure the hardware itself.
  • Storage and processing are within close proximity, resulting in less cabling and lower latency.
  • An HCI system can accommodate varying workload types without the I/O blender effect that can degrade storage performance in a virtualized environment.

Agility

Despite its rigid node structure, an HCI platform offers a great deal of flexibility for accommodating diverse and changing workloads:

  • Because an HCI platform is flexible and scalable, IT can quickly and easily meet changing business requirements or accommodate fluctuating workloads.
  • The virtual environment makes it easier to handle diverse workloads, even if they run on different OSes.
  • The virtual environment enables admins to move workloads between clusters or even across data centers.
  • The software-defined infrastructure makes it possible to automate and orchestrate workload deployments and other operations.

Software-defined infrastructure

Software-defined capabilities make HCI stand out from other infrastructure platforms, helping to drive operations and maintain the environment’s overall health:

  • Most HCI systems now offer software-defined networking along with software-defined storage and compute, providing a 100% software-defined environment.
  • Automation is easier to implement than with legacy systems, helping to simplify IT, better utilize resources, handle diverse and changing workloads, and improve overall efficiency.
  • A software-defined infrastructure can more quickly and easily accommodate upgrades, new components and multiple storage types, while supporting disaster recovery.
  • Third-party management and monitoring tools, as well as other applications and services, can more easily integrate with the HCI platform.

Cloud-friendly environment

HCI is built on a modern architecture that provides users with a cloud-like experience and helps facilitate digital transformation:

  • An HCI platform abstracts the underlying hardware resources and presents them as consumable services, like a cloud platform, which streamlines and simplifies administrative operations.
  • An HCI system uses advanced virtualization and software-defined technologies that make it easier to integrate with cloud platforms and support hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments.
  • Because of HCI’s cloud-like nature, admins can more easily implement and manage workloads that span multiple platforms, including cloud environments.
  • Many HCI platforms now support containerized applications, along with those running them in VMs, adding to the platform’s flexibility.

Data protection

An HCI platform offers data protection that includes built-in disaster recovery capabilities, as well as features for managing security:

  • Data protections such as backups, snapshots, clones or other disaster recovery features are built into an HCI platform.
  • HCI’s multinode architecture and built-in fault tolerance make it easy to restore data in the event of a cyberattack, equipment failure or some other occurrence.
  • Because HCI consolidates resources into a single system, data is stored closer to where it is processed, making it easier to manage and monitor, while reducing the overall attack surface.

Lower costs

Many organizations turn to HCI because of its promise to lower the costs of running workloads throughout their lifecycles:

  • An HCI platform consolidates hardware resources and maximizes their use, resulting in fewer servers, smaller data center footprint, and lower power and cooling requirements.
  • An HCI platform can be built with commodity hardware, avoiding the high costs that come with deploying specialized server, storage or network components.
  • Because HCI uses direct-attached storage, an organization can avoid the high costs that come with deploying and managing a SAN.
  • Organizations can purchase HCI software and build their own HCI platforms, using a reference architecture to help with the process.

Because an HCI platform is easier to deploy and manage, fewer IT resources and less expertise are needed to get started and keep going.

18 Feb

Hyperconverged tech investment set to rise

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Hyperconverged Infrastructure, or HCI, is an IT framework that combines all the elements of a traditional data center, such as storage, computing and networking, into one unified system.

Source: SPGGlobal
By Anser Haider

Investment in hyperconverged infrastructure is set to boom this year as companies that had already invested in the technology realize the potential for the blended IT model to modernize their workloads, according to a survey conducted by 451 Research, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure, or HCI, is an IT framework that combines all the elements of a traditional data center, such as storage, computing and networking, into one unified system. Dell Technologies Inc., VMware Inc. and Nutanix Inc. are among the major IT vendors that offer HCI platforms to organizations seeking to reduce the operational complexity inherent in traditional, stand-alone infrastructure. A rising number of companies are turning to HCI to deploy and simplify the notoriously complex virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platforms that are used for remote work, for example.

451’s “Voice of the Enterprise: Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Technology & Platform Innovation 2020” survey, which published in late December, found that HCI adoption sits at about 35% of the overall IT market, but a significant percentage of customers are testing the platforms or plan to adopt them in the near future. Meanwhile, organizations currently using HCI — whether in production or as a proof of concept — plan to increase their HCI budgets by an average of 50% in 2021 compared to 2020.

Christian Perry, a senior research analyst covering IT infrastructure at 451 Research and the author of the survey report, said that there is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic was a tremendous driver for HCI tech.

“As organizations scrambled to outfit their businesses for remote work, some of them found that they can be up and running quickly with HCI,” Perry said. “Deployments of that technology can be very complex, but HCI makes the process far easier.”

Some government agencies wound up adopting HCI in 2020 in response to the pandemic, Perry said. Police departments, for example, turned to the technology to digitally track various uprisings and protests in the past year, he said.

“Once HCI is within an IT ecosystem, it tends to expand like wildfire, mostly because the experience is very positive and not tremendously different from a standard virtualization server experience,” Perry said.

HCI investment is often strategically deployed for specific IT initiatives and projects. Thirty-six percent of surveyed organizations cited new IT initiatives and/or project requirements as the primary reason for increased HCI investment, whereas 15% of organizations said the investments were part of a broad infrastructure refresh.

“The survey results support the point that HCI budgets are now designed for organizations to expand their HCI footprints to support the convergence of IT and critical businesses,” Perry said.

Enterprises choose their HCI platforms based on factors including scaling, networking and hybrid cloud capabilities. Ease of scaling — or the ability to add compute or storage capacity without downtime — is the leading feature that drives HCI platform selection, with 50% of surveyed organizations identifying it as important. This became especially important in 2020 when organizations were forced to speed up their digital transformation efforts amid the pandemic, Perry said.

Other important technology features on the radar for HCI platform selection are networking (43%) and hybrid cloud workload mobility to public and/or private clouds (42%).

The study also found that HCI is not necessarily the power-efficient infrastructure that customers expect. Although some IT teams say HCI saves power compared with stand-alone, three-tier infrastructure, 41% of adopters say that HCI has actually increased their data center power requirements to date. Meanwhile, 31% say it has decreased power requirements, and 28% say it has had no effect.

“While everything else about HCI is very efficient, we found that power requirements can actually increase due to the far denser, fully virtualized servers,” Perry said. “However, that’s a good thing, because it means the technology is functioning properly and the customers are getting their money’s worth, even if they have to deal with greater electricity and cooling platforms.”

Perry said that once organizations get more accustomed to their HCI platforms, they are able to more easily optimize and manage the power requirements.

15 Feb

Capitalizing on important technology trends of 2022

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Source: IT Web

Where OT managers and IT managers previously might not necessarily have had to sit around the same table, this hyperconvergence together with trends like robotics now necessitates close collaboration between IT and operational technology.

Over the course of the last two years, companies of all sizes have had to invest in the acceleration of their digital transformation as a result of the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, coupled with the need to respond to the demands of hybrid working thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown measures put in place to help curb its spread.

This fast pace of digital adoption is set to continue during 2022. Morné Laubscher, Chief Technology Officer at global IT solutions and managed service provider, Logicalis South Africa, unpacks some of the most prevalent technology trends that will help business leaders drive productivity, enhanced decision-making and higher levels of success in 2022.

Weaving the fabric of continued business success

Data literacy within private and public organisations is of the utmost importance during 2022 and beyond, as leaders historically had to understand only the finances to manage their business. But these days, you need data savvy leaders that can comprehend all the systems and all the outputs of the business, so they’re able to quickly pivot and make decisions that impact the organisation – its offerings, it’s engagement with its staff, engagement with its market or clientele in a very dynamic manner.

While the big corporates with the bigger budgets certainly invest in big data platforms and analytics tools, mid-market organisations and even SMEs that don’t necessarily have these big budgets also have the ability to drive access to those insights across structured and unstructured data, irrespective of its location inside the organisation or the platform that it resides on.

And there are really trend-setting innovative platforms out there that do this, including Microsoft Synapse, which is an interesting new approach to data and data warehouse management across a heterogeneous ecosystem.

Keeping corporate data secure and sensitive data private

The adoption of digital technologies has been exponential in the market, but with that comes a responsibility to make sure that we are able to transact in a secure manner. Data privacy is a big concern for a lot of organisations because having access to platforms across any connectivity medium creates a challenge: how do you govern their access to that data? With the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Act now having become a real concern in South Africa, it’s become also quite locally relevant, so security and data governance is sort of a bundle deal.

With regards to this, one of the biggest security pitfalls in cloud and cloud technologies is misconfiguration. Data platforms are so complex and have so many features that companies are quick to adopt, but it takes a certain core skill in order to properly run and manage these platforms in a secure manner. So, it’s not malicious intent from my external party that creates an exploit or some sort of risk in the business, but simply that there’s a system that came with security features; however, these security features weren’t configured.

To address this, companies can ensure that these fairly complex environments are secure through security operations centre (SOC) service. Consequently, Logicalis invested heavily in a fully resourced security socket within South Africa, and we have a co-delivery model with our colleagues in Jersey, so it’s also not a standalone SOC. So, this results in the capability to drive intelligence on the environment, doing the log ingestion, understanding what all the systems and platforms and technologies in the environment look like, whether they are secure and then adding to that the security, automation and orchestration component. One of the big SIEM/SOAR platforms that we focus on is Microsoft Sentinel, which allows for automation to significantly cut down on remediation times and costs of the service. It’s quite efficient.

When IT met OT for a hyperconvergence rendezvous

In the fourth industrial era, internet of things is increasingly and quickly becoming part of the set-up on factory floors, in manufacturing facilities, as well as within buildings for remote monitoring purposes. Where OT managers and IT managers previously might not necessarily have had to sit around the same table, this hyperconvergence together with trends like robotics now necessitates close collaboration between IT and operational technology.

Ultimately, 2021 brought a lot of challenges to companies, including the need to rapidly transform digitally to enable hybrid working, and 2022 will continue to introduce challenges and market opportunities. Organisations simply need to capitalise on technological trends like these mentioned above in order to take these opportunities up and address any challenges experience throughout the course of the year.