11 main benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure

3 Mar

11 main benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure

Reading Time: 4 minutes

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.

22 Feb

How Cloud Computing is Helping to Solve 3 Problems: COVID-19 Spread, Pharmaceutical Safety, and School Bus Routing

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Source: Inside BIGDATA

Today’s users are looking for opportunities to reduce cost, analyze massive quantities of data, increase the speed and power of their calculations, access the latest and best new technology, put greater computing power in the hands of their data scientists and analysts and outsource the building and maintenance of expensive hardware. Cloud computing allows organizations to access more and better computing power more easily and at lower cost.

In this special guest feature, Dr. Viral B. Shah, CEO of Julia Computing, offers 3 Julia language-based examples of the way that cloud computing is revolutionizing data science. Dr. Viral B. Shah is one of the creators of the Julia language and co-founder and CEO of Julia Computing. Julia combines the ease of use of Python with the speed of C. It has been downloaded over 30 million times, and is now taught at MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, and many universities worldwide. Dr. Shah and two other Julia co-creators were awarded the prestigious James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software in 2018. Dr. Shah earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In recent years, improvements in cloud computing ease of use, speed and capacity and lower costs have resulted in increased use of cloud computing to solve important problems, including analyzing the spread of COVID-19, pharmaceutical safety and school bus routing.

For example, this dashboard, built using Julia, demonstrates how open source data, in this case, from the New York Times, can be presented for data scientists and other users to inform everything from personal decision-making (e.g. how safe is it to travel to a particular location during the holidays) to public policy.

This free dashboard is hosted in the cloud, and all of the code is available for users to analyze, copy, modify and use.

Another area in which cloud computing is revolutionizing health research is pharmaceutical safety. Pumas-AI uses Julia in the cloud for every stage of pharmaceutical development and testing. The cloud makes this possible by providing access to infinite and immediate scalability for models involving millions of data points and complex simulations.

A third area in which cloud computing is having a real-world impact is school bus routing. AlphaRoute uses Julia in the cloud to design optimal school bus routes for school districts including Boston and San Francisco. The superior computational capabilities of cloud-based infrastructure power solutions that save school districts tens of millions of dollars, allow students to follow sleep schedules that are age appropriate and help them start school rested and ready to learn, reduce traffic and carbon emissions.

These are just three examples of the way that cloud computing is revolutionizing data science.

Why is cloud computing so powerful?

  • Scalability: A single user operating a laptop or desktop computer can instantly scale up to dozens, hundreds or thousands of processing units.
  • Cost: With pay-as-you-go pricing, you only pay for the computing power you actually use. No need to invest thousands of dollars up front in hardware.
  • Access to Latest Technology: The newest, fastest and best processing units – including GPUs, TPUs and more – are instantly accessible online.
  • Flexibility: No long term commitment to any particular number of compute hours, number of processing units, hardware configuration or type of hardware. Instantly scale up or down, shift from one type of processing unit to another.
  • Democratization: The cloud puts the power of a supercomputer or computing cluster in the hands of any individual user.
  • Speed: With instant access to so much top-of-the-line hardware at the click of a mouse, users can run complex simulations and calculations faster than ever.
  • Power: The cloud allows users to crunch more numbers and run complex models and simulations that would have been otherwise impossible.
  • Openness: Computing power in the cloud can be accessed using any major computing or data science language and any major data format.
  • Ease of Use: Any user can easily access the cloud – no need for an IT professional to set up, access or use new hardware.
  • Maintenance: Each network is managed by its operators. Users do not need an IT professional or department to maintain an expensive cluster or server farm.

Today’s users are looking for opportunities to reduce cost, analyze massive quantities of data, increase the speed and power of their calculations, access the latest and best new technology, put greater computing power in the hands of their data scientists and analysts and outsource the building and maintenance of expensive hardware. Cloud computing allows organizations to access more and better computing power more easily and at lower cost.

18 Feb

Hyperconverged tech investment set to rise

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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.