In today’s rapidly scaling ITOps environments, additional resources have to be developed with speed and efficiency. Older technologies like blade servers and SAN have helped, but thought leaders in IT infrastructure circles have begun to champion “hyper-convergence” as the most forward-thinking approach.
It’s a term that’s thrown around a lot, but behind the buzz lays great potential that’s backed up by promising initial results. Simply put, hyper-convergence can help make IT more efficient and flexible to business demands while also providing greater control over infrastructure. Let’s take a closer look at what hyper-convergence is, and how exactly it can help.
A Simplified Solution That Scales
On a fundamental level, a hyper-convergent system makes it possible to manage several integrated technologies through a common interface. Compute, storage, and networking are all strung together to provide greater efficiency in managing these resources. Typically this involves utilizing a pre-configured bundle of hardware and software that can manage these infrastructure components together.
In advanced deployments, a hyper-converged infrastructure can even be used to support a rapid software update cycle. It can also reduce the complexity of data center operations while increasing scalability and versatility, make IT management easier and allow IT departments to punch above their weight when it comes to speed and efficiency.
Hyper-Convergence Versus Convergence
It’s important to clearly differentiate hyper-convergence from simple convergence. Whereas a converged, or integrated, infrastructure combines network, server, and storage components as part of a simplified solution, it still manages infrastructure through traditional means with only limited gains from the use of virtualization.
This style of architecture can provide a foundation for mission-critical applications that need top-level performance. At the same time, relying entirely on this type of architecture limits the ability of organizations to scale and increase their efficiency.
A hyper-converged system manages IT infrastructure through virtualization in a way that can better exploit the resources of commodity hardware and servers. It can present different forms of hardware as a unified system. It also allows for rapid scaling of storage without the need to re-architect the hardware infrastructure.
Once implemented, a hyper-converged environment offers greater flexibility to adjust resources as needed. Compute, storage, and networking are all interlinked, because they are software-defined elements that are implemented virtually under a virtual machine manager (VMM). Adding resources can be as simple as adding additional nodes within this system, instead of upgrading network, computer, or storage separately. Each additional node can provide greater resources to all of these components. This flexibility can be applied in all the potential uses of hyper-convergence, from server virtualization to branch office deployment to disaster recovery.
Hyper-Convergence Is Changing IT Management Services
Whereas traditional infrastructure is often comprised of dozens of hardware and software products from several different vendors, hyper-convergence helps reduce the siloed environment that type of architecture breeds in organizations. This provides more effective management of IT services and cuts down on training costs, as employees no longer need to learn many different hardware and software systems.
For mid-sized organizations looking to grow quickly, hyper-convergence provides a beneficial mixture of simplicity and the more advanced functionality that allows larger organizations to succeed. By providing the benefits of cloud infrastructure without any loss of control, it ensures business have the necessary agility needed to modernize operations and improve business outcomes. Backups are streamlined, provisioning test environments is easy, and fewer resources are wasted.
Building the Business Case
This new model presents an incredible opportunity for IT infrastructure management. Many IT leaders find it difficult to present business cases that require further investment in their department’s resources. With hyper-convergence, the business case is easier, because its implementation can help support business goals.
Software products and services are often a key way to grow revenue and, therefore, it’s important to develop the underlying IT infrastructure that supports these goals. Software-defined storage leads to efficiency gains that can help IT to drive growth through rapid scaling of systems as needed. Hyper-convergence provides the high degree of flexibility required to get software up and running quickly and then deploy updates more often. This makes business partners and customers happy.
Finding the Right Solution and Implementation Partner
Unfortunately, departmental silos and interoperability issues still exist with hyper-convergence. The best way to minimize the impact of these challenges is by finding a platform that can help manage both your traditional and hyper-converged infrastructure. Cisco, for example, offers a UCS Manager that works with both UCS and hyper-convergent resources. As a result, their HyperFlex infrastructure can offer significant performance benefits.
Businesses today need to be agile to keep pace with evolving business needs and customer requirements. Doing so requires effective data center solutions that integrate with existing tools and processes. This helps push IT infrastructure toward greater flexibility, and enables easy scaling to support future requirements. While migrating to a hyper-converged environment can bring some upfront challenges, working with a trusted partner can help streamline the process while ensuring that core business services remain robust.
Ready to take your data center to the next level? Download our free Evolution of Convergence whitepaper to learn more.
Comments