{"id":49800,"date":"2018-02-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/is-hyperconverged-infrastructure-worth-the-hype\/"},"modified":"2018-01-31T09:45:41","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T09:45:41","slug":"is-hyperconverged-infrastructure-worth-the-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/is-hyperconverged-infrastructure-worth-the-hype\/2\/33175","title":{"rendered":"Is Hyperconverged Infrastructure Worth the Hype?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As companies race to achieve their digital transformation<\/a>, the data center<\/a> is undergoing a complete restructuring of its architecture. Many enterprises are migrating to a hybrid IT<\/a> approach in which workloads are matched to the appropriate platform that optimizes the user experience<\/a> while maximizing ROI. In order to attain greater levels of agility and flexibility that is required in today’s globally competitive environment, IT must divest the silos<\/a> within the typical enterprise that have segmented its ability to act as one uniform fluid ecosphere. (To learn more about digital transformation, check out The Do’s and Don’ts of Digital Transformation<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

IT management<\/a> must also look for ways to reduce the time-to-value of new infrastructure by reducing deployment times and streamlining operation. Doing so allows business units to maximize the ever-shrinking windows of opportunity that can directly contribute to the profitability of the company. In order to meet these tall expectations, IT is incorporating several technologies such as cloud computing<\/a>, software-defined networking<\/a> and hyperconverged infrastructure<\/a> (HCI).<\/p>\n

The Legacy Silo-Dominated Data Center<\/span><\/h2>\n

Up until recently, any attempt to transform IT within an organization has been traditionally defined by months, if not years. Most transformations are initiated by the need to replace end-of-life<\/a> hardware or introduce new operating systems<\/a> every few years. These vast time windows allowed IT the luxury of taking up to six months to move from the birth of an idea to implementation.<\/p>\n

Imagine for a moment the complexity of involvement undertaken within a large data center project such as the deployment of a new virtual server farm<\/a>. Internal IT must work with a server vendor in order to size and order the required boxes. Then a SAN<\/a> has to be purchased and provisioned, including the back-end iSCSI<\/a> network consisting of a separate switch<\/a> infrastructure. A core switch<\/a> is then purchased and configured to service front-end traffic to the servers. The last step involves the installation and configuration of the appropriate virtualization<\/a> solution. The purchasing and provisioning of each of these separate components is time consuming and labor intensive. It also requires a separate expertise of each solution for the internal IT staff.<\/p>\n

What Is HCI?<\/span><\/h2>\n

The first step in the HCI evolutionary process was simply converged infrastructure<\/a> (CI). It was first adapted by cloud providers<\/a> as a way to achieve the elastic scalability<\/a> and rapid deployments necessary to build out the massive global data center presence that cloud computing requires. This created a modular approach to creating data centers with commoditized hardware. Within these modular systems, all facets of the data center – compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources are tightly integrated into a single commodity hardware box or chassis. HCI is much like the UTM<\/a> appliances that enterprises use today that incorporate the operations of a firewall<\/a>, IPS<\/a>, anti-virus<\/a> and web filtering<\/a> in a single box. New modules can simply be added on in simple fashion as needed.<\/p>\n

Hyperconverged infrastructure takes the evolutionary step initiated by CI one step further and integrates software-defined technologies, thus creating a software-defined data center<\/a> (SDDC) in a box. Gartner defines HCI as “a platform offering shared compute and storage resources, based on software-defined storage, software-defined compute, commodity hardware and a unified management interface.” In addition to the principle of commoditizing the underlying hardware, HCI delivers added value through its software tools. Through software intelligence, all of the included data center components are aware of each other and can work as one fluid ecosphere. Many HCI solutions incorporate additional components such as backup<\/a> software, snapshot<\/a> capabilities, data deduplication<\/a>, inline compression and WAN optimization<\/a>. (Want to learn about another level of convergence? Check out The Future of IT Infrastructure: Superconvergence<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Advantages of HCI<\/span><\/h2>\n

Companies are beginning to recognize some key advantages of HCI, which is why Gartner estimates that companies will spend $5 billion on HCI infrastructure by 2019.<\/p>\n