For IT managers embarking on data center or IT modernization projects, hyperconvergence solutions offer an integrated solution that combines servers, storage and virtual machines. The result: scalability, resilience and availability.
Like "object storage" (or "software-defined storage"), hyperconvergence is a major trend of the moment. It's on a roll. According to figures from IDC, purchases of this type of platform rose by 69.4% year-on-year to reach $1.25 billion in the last quarter of 2017. And for the whole of 2017, this figure exceeded the $3.7 billion mark (+64.3% on 2016).
One of the main reasons for this interest is the desire of professionals to increase their agility. In a classic convergence configuration, the company relies on a solution integrating state-of-the-art infrastructure components such as networks, shared storage and servers. The main advantage: a company doesn't have to deal with a large number of manufacturers and integrators. They deal with a single contact.
The problem is that this configuration brings together disparate solutions. It has not been fundamentally designed to take account of technology or management issues.
Bricks for customization
In contrast, hyper-converged platforms can be controlled from a single administration console. They enable the rapid deployment and scaling of virtualized environments, particularly in terms of storage. In a nutshell, they enable on-demand horizontal scalability (or "scale-out") of resources. This means faster provisioning.
When delivered as pre-configured appliances (otherwise available as a reference architecture or software-only model), this architecture reduces the cost and complexity of the IT environment. In addition, deployment time is short (around twenty minutes to install an initial system and see the first VMs run), and operations on remote sites (such as backups) are simplified.
The modularity of these hyperconverged platforms is the main practical advantage. It's not a question of reinvesting in expensive new infrastructure "bricks", but of adding options.
In this way, IT managers can customize their infrastructure according to their needs or obligations (with regard to regulations, for example): compression, data protection, snapshots, WAN optimization, backup and disaster recovery offers...
These different modules differentiate the solutions available on the market, one of the best-known and most appreciated of which is HPE SimpliVity (one of the pioneers of the hyperconvergence market). In fact, this offering natively integrates advanced backup and data protection services.
Fast, simple and constantly evolving, SimpliVity is based on data deduplication. It combines your IT infrastructure and advanced data services in a single, integrated 100% flash solution, at a fraction of the cost of traditional or public cloud offerings.
Reducing complexity
Generally speaking, a hyperconvergence solution includes a hypervisor for virtualized computing, software-defined storage and virtualized networking. It generally runs on standard, off-the-shelf servers.
Hyperconverged solutions leverage enhancements to the storage controller software layer to enable these systems to scale. The more devices you add, the higher the performance and capacity. Instead of scaling by adding more drives, memory or CPUs, it's about scaling by adding more device modules.
However, this solution does have its limitations. Hyperconverged infrastructures make life easier for CIOs who have embarked on the digital transformation of their organization. They can rely on an IT infrastructure that's up and running in minutes, and very easy to administer.
The other side of the coin, as pointed out by IDC and Gartner, is that these solutions are either closed or so integrated that it is difficult to determine, a priori, the level of interoperability with other solutions...
On the other hand, it is impossible, for example, to make granular upgrades or adjustments to the system. If a cluster is running at low storage capacity, but not compute capacity, it will still be necessary to upgrade the overall compute capacity by adding another appliance.
Hyperconvergence is the ideal solution for creating private cloud environments with minimum complexity, to meet the financial and regulatory constraints of businesses.
