Hyperconvergence - Does one size fit all?

[Michael_Bird]

Of all the buzzwords bandied about, hyperconverged infrastructure (or HCI) is quite possibly the buzziest of them all. 

Hyperconverged Infrastructure is working towards the challenges IT departments are facing now, and in the future, that involve massive amounts of data and the need for agility, stability and speed.

But where has HCI evolved from? What has stood in its place for the past half century? And why might HCI be the right solution for every organisation?

The evolution of infrastructure

Luke Peters, a hyperconverged infrastructure specialist at HPE explains the evolution of infrastructure from converged to hyperconverged, from mainframes in the 1950s to today’s modern version.

The original infrastructure was a difficult to manage, time consuming, three-tier architecture, the market needed something different, while still retaining the features of the traditional three tier architecture.

Enter HCI. This modern simplified converged architecture is a software led, simplified, plumbed in solution, fully integratable, negating the need for mass configuration.

“Three-tier architecture could take months to be properly set up, configured and working perfectly. But with converged infrastructure, performance was there from day one.”

HCI in the fast lane

“During practice, qualifying and the race, the data centre and infrastructure are pushed to their limits in terms of consumption. But what goes up must come down and for the team, it's got to happen fast, especially if there's a race the next weekend.”

When time is of the essence, performance is non-negotiable and environmental conditions pose a different challenge to the data centres on a weekly basis, HCI is the answer.

Chris Middleton from the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing Formula One team shares what a typical week for the whole team looks like and we discover why the drivers for adopting this technology - universal reliability, simplicity, agility and flexibility - can apply to any kind of organisation, not just the high speed ones.

dHCI: Is HCI about to get a little less converged?

Isn’t the point of HCI to have everything together in one box? So why would you want a disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure?

Matt Harris explains, “it's bringing all the benefits of hyperconverged solutions but taking away a number of the restrictions organisations have shared with us of why they haven't moved to those architectures.”

Could it be the logical next step? The cloud first only strategy isn’t fit for purpose, and one size doesn’t fit all. But by incorporating AI, dHCI could potentially open up a new world of efficiency and speed.

Key takeaways:

• HCI is a perfect, all in one, hassle free solution. You don't have to be a Formula 1 engineer to get on board with HCI. It's also a perfect fit for small and medium businesses. It’s manageable, scalable with a lifecycle management and a quick learning curve.
• With HCI you can plug in and go live overnight. You can integrate your old servers - organisations no longer need to rip and replace.
• dHCI is the logical next step, but this is still evolving. HCI is about how a system looks from the outside. It's a simplified box giving you the entire stack - it needs to look integrated from the outside, but what's inside the box is open for discussion. dHCI is very much a continuation of that story, offering additional flexibility and capabilities that place it at the cutting edge of infrastructure.

Links and Resources:

What is Hyperconvergence? - Enterprise IT Definitions | HPE Europe

Aston Martin Red Bull Racing

E-book: Gorilla Guide to Hyperconverged Infrastructure | HPE Europe

SimpliVity Hyperconverged | HPE

Intelligent Cloud Platform for Virtual Machines - Nimble Storage dHCI | HPE

Hyper-converged Systems | HPE EUROPE

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