What is converged infrastructure?
Hyper converged infrastructure is a type of infrastructure with a software-defined architecture. Hyper convergence tightly integrates compute, networking, storage and virtualisation together within commodity hardware - usually supported by a single vendor.
Gone are the traditional IT silos, where you required seperate Network, Storage, Compute and Virtualisation admins. As Virtualisation has become more prominent in the last 10 years, vendors have moved to offer complete converged solutions.
There are two different approaches to hyper-converged architecture.
- Software defined, from the likes of VMware or Dell/Nutanix
- Hardware focused, from the likes of Fujitsu or SuperMicro.
Software defined 'Hyper Converged Systems'
Hyper converged takes the idea of convergence (seperate hardware engineered to work together with other hardware) and adds a software layer wraparound. You take a 4 node, compute cluster and interconnect it with 10Gb Ethernet, then add your flavour of hypervisor. This then takes advantage of the improved storage controllers to offer scale out, not just scale up architecture. Rather than adding extra compute, or extra storage to scale up - you add more appliance building blocks and scale out.
As opposed to having seperate network administration, software administration, and compute/x86 administration; Hyper-converged architecture allows you to manage all aspects of the stack within a single pane of glass. Allowing more flexible resource management.
How to get 'Hyper Converged'
Talk to us, email us, try a box.
We have deployable proof of concept machines available. If you're not sure how hyper converged architecture can benefit you (think 250 VDI in 2RU, or 100 Virtual Servers in 2RU) then give our consultants a call, we'll show you exactly how it works and how it can help your business.
We partner with all Tier 1 vendors, and our available hyper converged infrastructure is listed below.
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