What is hyper-converged infrastructure?
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) combines common datacenter hardware using locally attached storage resources with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays. Benefits include lower TCO, increased performance, and greater productivity within IT teams.
What is hyper-converged infrastructure?
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) combines servers and storage into a distributed infrastructure platform with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays. More specifically, it combines commodity datacenter server hardware with locally attached storage devices (spinning disk or flash) and is powered by a distributed software layer to eliminate common pain points associated with legacy infrastructure.
The birth of hyper-convergence
Datacenter infrastructure has been designed around SAN Storage since the 90’s to protect data and to power critical databases, and became pervasive with the explosion of virtualization in the early 00’s.
But as organizations have grown increasingly dependent on technology, traditional SAN-based infrastructure can no longer keep up with IT needs. It’s complex, unwieldy, and can’t scale as flexibly or efficiently as IT teams need to keep up with changing business priorities.
The world’s largest web companies faced the realities of traditional infrastructure’s limitations long before the broader market, and developed distributed systems technologies to meet their scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency challenges.
In 2009, engineers from several of these web scale companies realized that the technologies they had developed to solve their own operational challenges were applicable to the market at large. The realities of bringing these technologies to enterprise computing required a new approach, and the concept of HCI was born.
Today, HCI is the infrastructure of choice for companies that want to stay competitive and evolve with the changing realities of the technology landscape. While the actual date and person who first coined the term hyperconvergence can be up for debate, Nutanix was the first technology company to bring to market an HCI-specific product in 2011 called Complete Cluster.
Agile Infrastructure
Standardize upon infrastructure that can be deployed in minutes, and can scale out as your business grows, without disruption. Get cloud-like benefits with the freedom to choose the right technologies for your business needs.
Intelligent Operations
Discard multiple management consoles. Get integrated control and visibility across the virtualized infrastructure stack. Leverage advanced machine learning technology to gain insights and optimize virtualization and infrastructure planning and management.
Financial Flexibility
Convert CapEx to OpEx. No longer should you be forced to buy infrastructure in 3 to 5 year cycles. Plus, an independent study from IDC found a decrease in operating expenses of 60% along with a 5-year ROI of 534% and a 7-month payback.
