6 Reasons to Consider Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
November 07, 2017

Gray Salladay
Veristor

Share this

Today's IT is under considerable pressure to remain agile, responsive and scalable to meet the changing needs of business. IT infrastructure can't become a bottleneck, it must be the enabler. But as new paradigms, such as DevOps, are adopted, data center complexity increases and infrastructure constraints can block the ability to achieve these goals.

In response to these demands, hyper-converged technologies have emerged to replace hardware-defined data center amalgamations that have become overly complicated, expensive and difficult to manage. This next-generation, software-defined infrastructure technology combines storage, compute, virtualization and networking capabilities all into one appliance. Here, commodity servers provide virtualized building blocks of computing power and storage, an efficient and flexible way to deploy clusters of highly available infrastructure. The bonus? They can be managed from anywhere, offering ease of setup, improved performance and above all, simplicity.

Hyper-converged infrastructure offers management controls from a streamlined, central management interface. By providing a unique ability to deploy discrete pods of infrastructure, IT organizations can quickly build their own cloud just by installing new appliances. This is especially valuable for remote locations or branch offices that lack a dedicated support staff. The entire infrastructure can be managed by a centralized IT staff from anywhere in the world.

Some hyper-converged solutions have upped the ante with additional functionality built into the solution including WAN optimization, deduplication, disaster recovery, backup and inline compression/deduplication. This further simplifies the management of what were once separate operational tasks.

Is it time to adopt hyper-convergence? Even with the promise of powerful benefits including increased agility, responsiveness and scalability, it can be a significant decision to move to a hyper-converged infrastructure. How can you know if the benefits will deliver value? Consider these six reasons it may be time to make the case:

1. You're deploying greenfield infrastructure

Hyper-convergence's very nature makes it an excellent choice for organizations who need to rapidly spin up a data center from scratch. The ability to create template-driven deployments based on application requirements means fast access to functional virtual infrastructure.

2. You have multiple branch offices or remote locations

Hyper-convergence is a very powerful tool for organizations with multiple data centers, remote locations or branch offices. Rather than manage at each co-location, hyper-convergence allows for the sharing of resources across multiple physical locations, all managed from a single, centralized interface.

3. You're launching Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

In environments with a fixed relationship between requirements for compute, memory and storage, choosing a hyper-converged infrastructure can be a solid approach to tackling VDI.

4. You need a dedicated development environment

By offering rapid deployment in an undifferentiated virtual infrastructure, this approach is perfect for bringing up a dedicated development environment, anywhere, hassle-free.

5. You're consolidating servers and data centers

For those organizations looking to update or expand data centers, hyper-converged solutions allow for a controlled implementation of new infrastructure. With it, you can phase in new architecture while you phase out the old, expanding as the IT budget allows. There is no need to make excessive upfront financial investments with a hyper-converged solution, waiting years on a return.

6. You need simplified procurement

By choosing to work with a single vendor, support and purchasing options are streamlined into a one-stop shopping approach, thus simplifying your buying strategy.

If it's time to boost your infrastructure with virtualized, software-based technology and break the chains of your hardware-defined infrastructure, a hyper-converged solution may be the right choice. It can deliver new efficiencies to quickly spin up new infrastructure, build out development environments, support remote locations and branch offices or deploy virtual desktop infrastructure.

Gray Salladay is a Solution Architect at Veristor
Share this

The Latest

March 18, 2024

Gartner has highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers in 2024: Generative AI (GenAI) is dominating the technical and product agenda of nearly every tech provider ...

March 15, 2024

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 4 - Part 1, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) discusses artificial intelligence and network management ...

March 14, 2024

The integration and maintenance of AI-enabled Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have emerged as pivotal points in enterprise AI implementation strategies, offering both significant challenges and promising benefits. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI's potential impact, the reality of its implementation presents hurdles. Currently, over 90% of enterprises are grappling with limitations in integrating AI into their tech stack ...

March 13, 2024

In the intricate landscape of IT infrastructure, one critical component often relegated to the back burner is Active Directory (AD) forest recovery — an oversight with costly consequences ...

March 12, 2024

eBPF is a technology that allows users to run custom programs inside the Linux kernel, which changes the behavior of the kernel and makes execution up to 10x faster(link is external) and more efficient for key parts of what makes our computing lives work. That includes observability, networking and security ...

March 11, 2024

Data mesh, an increasingly important decentralized approach to data architecture and organizational design, focuses on treating data as a product, emphasizing domain-oriented data ownership, self-service tools and federated governance. The 2024 State of the Data Lakehouse report from Dremio presents evidence of the growing adoption of data mesh architectures in enterprises ... The report highlights that the drive towards data mesh is increasingly becoming a business strategy to enhance agility and speed in problem-solving and innovation ...

March 07, 2024
In this digital era, consumers prefer a seamless user experience, and here, the significance of performance testing cannot be overstated. Application performance testing is essential in ensuring that your software products, websites, or other related systems operate seamlessly under varying conditions. However, the cost of poor performance extends beyond technical glitches and slow load times; it can directly affect customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Understand the tangible and intangible consequences of poor application performance and how it can affect your business ...
March 06, 2024

Too much traffic can crash a website ... That stampede of traffic is even more horrifying when it's part of a malicious denial of service attack ... These attacks are becoming more common, more sophisticated and increasingly tied to ransomware-style demands. So it's no wonder that the threat of DDoS remains one of the many things that keep IT and marketing leaders up at night ...

March 05, 2024

Today, applications serve as the backbone of businesses, and therefore, ensuring optimal performance has never been more critical. This is where application performance monitoring (APM) emerges as an indispensable tool, empowering organizations to safeguard their applications proactively, match user expectations, and drive growth. But APM is not without its challenges. Choosing to implement APM is a path that's not easily realized, even if it offers great benefits. This blog deals with the potential hurdles that may manifest when you actualize your APM strategy in your IT application environment ...

March 04, 2024

This year's Super Bowl drew in viewership of nearly 124 million viewers and made history as the most-watched live broadcast event since the 1969 moon landing. To support this spike in viewership, streaming companies like YouTube TV, Hulu and Paramount+ began preparing their IT infrastructure months in advance to ensure an exceptional viewer experience without outages or major interruptions. New Relic conducted a survey to understand the importance of a seamless viewing experience and the impact of outages during major streaming events such as the Super Bowl ...