George Crump

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IT professionals often reject hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) because they want to integrate HCI into their traditional three-tier architecture, and most HCI solutions can’t meet this requirement. HCI vendors also only focus on three tiers of the typical data center: networking, virtualization, and storage. However, a fourth tier is far too often overlooked: data availability and protection.

VergeOS’ Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) can integrate into a customer’s traditional three-tier architecture. In this article, we will cover how VergeOS enables a more gradual onramp to UCI instead of a complete overhaul on day one and allows you to use components from each of your existing tiers.

UCI, an HCI Solution You Actually Want

Integrate HCI into a Three-Tier Architecture

The concept of HCI has merit. Take the data center tiers running on dedicated, vendor-provided hardware and reenable them as software, converging that software onto a single commodity server, liberating the organization from vendor lock-in and markups. The problem faced when IT attempts to integrate HCI into a traditional three-tier architecture is that HCI doesn’t truly converge anything. HCI stacks these tiers as software packages on top of each other, essentially recreating the same technology stack within a single server. It also forces them to exclude external SANs and existing servers.

UCI changes this by collapsing these stacks into a single, cohesive operating environment that is significantly more efficient. This elegant code base reduces overhead by as much as 30% while improving performance. The result is a VMware Alternative that is more portable, performs better, and provides improved data resilience.

UCI, an HCI Solution That Supports Fibre Channel SANs

One of the largest investments in the data center is the storage tier. If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in a fibre-channel (FC) storage area network (SAN), you will want to integrate HCI into your traditional three-tier architecture so that you can continue to benefit from your significant investment. The problem is that most HCI solutions don’t support them. Because VergeIO owns all the code within VergeOS at a very deep level, we have taken the necessary steps to support fibre-channel-attached storage.

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When using VergeIO and a FC SAN, you’ll need a physically local drive in each server to load VergeOS and store metadata, but the VM data can reside on the FC array. You’ll create a LUN as a virtual drive for each node that contributes to storage for the VergeOS instance. The VergeOS will manage and aggregate virtual drives into a pool that the VMs can use for data storage. VergeOS will also provide an additional layer of protection from hardware failure and add a deduplication capability. If your array already has deduplication, you can turn it off or leave it on; we’ve been unable to measure any noticeable performance impact.

In the future, when it is time to add additional capacity to the environment, you have options. First, you can continue to add capacity to your existing FC array, or you can take advantage of the 10X cost savings of using internal server class NVMe SSDs and/or HDDs. Also, as new storage technologies come to market, there is a much higher likelihood of them being supported sooner under VergeOS than waiting for the storage vendor to retrofit their designs to support them.

UCI, an HCI Solution That Supports Blade Servers

VergeOS is unique in that it can run a variety of different servers within the same instance. You can mix different server manufacturers, processor generations, and even processor manufacturers (Intel and AMD). You can also mix different server configurations. Some servers can be storage-heavy, and others can be processor-heavy.

Integrate HCI into a Three-Tier Architecture

Blade servers are processor-heavy nodes because they can only support a limited amount of internal storage. This makes blade servers problematic for IT professionals looking to integrate HCI into a traditional three-tier architecture. It forces them to reconsider the server strategy, which blade server customers are reluctant to do.

To incorporate a blade server into the VergeIO instance, you need to have either one internal drive store to boot VergeOS, or VergeOS also supports PXE booting, so an internal drive is not required. From there, the blade server can access its data from the shared pool of storage that VergeOS creates from the other nodes, or in the aforementioned FC SAN. In fact, if the blade server is FC equipped, it can “contribute” storage to the overall instance by assigning it a LUN as described above. Hosting storage does require slightly more RAM, so it is best to review the exact configuration with our technical architects.

As is the case with storage, VergeOS brings added flexibility for server expansion or refreshes. When it comes time to upgrade or expand your server infrastructure, you can continue to add blade servers or use standard 1U, 2U, or larger commodity servers of your choice.

UCI, an HCI Solution That Supports External Networks

Integrate HCI into a Three-Tier Architecture

VergeOS has a robust set of layer 2 and layer 3 networking functionality, but its use is optional. If you’ve invested in one of the market leaders for networking functionality, VergeOS can easily interoperate with them. As with the above, as time goes on, you can decide to use some of the network functionality built into VergeOS, saving you the cost of additional dedicated appliances, or you can continue to use your current vendor. To learn more about VergeOS, watch our Networking Fundamentals video.

UCI, an HCI Solution That Supports Third-Party Backup

VergeOS’ Data Availability Services combined with ioGuardian capabilities lessen IT’s dependency on the backup infrastructure for most recovery efforts, and many customers decide that is all the protection they need. VergeOS provides an in-guest agent that can quiesce when applying consistent snapshots. Still, some customers want to use third-party backup solutions to meet these requirements:

Copy of Last Resort

VergeOS can export the VMs’ raw files via an NFS mount point that almost any backup product can browse to meet compliance or vendor-independent data copy requirements to a different storage system, even tape.

File Level Restoration

As we show in this video, several types of file-level restoration can be done by leveraging VergeOS snapshots. Customers who want a centralized file-level recovery can install an in-guest agent from their backup software application into the virtual machines that are likely to require single-file recoveries.

Again, most customers find they can meet 100% of their data protection and recovery needs using VergeIO. Still, its support of third-party backup products enables IT to continue to use these solutions if required, or until they gain full confidence in VergOS’ capabilities.

Conclusion

Schedule a Technical Deep Dive on VergeOS

VergeOS’ Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) effectively addresses the challenges of integrating HCI into a traditional three-tier architecture by supporting diverse hardware, including blade servers and FC SANs, and offering robust networking capabilities and data protection. As a versatile VMware alternative, VergeOS truly converges data center tiers into an efficient environment, allowing organizations to leverage existing investments and adapt to future technologies. This combination of compatibility, enhanced performance, and cost savings makes VergeOS’ UCI a very practical choice for modernizing IT infrastructure.

Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: , ,

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Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a vital part of any IT decision, and the TCO of a VMware alternative is no exception. Our recent survey of VMware customers found that IT professionals are looking for a VMware alternative to do more than just lower licensing costs. They are looking for a solution that can lower the cost of the entire infrastructure, both upfront and long-term. The problem is that most alternatives focus solely on upfront license costs, masking simplicity behind strict hardware requirements, eventually increasing the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Reducing Infrastructure Operation Costs

Lowering the TCO of a VMware alternative requires that IT can reduce one of the most significant costs outside of the license, which is the time cost of people operating it. The problem is that most alternatives use a similar approach to deliver infrastructure services as VMware. They use a layer or stacked approach, squeezing separate pieces of software onto a server. However, VMware alternative vendors complicate things because they typically use open-source components that were not originally designed to work together. They try to emulate integration by adding a “custom” graphical user interface (GUI).

The layered approach, correctly labeled “the stack,” adds significant overhead and slows down operations as the loosely connected components try to exchange information between themselves. Each layer in the stack often requires a virtual machine and its high-availability functionality. When you navigate this stack, its overhead becomes evident as you interact with the GUI. Once burdened with only a few dozen virtual machines, the interface can take 30 seconds or more to refresh or update with each interaction. This refresh time leads to hours a day waiting for screen refreshes.

VergeOS – Integrated Operational Simplicity

the TCO of a VMware alternative

VergeOS is unique in the infrastructure software market in that it provides a fully integrated solution. There is no stack. A single piece of software provides all the functionality that the above VMware Alternatives try to cobble together. VergeOS includes an enterprise-class hypervisor, storage services, and networking functionality. The result is an operational experience that enables IT professionals to move through their day seamlessly. As our customer, SkiBig3 stated in a recent webinar, “I don’t spend all day in the VergeIO interface. I get what I need to get done and then take care of other tasks. Managing infrastructure is something I get done a few minutes per day instead of hours.”

Reducing Infrastructure Hardware Costs

Lowering infrastructure hardware costs can also lower the TCO of a VMware Alternative. The problem is that most alternatives deliver the exact opposite. In the name of “simplification,” they require that you purchase a turnkey solution from them or buy hardware from a certified vendor. The configurations are often designed to compensate for the inefficiency of their stack.

In addition, most VMware alternatives lack built-in, integrated storage functionality and networking capabilities, or they use a stand-alone open-source component. This shortcoming either forces customers to purchase dedicated storage arrays and network appliances for routing and firewalls or learn and configure another piece of infrastructure software.

VergeOS – Bring Your Own Hardware

Over 95% of the organizations we speak to have server hardware suitable for hosting VergeOS. This support flexibility is another of the by-products of delivering a fully integrated solution. At VergeIO, we have never forced customers to upgrade hardware to support an upcoming version of VergeOS. Our customers often mix six-year-old hardware with three-month-old hardware and manage it all from a single instance of our solution. The result is an infrastructure that evolves with your needs and the practicality of hardware innovation.

Integrating storage and networking services into VergeOS means that IT professionals can gradually eliminate the need for dedicated storage arrays and networking appliances. This integration has the added benefit that the entire infrastructure is now aware that they exist. For example, VergeOS integrates deduplication at its core, which means both the hypervisor and network are “dedupe aware.” The result is that the deduplication, since it is integrated into the core of VergeIO, lowers compute and networking requirements in addition to storage capacity.

Reducing Infrastructure Upgrade Costs

the TCO of a VMware alternative

Part of reducing the TCO of a VMware alternative is ensuring that the cost of upgrading the infrastructure doesn’t become prohibitive. Customers are looking to escape the VMware practice of no longer supporting certain hardware as new versions of its software are released. Given infrastructure software’s potential to provide high availability and redundancy, IT professionals should be free to run existing hardware for years while gradually mixing in newer hardware. Organizational demand should drive hardware upgrades, not software inefficiencies.

The turnkey hardware approach and strict hardware compatibility guides that some infrastructure software vendors employ make upgrades difficult. In most cases, all the servers must be refreshed at once instead of gradually replaced as needed or required by age. This practice also makes it difficult to solve a specific problem, such as if the infrastructure only needs more storage capacity but not additional computing power.

VergeOS – Future Scale

VergeOS is designed to enable IT professionals to adapt their infrastructure gradually as the needs of the business demand it. It supports dramatically different nodes within the same instance. Servers can be from different vendors, generations or brands of processors, and configurations (storage-heavy, compute-heavy, GPU-enhanced). VergeOS uses off-the-shelf NVMe-Flash and Hard Disk Drives, making capacity less expensive than dedicated storage arrays by a factor of five or more while delivering a robust set of enterprise-class storage services.

VergeOS’s capability to integrate with existing and diverse hardware components underscores its value proposition in reducing the overall TCO. By eliminating the need for dedicated storage arrays and networking appliances and by allowing for a gradual, need-based hardware upgrade path, VergeOS presents a sustainable model that aligns with the practical realities of IT budgeting.

Conclusion

Evaluating the TCO of a VMware alternative requires a holistic approach and an understanding of the triggers that can increase TCO. IT professionals must consider the operational, hardware, and upgrade costs associated with infrastructure software. VergeOS stands out by offering a fully integrated solution that simplifies the operational process and significantly reduces the reliance on expensive, dedicated hardware and the costs associated with upgrading and scaling infrastructure. This integrated approach allows for a seamless operational experience and a more cost-effective, flexible hardware strategy, setting a new standard in the industry for efficiency and adaptability.

Are you ready to map out your VMware Exit? Schedule a 15-minute session with one of our experts, and we will create a custom step-by-step transition guide for you.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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Once IT decides to make the switch, it must answer five VMware migration questions before completing the transition. Of course, before you even get to migration, you need to make sure that your potential new hypervisor will help you reduce costs both upfront and long-term. It also should deliver improved data protection and resiliency.

VMware Migration

Assuming you’ve found a product that makes migration worthwhile, making sure you understand how your potential new hypervisor will address the five VMware migration questions is critical:

  1. How is the migration service delivered?
  2. How much downtime is involved?
  3. Does migrating require new hardware?
  4. Can I migrate gradually?
  5. What is the process for migration?

1. How is VMware Migration Delivered?

The first of the five VMware migration questions focuses on how integrated migration is into the alternative vendor’s solution. Different VMware alternative vendors will use different approaches to deliver their VMware migration capabilities. For some vendors, it is a manual export of the VMware Virtual Machines (VM) and then a manual import of the VMs into their environment. The manual process may cause significant outages as you transfer the VMs between environments. Other vendors use a third-party utility to access vCenter, pull all the VMs over, and then convert them to run within their hypervisor. This method also leads to outages as the migration occurs and often forces an all-at-once cut-over.

In both cases, these migrations are very time-consuming. We’ve seen reports of 30 minutes per VM, which in even a smaller environment of a few dozen VMs is days of copying data before you can begin testing. It is critical to remember that there is a difference between converting a few VMs in a lab environment and rolling the migration service out in production.

VergeOS Integrated Migration

VMware Migration

VergeOS’ ioMigrate function is integrated directly into VergeOS. It then connects directly to vCenter and presents a list of VMware VMs for you to migrate. The transfer to VergeOS is fast; we typically show customers VMware to VergeOS migrations in real time during our demonstrations. During those demonstrations we show the migration and import of five VMware VMs in less than 15 seconds. Also, ioMigrate is not limited to a single VM at a time. You can migrate all of your VMs at once if you need to.

2. How Much Downtime is Involved for a VMware Migration?

The next of the five VMware migration questions to answer concerns downtime. Obviously, you want as little downtime as possible. Obviously, the transfer time mentioned in question one impacts downtime. If it takes 30 minutes to transfer a VM to the new hypervisor, that effectively means the VM has to be “off” for the complete transfer while the VM is being converted and restarted on the new hypervisor. For most alternative solutions, this means that the migration to the new hypervisor is something that has to be done over multiple weekends, which means you have to be running parallel systems for a longer time than you might have hoped.

VergeOS Minimizes Migration Downtime

VMware Migration

VergeOS ioMigrate provides very fast transfers of VMware VMs into our environment, but we don’t convert them to VergeOS VMs until you are ready to test them. ioMigrate also uses change block tracking (CBT) to update these VM copies continuously throughout the day. In this demonstration video, you’ll see that we update them every hour. These CBT transfers are very fast regardless of the size of the original VM.

With ioMigrate, when you are ready to execute the conversion, you will likely do one more quick CBT backup to ensure you have the latest version of the VM. Then you’ll click import, answer a few questions, and in seconds, the VM will boot under VergeOS. Downtime with VergeOS is the time it takes to execute the last CBT backup and to start the VM under VergeOS which equates to a few minutes.

3. Does the VMware Migration Require New Hardware?

The answer to the third of the five VMware migration questions may not be driven by a migration activity. Instead, it may be driven by a business methodology. Many VMware alternatives require that you buy either new hardware from them, or adhere to a very strict certified vendor list, which effectively requires you to buy new hardware.

If your VMware alternative is able to run on your hardware, the capabilities of the hypervisor’s migration function also impact whether or not you still have to buy new hardware. Most in-place migrations will require that you “clear” one of your existing servers, likely running VMware, to accept the new hypervisor. That is to be expected but doing so means that you are limited on the amount of available compute to run production while you are converting. You are also exposing yourself to an outage because you’ve lowered your level of redundancy. If it takes hours or days, you may decide it is more practical to buy at least one new server to start the process with less pressure.

Schedule a quick 15-minute chat with one of our technical experts who can create a custom, step-by-step VMware Exit strategy for your organization.

VergeOS Migration without New Hardware

ioMigrate’s ability to rapidly copy multiple VMs simultaneously and to rapidly update those VMs via CBT means customers can facilitate a safe migration without purchasing additional hardware. As mentioned above, you “clear” one of the servers to receive VergeOS, but thanks to the speed of transfer, updates, and conversions, these customers can bring the VergeIO VMs online very quickly. Plus, VergeOS, for the time you specify, can retain the final VMware image in case something goes wrong in the testing and conversion process. Another advantage is that the efficiency of VergeOS breathes new life into your existing hardware.

4. Can VMware Migration Occur Gradually?

The fourth of the five VMware migration questions focuses on the pace of migration. VMware is infrastructure, and most customers, for good reason, want to take the migration process gradually. The problem is that most migrations are an all-or-nothing proposition. As a result, many customers will take the “safer” route and buy a whole new stack of hardware so they can migrate at a more comfortable pace.

VergeOS, Migrate at Your Pace, Fast or Slow

VergeOS enables your migration to be at the pace you are most comfortable with. ioMigrate can position data for you very quickly and keep it up to date. Many customers only want to migrate a few VMs at a time and test the migrated VMs extensively prior to moving them into production. Using the ioMigrate scheduling function, IT can follow this process of testing a few VMs at a time under VergeOS, while the rest of their VMware environment is constantly being updated behind the scenes with CBT transfers.

5. What’s The VMware Migration Process?

The final of the five VMware migration questions gets into the specific details. With other migration functions, the process is a serial, one-at-a-time VM transfer which itself is very slow. It forces customers to take more of an all-at-once approach to conversion, which leads to multiple long weekends to complete the task.

VergeOS’ VMware Migration Process

As mentioned above, the typical process is to “clear” one of your VMware servers by migrating your VMware VMs to other VMware hosts. Then, on the “cleared” server, remove VMware from it and install VergeOS. Optionally, if you have enough capacity on the first VergeOS server use ioMigrate to migrate ALL the VMware virtual machines over. Essentially you are doing a backup of your VMware environment. Then, using ioMigrate, set up a schedule to keep all these VMs up to date using frequent CBT backups.

With all the VMware VMs captured, you can now import your first group of VMs into VergeOS using the process mentioned above and demonstrated in this video. First, shut down your first set of VMware VMs, do one final CBT backup, and import the VMs into VergeOS. Test them to ensure everything is working as expected and make them available to users. Given VergeOS’s resource efficiency, you should be able to put enough VMs into production on the VergeOS host to “clear” another VMware host and convert it to VergeOS. You’ll repeat this process by importing more VMs into VergeOS, which clears additional VMware hosts, which are then re-imaged with VergeOS and integrated into the VergeIO instance.

With the five VMware migration questions resolved, you’ll have everything converted, and you’ll be ready to enjoy all the capabilities of VergeOS, like our recently announced ioGuardian, which maintains application availability even during multiple drive or server failures. Join us tomorrow for a live webinar and demonstration unveiling ioGuardian. After all you should get more from your VMware alternative than just a better price.

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: ,

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Ann Arbor, Mich, March 12, 2024 VergeIO, a leader in innovative software solutions, today launches ioGuardian for VergeOS, a cutting-edge backup solution designed to enhance data resilience and minimize downtime in the face of multiple drive or node failures. ioGuardian sets a new standard for backup and recovery processes by offering inline recovery capabilities, ensuring near-continuous data access without the need for traditional recovery timeframes.

Seamless Inline Recovery

ioGuardian for VergeOS is not just another backup solution; it is a paradigm shift in how businesses protect and access their critical data. Unlike conventional backup appliances that require significant downtime for data recovery, ioGuardian delivers missing data segments to virtual machines (VMs) in real time. Real-time data delivery means that even in scenarios where the primary VergeOS instance suffers from multiple drive failures, VMs can continue operating without any perceptible downtime, thus maintaining business continuity and enhancing overall productivity.

Simplified Requirements, Enhanced Deduplication

There is no additional software to buy. Integration of ioGuardian capabilities directly into VergeOS simplifies the backup process for customers and lowers costs. Only an additional server configured and licensed as the ioGuardian target is needed, which can be an older server or storage system capable of running VergeOS. Thanks to VergeOS’ global inline deduplication, the ioGuardian server requires minimal capacity planning, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. The asynchronous data transfer allows for the use of hard disk drives instead of flash, further reducing costs without compromising on reliability.

Optimized Data Protection

ioGuardian leverages VergeOS snapshots, usually taken hourly, to tighten both Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). This frequent snapshot replication capability enables businesses to recover to the last known good state quickly in the event of a serious outage like multiple drive failures. Moreover, by adjusting RAM allocation, customers can achieve even more frequent snapshots, narrowing the RPO further without affecting system performance.

Superior to Instant Recovery

While some backup solutions offer instant recovery by restarting VMs on a backup appliance, ioGuardian’s inline recovery nearly eliminates downtime. Data is provided to VMs instantaneously maintaining operations on the primary instance and avoiding the performance penalties associated with running on backup hardware. This approach not only obviates the need for IT intervention during recovery but also offers an unparalleled RPO of less than an hour.

Strategic On-premises and Remote Placement

For optimal data protection, ioGuardian servers are best placed both on-premises and at a remote location. This dual-server approach ensures that data can still be recovered from the remote ioGuardian server in the event of a local disaster, providing an additional layer of security and peace of mind for businesses.

VergeOS is committed to empowering businesses with reliable, efficient, and innovative solutions like ioGuardian. By integrating advanced backup and recovery functionalities directly into VergeOS, we are setting new benchmarks for data protection and accessibility in the industry.

Business continuity and DR is or should be an organizational priority,” said Marc Staimer, President Dragon Slayer Consulting. “Minimal downtime from an outage with non-disruptive recoveries are by far the most challenging aspect of all data protection. VergeIO’s ioGuardian is a highly effective data protection software defined technology specifically designed to cost effectively do just that.”  

For more information on ioGuardian for VergeOS, please visit our website, contact us, or join our webinar “Can Your Hypervisor Do This?”

About VergeIO

VergeIO is the leading VMware Alternative. Unlike hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), its ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) rotates the traditional IT stack (computing, storage, and networking) into an integrated data center operating environment, VergeOS. Its efficiency enables greater workload density using existing hardware while improving data resiliency. The result is dramatically lower costs, improved availability, and greatly simplified IT.

Media Contact:
Judy Smith, JPR Communications
818-522-9673
[email protected]

Filed Under: Press Release Tagged With: ,

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While instant recovery was a critical step forward, customers are now looking for an instant recovery upgrade. The next advancement of recovery needs to maintain its point-in-time independence while shrinking recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). Traditional methods of data recovery can often lead to significant downtime, disrupt business operations, and lead to potential revenue loss. Instant recovery has filled that gap for a decade, but now customers need more. VergeOS’ ioGuardian for VergeOS is changing the landscape by offering real-time data recovery.

Understanding Real-time Recovery with ioGuardian

ioGuardian for VergeOS is a backup solution integrated into VergeOS. It is an instant recovery upgrade. Unlike conventional backup software, it offers inline recovery capabilities that ensure continuous data access, even in scenarios where traditional hardware failure protections fail, such as during multiple drive or node failures. Even instant recovery might cause delays, but ioGuardian delivers missing data segments to virtual machines (VMs) inline, enabling operations to continue without downtime.

One of ioGuardian’s key benefits is its ability to tighten RPOs and RTOs. It achieves this through the use of VergeOS snapshots, which can be executed frequently based on the customer’s needs, ensuring more regular data protection and inline recovery. This approach enables ioGuardian to provide real-time recovery of missing data segments, ensuring VMs can continue their operations seamlessly without crashing or requiring a separate recovery process. These capabilities are included in VergeOS at no additional charge other than licensing the server used for ioGuardian.

Setting Up Real-time Recovery

An Instant Recovery Upgrade

The setup for ioGuardian involves configuring a dedicated server as the ioGuardian target, which can be an older, repurposed server or storage system capable of running VergeOS. It runs outside the production instance and represents a third copy of data beyond the protections built-in to the production VergeOS instance. Since it is also running VergeOS, it also provides global inline deduplication, so the storage capacity needed for the ioGuardian server is optimized, allowing for reduced data transfer and footprint. Additionally, placing an ioGuardian server on-premises and at a remote location can enhance data recovery efforts by providing access to data blocks from multiple sources if needed.

Comparing Instant Recovery to Real-time Recovery

While there are a lot of rapid recovery technologies on the market, instant recovery was the former state-of-the-art. The concept offered by several backup vendors aims to quickly re-instantiate a VM on a backup appliance. While this method can be effective, it typically requires downtime for the VM to restart on the backup appliance. It is also hosted on the backup appliance, which might not offer the same performance as the primary system to the point that even though recovery is “instant,” performance is so bad that IT can’t use it.

Moreover, instant recovery often involves manual intervention from IT staff due to limitations in how often entire environments are protected and how available the IT team is. The actual RTO could range between four to eight hours. Also, instant recovery requires another manual intervention for IT to move the VM back into the production environment eventually. This may also cause an outage while the movement occurs.

When the drives are replaced, instant recovery does not aid in restoring those drives. Recovery requires a manual and complete restoration of the impacted volumes. Even a RAID rebuild will likely not work, and if it does, it will be very time-consuming and extract a performance toll.

An Instant Recovery Upgrade

As an instant recovery upgrade, ioGuardian’s inline recovery method introduces potentially no downtime. It provides the missing data segments to VMs in real-time, bypassing the need for IT intervention and achieving an instant RTO with an RPO of minutes. Furthermore, VMs continue running from the primary production hardware, avoiding the performance drawbacks of running on a backup appliance. As a result, an outage to move the VM back to the production environment is eliminated. Lastly, when the failed drives are replaced, the ioGuardian server rebuilds the data on those drives automatically, avoiding further restoration or time-consuming RAID rebuilds.

Conclusion

The real-time and instant data recovery comparison highlights the advanced capabilities and benefits of inline recovery solutions like ioGuardian for VergeOS. IoGuardian sets a new data backup and recovery standard by providing real-time data recovery without downtime or manual IT intervention. As businesses rely heavily on their data, adopting innovative recovery solutions while keeping costs in check will ensure operational continuity and resilience in the face of data loss challenges.

To learn more, register for our upcoming webinar, “Can Your Hypervisor Do This? Real-Time and Inline Data Recovery” We spotlight VergeOS’s ioGuardian capabilities, challenging the status quo of hypervisor functionality. Learn what it would take and how much it would cost for other hypervisors to deliver similar capabilities. We will also demonstrate live how ioGuardian delivers missing data segments to virtual machines (VMs), maintaining continuous operations even during multiple simultaneous hardware failures.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: ,

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The decision to use a vSAN vs. dedicated arrays is one that IT professionals continue to wrestle with. Despite the theoretical pricing and scaling advantages of a virtualized storage solution, dedicated storage arrays like All-flash SAN arrays or Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems are still the dominant choices.

In a contest between vSAN vs. dedicated arrays, why does legacy vSAN technology continually lose? Legacy vSAN technology is hampered by inefficient software code and lack of integration, which forces customers to buy more hardware than they should have to, upgrade that hardware before it reaches the end of life, and compromise on capabilities. For these reasons, customers feel they have no choice but to purchase a dedicated array.

In this post, we dive into the intricacies of creating a blueprint for a better vSAN so it can win the vSAN vs. dedicated arrays debate and organizations can benefit from a significant reduction in costs. This new blueprint needs to rectify the limitations of existing solutions like VMware’s vSAN and achieve, even exceed, feature parity with dedicated all-flash arrays while leveraging its cost advantages over traditional dedicated storage architectures.

Understanding vSAN

At its core, a vSAN is a storage software explicitly designed for a virtualized environment. It scales capacity and performance by adding nodes to the infrastructure and allows for utilizing commodity server-class storage media within the servers that host the hypervisor. The ideal vSAN architecture dramatically reduces storage costs, simplifies storage design and operations, and eliminates the need for overpriced storage controllers and the excessive markup on storage media.

Improve vSAN: The Blueprint

Improve vSAN Efficiency – Integrating the Hypervisor

A fundamental flaw in many vSAN solutions is their operation as standalone storage solutions, independent of the hypervisor. This separation leads to metadata redundancies and a performance bottleneck, as storage I/O is sometimes deprioritized in favor of hypervisor activities. The separation also leads to complexity as the environment scales. Each software component needs a separate communication path between nodes and must coordinate with the other software layers within the same node. As the environment scales, internal node performance is compromised, and the overhead of east-west traffic limits scalability to about eight to twelve nodes per instance.

By contrast, a better vSAN solution, exemplified by VergeIO’s approach, incorporates the hypervisor, a management GUI, and network functionality into a single efficient codebase. This integration enhances VM density and performance across compute and storage I/O, demonstrating a significant advancement over existing vSAN technologies and even dedicated all-flash arrays. An integrated approach also optimizes node-to-node communication activities, eliminating the east-west traffic overhead that often limits the scalability of legacy vSAN architectures. VergeOS’ implementation enables it to win the vSAN vs. dedicated arrays debate.

Improve vSAN Flexibility – Overcoming Hardware Constraints

The traditional response to inefficiencies in vSAN solutions has been to add more hardware:

  • More servers or nodes
  • More processors per server
  • More RAM per server
  • More sophisticated networking hardware
vSAN vs. dedicated arrays

Because most licensing is driven by the number of processors or cores in the environment, the hypervisor software costs also rise dramatically, especially as new features or capabilities are implemented.

A better vSAN solution’s efficiency means less hardware. It leaves more processor and RAM resources to the hypervisor and its single communication path, especially if the unified solution includes networking capabilities, which means IT can leverage commodity switches, further lowering costs.

Lower vSAN Capacity Requirements Without Increasing Server Costs

Another aspect of the vSAN vs. dedicated arrays debate is data efficiency, achieved through methods like deduplication, and is crucial for reducing storage costs. Dedicated arrays seemingly have the upper hand since, although they raise hardware costs, they can dedicate processing power and RAM to the task. However, the addition of deduplication in many vSAN technologies has been an afterthought, leading to even more performance issues. Customers typically find deduplication’s additional requirements of more processing power and RAM capacity quickly erase the capacity-cost savings of deduplication.

VergeIO’s integrated approach embeds deduplication at its core, offering a cost-effective way to enhance capacity efficiency without necessitating additional hardware investments. Its economical use of processing power and RAM means customers can benefit from the 3:1 or greater efficiencies of deduplication at no additional cost in hardware.

Improve vSAN Availability – Intelligent Drive Failure Protection

Protecting against drive failures is non-negotiable for any storage solution. A drive failure must be handled seamlessly without interrupting data access. While most solutions include this, they come with more compromises, mostly in terms of recovery impact. With legacy RAID or Erasure Coding, application performance is greatly impacted during a failed state since it must calculate missing data in real-time while it is also trying to rebuild the failed drive. Performance impact while in a failed state is not a vSAN vs. dedicated array issue since both essentially use the same decades-old strategies.

VergeOS, once again, distinguishes itself by forgoing hardware RAID and complicated software-based protection schemes in favor of a more intelligent, device-level approach that ensures data access continuity and eliminates the impact on application performance during drive failures. VergeOS knows the exact location of each data segment down to the device level and the location of its redundant counterpart and can seamlessly serve up the missing data without additional processing overhead.

Improve vSAN Data Protections – Snapshots that Act Like Clones

The ability to manage snapshots effectively is another area where traditional vSAN solutions falter, often due to limitations in snapshot numbers and the complexity of metadata management. As a result, if the customer uses vSAN snapshots at all, it is typically to feed a backup process. The limitations of the implementation do not allow them to be used for backup and recovery effectively. Snapshot limitations are again not part of the vSAN vs. dedicated array debate since, although it is more pronounced with vSAN technology; both suffer from the same limitations.

vSAN vs. dedicated arrays


VergeIO’s snapshot technology, powered by ioClone, transforms snapshots to behave like complete, immutable, independent copies of the source, simplifying metadata management and enabling unlimited snapshots without performance degradation or impacting capacity. Snapshots can be taken frequently and retained indefinitely, making them a critical component in our ioFortify ransomware resiliency solution.

Drive failure protection and data resiliency is only part of the capabilities of VergeOS. Watch our on-demand webinar to learn about our complete high-availability and resiliency capabilities.

Conclusion

By streamlining functions into a single codebase and incorporating advanced features such as built-in deduplication and intelligent drive failure protection, VergeIO redefines the standards for vSANs. This innovative approach, coupled with the utilization of commodity hardware and enhanced data efficiency, positions VergeOS to offer unmatched performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. This paradigm shift challenges conventional storage models and unveils new opportunities for organizations to refine their infrastructures, ensuring robustness, flexibility, and readiness to meet the demands of the contemporary data landscape.

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Filed Under: Storage