George Crump

by

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: ,

by

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: ,

by

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.

  • Schedule a technical whiteboard session to dive deeper into VergeOS’ capabilities.

Filed Under: Storage

by

overcome DR cost and complexity

IT professionals trying to implement disaster recovery (DR) plans that enable their organizations to survive, struggle to overcome DR cost and complexity. The problem is that most solutions don’t take a holistic approach. Instead, current solutions require IT to use a DR component for each tier of the data center infrastructure: storage, applications, and networking, which not only increases cost and complexity but lowers the likelihood that a recovery will be successful.

VergeOS’ holistic approach greatly simplifies DR to the extent that it “just works,” while lowering costs. In addition to unprecedented DR capabilities, VergeOS provides complete high availability and data protection. Learn in our upcoming live webinar and demonstration, “The Missing Fourth Tier of Convergence: High Availability, Data Protection, and Disaster Recovery.”

The DR Problem with Array-Based Replication

overcome DR cost and complexity

Storage systems are a primary focus of any DR solution. Replicating data from a primary site to a secondary site is table stakes for any enterprise solution, and most storage vendors provide such a capability with their products. However, including replication still requires IT to overcome DR cost and complexity issues and makes it very difficult for them to overcome DR cost and complexity.

Dedicated storage arrays, that include replication, often require the same or a very similar storage array in the DR site. As we discussed in our article “The High Cost of Dedicated Storage,” storage vendors already markup the cost of their solutions 5X to 10X the regular cost of hardware, and now, to protect their organizations from a disaster, IT must pay that markup twice.

Creating a separate disaster recovery process for the storage system creates complexity when executing recovery. Storage replication only replicates the data on that dedicated device. If the customer, as many do, has multiple storage systems from different vendors, they need a separate replication process for each system.

In addition, most customers do not place all their data on the storage area network (SAN) or the network-attached storage (NAS). Many customers at least boot their virtualized environments from local storage and many store critical aspects of the application on storage within those local servers. Also, array-based replication will not capture any network configurations and settings. Those need to be separately captured and applied at the disaster recovery site.

As a result, array-based replication, which is by far the most common means of complying with a disaster recovery requirement, is incomplete, complex, and expensive. It forces IT to manage a separate disaster recovery process for each storage system and maintain separate processes for the application tier and the network infrastructure.

The DR Problem with Hypervisor-Based Replication

To overcome DR cost and complexity of array-based replication, some solutions will replicate at the hypervisor, from hypervisor vendors like VMware and standalone third parties like Zerto, now owned by HPE. These solutions capture and replicate data from a virtual machine perspective. The likelihood of success increases if the organization stores all its data within the virtual machines. However, most organizations do not and have separate data storage silos. Hypervisor-based replication also enables replication to disparate storage hardware.

There are challenges to hypervisor-based replication. First and foremost is the cost. These solutions are dramatically more expensive than even array-based replication. The second challenge is that hypervisor-based replication often will not pick up unique storage settings at each location, so the storage infrastructure has to be correctly maintained. Finally, hypervisor-based replication cannot capture all the unique network configurations unless the network is software-defined.

As a result, when performing a disaster recovery test or recovering from a declared disaster, hypervisor-based replication takes significant amounts of time to apply last-minute updates to the DR site, which delays the speed at which the organization can recover from the disaster. Each last-minute step is also a potential point for human error, which can delay the recovery process even further.

Solve the DR Problem with VergeOS

overcome DR cost and complexity

VergeOS’ unique multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDC) provide a holistic disaster recovery solution where every aspect of the data center is captured and replicated in a single movement, enabling IT to overcome DR cost and complexity.

A VDC is an encapsulation of the entire data center, similar to how a virtual machine is an encapsulation of a physical server. A VDC contains all of the components of the data center: all the VMs, all the network settings, and all the storage settings. This encapsulation means IT can perform VM-like movement functions to the entire data center.

While there are many use cases for Virtual Data Centers, the most common is to implement them as part of a DR strategy. To establish a DR site, IT only needs to copy the VDC to their DR site and establish an asynchronous replication between the two. The remote VDC benefits from VergeOS always-on global inline deduplication. Multiple sites can replicate to a single disaster recovery site, and only data unique to the entire global footprint must be transmitted.

In the event of a disaster, the DR copy of the VDC is perfect, containing all the components and configuration settings of the original data center, even the network settings. The DR site can contain different server, storage, and network hardware than the primary, and everything will still function as expected because the VDC has abstracted everything from the physical hardware.

Every infrastructure component is securely stored at the DR site so that recovery occurs seamlessly without last-minute configuration updates. When IT needs to perform a DR test or recover from a real-life disaster, it “just works.”

IT just needs to make the VDC instance active and direct users to start logging into it. Most VergeOS customers report a dramatic reduction in the time and effort to perform their DR tests, and 100% of those impacted by an actual disaster have been able to execute a rapid, successful recovery. In short VergeIO customers have overcome DR cost and complexity.

Lowering Disaster Recovery Costs with VergeOS

Not only does VergeOS simplify disaster recovery, but it also lowers its costs. VergeOS is a single piece of software that integrates virtualization, storage, networking, as well as high availability, and disaster recovery into a cohesive operating environment. As a result, VergeOS includes all of the above functionality in the core software product at no additional charge. The cost savings are dramatic when comparing the cost of a multi-component disaster recovery solution to VergeOS’ holistic DR approach. Many customers report reducing their DR total cost of ownership (TCO) by 60% or more. When customers add the savings of eliminating double-marked-up storage costs and proprietary networking hardware, they can reduce their TCO by 80%.

Conclusion

IT professionals have long struggled to overcome DR cost and complexity. VergeOS offers a simplified and cost-effective DR solution integrated into the platform’s core instead of a never-ending series of expensive add-ons.

VergeOS integrates virtualization, storage, networking, high availability, and disaster recovery into a single software solution, eliminating the need for multiple components and significantly reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO). VergeOS’s multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDC) streamline the process, capturing all data center components in one movement, ensuring seamless recovery.

In today’s unpredictable business landscape, VergeOS revolutionizes disaster recovery, making it efficient and affordable for organizations.

Filed Under: Protection Tagged With: ,

by

Many IT Professionals disqualify Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) as a VMware Alternative because they feel that overcoming HCI shortcomings is more expensive than continuing to use legacy three-tier architectures. These shortcomings are in areas where HCI was initially intended to excel: price, performance, scalability, and simplicity.

Overcoming HCI shortcomings led the VergeIO team to start from a clean slate and create the industry’s first UltraConverged Infrastructure (UCI) solution, VergeOS. It provides a superior, cost-effective alternative to HCI and the traditional three-tier infrastructure. Watch our on-demand webinar, “Beyond HCI” for a comparison of VergeOS’ UCI to the VMware and Nutanix HCI solutions.

In this article, we will explore the critical shortcomings of HCI, which lead IT planners to continue to leverage dedicated infrastructure, and how UCI overcomes them.

Can HCI Deliver Better CPU Performance?

The short answer is no. HCI can’t outperform the traditional three-tier architecture, which has dedicated hardware powering each tier. The reason is that HCI uses shared hardware to power at least four separate software packages, to deliver:


1) A package that contains the core operating system and the hypervisor.
2) A package that contains the storage software.
3) A package that contains the network software.
4) A package that contains the management software.

Each of these packages consumes CPU resources, and HCI’s lack of integration between them means it discards the potential gains in efficiency that combining them into a single code base would deliver. IT must install these packages as separate entities, making installation more complex. Then, once they are all installed and running and IT is ready to create a VM for the organization instead of for infrastructure, they’ve already lost as much as 20% of the CPU resources. To compensate, HCI requires the purchase of more powerful (and expensive) servers.

Another challenge is that as your application executes within the VM, it is probably running through much of the above stack. It uses the CPU to process requests from users. It is using storage IO to read and write data. It is using network resources to receive that input and deliver results. Finally, the VM’s health is reported to a management console in order to report on its health. Each transaction that the application executes is mired down in overhead.

The inefficiency of the code base forces HCI vendors into a predictable pattern of making customers buy turnkey hardware and software solutions from them, or buy new hardware using a strict hardware compatibility matrix. The required hardware must also be overpowered to compensate for the inefficiency, increasing costs.

UCI Delivers Near Bare Metal Performance

Can HCI Deliver Better CPU Performance

The fundamental difference between UCI and HCI is that UCI goes the extra step and eliminates the four separate software modules listed above. Instead, it integrates them into a cohesive code base, increasing resource efficiency. VergeIO typically uses less than 3-5% of CPU resources. The efficiency of resources also improves each VM transaction since no layers of code are involved in each request.

VergeIO customers consistently report measurable improvement in performance-demanding VMs and increased VM density while using existing hardware. Many VergeIO customers even report virtualizing formerly bare metal workloads and seeing a performance improvement.

Can HCI Deliver Better Storage Performance?

Concerns over storage performance are the number one reason customers will disqualify HCI in favor of dedicated three-tier architectures. Storage performance and storage scalability are very legitimate concerns for HCI vendors. First, most HCI vendors don’t use their own storage software. Often, they use an open-source solution like ZFS or CEPH, which were not designed for the unique requirements of providing storage services to a virtualized infrastructure. The solution remains convoluted even if they have their storage code.

Because of the lack of integration, HCI vendors have stumbled through implementing advanced drive failure protection and storage efficiency algorithms like deduplication. Adding these capabilities post-facto adds another layer to an already complex combination of software. For this reason, most vendors force customers to choose between storage efficiency and advanced drive redundancy.

Can HCI Deliver Better Storage Performance

UCI Delivers Better Storage Performance

The storage performance delivered by a UCI solution like VergeOS can outperform an HCI solution and a dedicated storage array while significantly reducing the storage cost. VergeOS correctly balances storage efficiency and storage performance. Its deep integration into the core software enables features like drive failure protection and global inline deduplication to work without adversely impacting performance.

Can HCI Deliver Better Scale?

By its very nature, HCI is scale-out, so scale should be an advantage, but once again, it falls short. Most HCI solutions require three servers (nodes) to start. It forces many small data centers to use two servers and a SAN or NAS. Many of these customers would benefit from a simple two-node solution that includes all the storage and networking functionality within those nodes.

HCI also doesn’t meet the scaling demands of enterprises. Most HCI solutions can only scale to eight nodes per instance before network traffic becomes challenging. They also have to buy similar nodes with each upgrade. If their needs change, they have to start an entirely separate instance of the HCI environment. As a result, many customers opt for the legacy three-tier architecture because each tier can be scaled independently of the other.

UCI Delivers Better Scale

Overcoming HCI shortcomings requires an infrastructure that is flexible and can adapt to the changing demands of the organization.

As we explain in our article “The Full Value of Scale”, a UCI solution like VergeOS delivers a three-dimensional scale. It can start with as few as two nodes, making it ideal for small data centers and remote offices, but it can also scale to hundreds of nodes to meet the needs of the most demanding enterprise. Nodes within the VergeOS instance can be different from each other. Customers can use nodes that provide balanced compute and storage, or mainly compute, or mostly storage, have GPUs installed, or any combination of the above.

Why is HCI More Expensive than Legacy Three Tier?

HCI should have a significant price advantage over legacy three-tier infrastructure. By definition, it is supposed to use off-the-shelf commodity servers, storage, and network hardware. However, this is seldom the case. Under the guise of “making it easy to install and support,” these vendors either require you to buy a turnkey hardware and software solution from them, require you to buy a specific configuration from one of their “certified” hardware vendors, or have a rigorous hardware compatibility list.

The inefficiency of layering virtualization software, storage software, and networking software as three separate software packages also drives up the cost of HCI. Customers must buy much more powerful nodes to support the additional overhead.

UCI Delivers Better TCO and ROI

Overcoming HCI shortcomings requires an infrastructure that can deliver the promise of reduced cost and simplified operations.

VergeOS’ tight integration of the hypervisor, storage, and networking software means customers can actually use off-the-shelf storage from whichever vendor they choose. This flexibility means there is no need to pay a premium for a so-called turnkey solution. Additionally, because VergeOS is licensed by the physical server, not the contents of that server, as you scale your environment, you can use quad-socket servers with massive core counts and not get crushed in licensing costs.

As we discuss in our article “The High Cost of Dedicated Storage”, VergeOS also dramatically lowers the cost of storage. You can use off-the-shelf server-class flash and hard disk drives, eliminating the 5X to 10X markup levied by dedicated storage array vendors.

The savings even follow through to the network. With VergeOS, you can use off-the-shelf commodity switches. When ready, you can replace dedicated network appliances like firewalls with VergeOS’ built-in L2 and L3 networking capabilities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) makes a poor foundation for an alternative to VMware, particularly in CPU performance, storage efficiency, scalability, and cost. Despite HCI’s initial promises of simplifying operations and reducing costs, it typically fails to meet these objectives due to its inherent inefficiencies.

Yet the cost and complexities of three-tier architectures remain. This has led to the development of VergeIO’s UltraConverged Infrastructure (UCI), which addresses HCI’s shortcomings as well as the three-tier challenges. VergeOS integrates infrastructure software modules into a single, cohesive codebase, enhancing performance and scalability while reducing costs. As such, it presents itself as a more viable solution for customers seeking a VMware alternative as well as for those seeking a simpler, more scalable data center infrastructure.

Learn More

Filed Under: HCI Tagged With: , ,

by

In the wake of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, IT professionals are searching for more than just cost-effective options; they are also looking for a simpler VMware alternative that can seamlessly align with their evolving needs. Looking for simplicity does not mean sacrificing capability or data resiliency. It means finding a product that can strike the right balance of all three.

A Simpler VMware Alternative

Most alternatives start by leveraging open-source code for some or all of its offerings. Vendors try to hide the complexity of open-source by providing a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) and forcing the purchase of specific pre-configured hardware. These approaches attempt to hide the complexity that typically plagues open-source software and the wide variety of components required to assemble a complete infrastructure solution.

Simplifying VMware Alternatives: The GUI Problem

Creating an interface that attempts to hide the underlying complexity of a solution creates a myriad of challenges in execution. Like VMware, almost all VMware alternatives are a series of separate applications that must be managed to deliver something that appears to be a complete solution. Switching between these different applications to ensure the infrastructure is configured correctly is challenging and time-consuming. Updating or changing a workload already set up is even more challenging.

The VMware alternative vendors use their GUI in the same way VMware uses vCenter to bring a sense of simplification. The reality is that even the best GUI can only hide so much, and complexity is bound to sneak its way into the day-to-day management of the infrastructure.

There are ramifications for trying to hide the complexity of VMware and its alternatives. The first consequence is performance. In most cases, when the core components of VMware are set up, the customer sacrifices 15% to 20% of CPU resources before they create any virtual machines (VMs) for their needs. The second consequence is a degradation in the responsiveness of that GUI, especially if it needs to display the status of dozens of VMs. Finally, despite all this effort, the environments remain complex.

Simplifying VMware Alternatives: The Appliance Problem

Another method that vendors use to try to provide a simpler alternative to VMware is they either deliver their solution as a turnkey appliance or require that the customers buy from a very restrictive list of certified vendors. This approach may simplify initial installation, but only if the customer is willing to replace their existing server infrastructure, which most are not.

It also adds complexity when the time comes to grow the environment. The customer must continue buying servers very similar to the initial set of servers. As a result, they may eventually be forced into a premature infrastructure refresh because their existing servers are no longer compatible with the servers the vendor is now providing/certifying.

Finally, there is the obvious problem of vendor lock-in. The vendor knows that you must buy your hardware from them, and there is limited motivation for them to continue to provide aggressive pricing.

Simplifying VMware Alternatives: The Storage Problem

The storage that supports VMware and VMware alternatives is always the source of complexity. A simpler VMware Alternative must provide a solution to the high cost and complexity of storage.

Vendors that require external storage inherit all the complexity and high cost of dedicated storage arrays. Vendors that can aggregate internal server-attached storage and serve that capacity up to VMs should be able to lower storage costs. However, this approach doesn’t eliminate storage complexities or lower prices because most VMware alternatives use open-source storage software as a separate module. In most cases, these storage applications were never designed to run across multiple nodes within a cluster, and getting them to support these architectures causes problems in terms of performance, data protection, and scalability. Customers are forced to overcompensate with additional hardware and processing power, raising costs again. Most of the alternatives’ storage features are add-ons, implemented years and, in some cases, decades after the original code was written.

The VMware Alternative Licensing Problem

Finally, these VMware alternatives often share the same licensing complexities as the solution they are trying to replace. Most license their software by the number of CPUs unless that CPU has a lot of cores. If it does, the customer must purchase two licenses on that CPU. For example, for most vendors, a dual-processor server with 36 cores per processor will consume four licenses.

There is also a growing contingent of vendors, VMware among them, switching to per-core licensing, which promises to be even more expensive.

VergeOS – Simplification By The Power of ONE

Over a decade ago, VergeIO started with a single vision: simplify IT. The manifestation of the vision is found in VergeOS. An infrastructure software solution that is simple to learn and operate, but also very powerful.

Simplicity Beyond the GUI

A Single Code base lays the foundation for A Simpler VMware Alternative

The simplicity of VergeOS starts well before the GUI with a single software codebase that cohesively integrates networking, virtualization, and storage services. With VergeIO, there is one package to install to get all the functionality of VMware’s ESXi, vSphere, vCloud Director, vSAN, and NSX. With that unified codebase comes efficiency. VergeOS only consumes about 3-5% of the CPU resources compared to 15%-20% of VMware and its alternatives.

Regarding the GUI, you find an ultra-intuitive interface that is responsive and easy to navigate. Most VMware experts can adapt within hours, and VergeIO customers consistently report accomplishing tasks much more quickly than they used to with VMware.

The Simplicity of Flexibility

A simpler VMware Alternative must provide flexibility. VergeIO is a software company in its purest form. VergeIO does not sell hardware, has no certified vendors, and doesn’t even have a hardware compatibility list. Instead, we rely on a relatively modest set of minimum requirements.

Simplification is also found in its hardware flexibility. VergeOS instances can start with as few as two nodes and scale to hundreds of nodes. Within that instance, various server types with different brands, processors, and storage configurations can exist. VergeOS can be installed onto your existing hardware, and its efficiency can breathe new life into it. The nodes used within the VergeOS instance can evolve, just as your data center must evolve to meet the organization’s ever-changing needs.

Virtualized Storage Made Simple

VergeOS includes its own storage services capability written from scratch, specifically with virtual environments in mind. It includes enterprise-class storage capabilities, including highly efficient global inline deduplication, integrated high availability, data at rest encryption, better-than-backup quality data protection, seamless disaster recovery, and the industry’s only infrastructure-wide ransomware resiliency capabilities.

These capabilities are integrated into the core code, so storage is not subservient to the hypervisor. The result is incredibly high performance and stability.

The Simplification of Support

The rock-solid stability of VergeOS means that the need for technical support is rare, but when you need support, you’ll talk to an actual human. These skilled technicians are passionate about staying with you to solve your infrastructure problems, even if they aren’t related to VergeOS.

Common-Sense Server-Based Licensing

Simplified Licensing is the icing on the cake for A Simpler VMware Alternative

A simpler VMware Alternative must provide simplified pricing. Unlike VMware, which is raising prices and shifting to per-core licensing, the VergeIO licensing model places an exclamation point on its “Simplify IT” vision. Licensing is based on the physical server, not the contents of that server. At VergeIO, we believe that software should not influence hardware purchasing decisions. With VergeOS, you can buy the hardware configuration you need to solve your challenges. The cost of your software won’t double or triple as a result. In most cases, VergeOS is 30% to 50% less expensive than VMware. As you add more robust features and use the VergeOS networking and storage capabilities that VMware charges extra for, those savings quickly increase to 75% or more.

Simple Migration

A simpler VMware Alternative must also provide seamless migration. Migrating from VMware to VergeOS is as simple as it gets: point VergeOS to your vCenter console, select the VMs to migrate, and click import. Within moments, the VM will be running in the VergeOS environment. Our customers constantly tell us that migration took less than 1/3 of the time they initially allocated.

A Simpler VMware Alternative must provide seamless migration

Next Steps

1) Get Pricing and a Plan – Schedule a technical whiteboard session to get pricing, a VISIO diagram of your environment running under VergeOS, and a complete plan to exit VMware.
2) Watch a Migration – Watch a live migration from VMware to VergeOS to see how simple and fast it is.
3) Continue Research – Explore our Blog to learn more about VergeOS as an Alternative to VMware

Filed Under: VMwareExit Tagged With: , , ,