HCI Realities eBook
Chapter One: The Disappointing Reality of Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Many organizations have turned to Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) to consolidate their data center resources and move away from three-tier architectures. However, HCI has faced multiple challenges that impede its efficacy, causing most organizations to stay with the more complex and expensive three-tier architecture. This chapter will delve into the issues associated with HCI and how Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) provides solutions to overcome them.
Lack of true convergence: HCI solutions aim to collapse three data center tiers (compute, networking, and storage) into a single entity. However, these solutions do not actually converge these tiers, it attempts to turn them into a software equivalent; software-defined networking (SDN), hypervisors, and software-defined storage (SDN). Each tier still runs as a separate layer on each node (server) within the HCI cluster. Instead of integration, this packaging results in complexity, especially at scale, and an inability to simultaneously support a wide variety of workloads, eliminating the primary goal of HCI, consolidation.
Limited node flexibility: Legacy HCI solutions often require nodes to be similar to each other, which means organizations have to add all three data center resources simultaneously, even if they only need one. It also forces more frequent refreshes and the creation of additional silos of HCI to support new or different hardware and/or workloads.
Scaling challenges: HCI solutions have limitations on the minimum and maximum number of nodes they can support within a cluster. Although vendors may claim support for large node counts, the overhead of networking and storage management across those nodes makes high-node count clusters impractical. HCI falls short when it comes to scaling small to meet the needs of edge computing and large to meet the needs of growing enterprises.
4️⃣ Virtualization tax: Running applications as virtual machines (VMs) under a hypervisor incurs a performance burden known as the virtualization tax. Most hypervisors can impact performance by 25% or more. HCI solutions exacerbate this issue by running their storage and potentially networking software as VMs, effectively tripling the virtualization tax because each "taxed" VM must access the storage and the network through taxed VMs.
5️⃣ Networking limitations: Legacy HCI solutions typically do not provide networking services, leaving organizations to rely on expensive high-end networking gear or different software-defined networking solutions. This adds costs and complexity to the data center infrastructure.
Introducing Ultraconverged Infrastructure
Ultraconverged Infrastructure solutions, such as VergeIO's VergeOS, go beyond HCI. UCI integrates virtualization, networking, and storage into a cohesive operating environment, providing complete convergence. It is one software package that drastically increases efficiency and eliminates the complexity of patching. Here's how UCI addresses the problems of HCI:
1️⃣ True convergence: UCI creates a unified operating environment that integrates virtualization, networking, and storage. Unlike HCI, where each tier runs separately on each node, UCI eliminates the siloed approach, increasing efficiency, reducing cost, and simplifying operations.
2️⃣ Flexibility: UCI supports radically different types of nodes for specific use cases. There can be nodes with Intel CPUs, others with AMD, and others with GPU. Each node can have mixed media types as well. Some nodes can have NVMe Flash, others SAS Flash and others have SATA SSDs or even hard disk drives. IT can also have some nodes that don't contribute any capacity to the environment, just computing power. VergeOS can start with as few as two nodes, and there is no limit to the number of nodes, enabling scalability from edge computing to growing enterprises.
In summary, UCI, exemplified by VergeOS, offers a more comprehensive and efficient alternative to HCI. By integrating virtualization, networking, and storage into a cohesive operating environment, UCI overcomes the limitations of HCI, providing scalability, flexibility, and improved performance while simplifying operations and reducing costs.
Getting Started with UCI
To adopt UCI, organizations can start by addressing their most pressing IT challenge and gradually consolidate other workloads. Many organizations use VergeIO's IOprotect and leverage VergeOS as a VMware Disaster recovery solution.
By leveraging VergeOS, organizations can eliminate the need for costly and complex replication technologies. VergeOS provides a unified platform that integrates seamlessly with VMware, enabling organizations to leverage their existing investments and skills.
With VergeOS and IOprotect, VMware DR becomes more efficient, affordable, and successful. It eliminates the need for dedicated infrastructure, reduces licensing costs, and simplifies management. As the DR implementation of VergeOS delivers on its promises, IT can use the DR environment to support new workloads and gradually transition existing workloads from VMware to VergeOS.
Next Steps
Next week, we will send you an email with a link to Chapter Two, which dives deeper into the storage challenges of HCI.
Until then, as a Digital Learning Guide Subscriber, you can access the below resources without registration:
• Stream our on-demand webinar, "Beyond HCI," for a competitive comparison of VergeOS to VMware and Nutanix
• Watch our LightBoard video, and watch our CTO and founder, Greg Campbell, chalk-talk through the VergeIO architecture.
You can also sign up for a Test Environment - No need to scrounge up hardware! We can use our virtual data center technology to provide a full working instance of the software. You can familiarize yourself with the interface and the feature set, create virtual machines, and even your own virtual data centers.