Hyperconverged

On-Premises IT Can Learn from MSPs

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There are best practices that on-premises IT can learn from MSPs to streamline operations, improve responsiveness, and enhance efficiency simply by applying them. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Cloud Service Providers are adept at navigating a rapidly evolving technological landscape, under constant pressure to lower costs. They excel in efficiency, scalability, and security across numerous customers while focusing on cost management, data resiliency, and disaster recovery.

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Modernized infrastructure software is critical in enabling MSPs and On-Premises IT to meet these challenges. Modernized infrastructure software combines virtualization services delivered via a hypervisor, storage services, networking services, and cloud services like multi-tenancy.

Applying MSP/CSP Best Practices for Server Longevity

While MSPs/CSPs provide infrastructure to their customers on a subscription basis, they, in most cases, must pay for the hardware upfront. The longer they can extract useful life from that hardware, the better the return on its investment. Maximizing hardware longevity requires infrastructure software with low overhead that leaves more of the available compute resources for customer virtual machines (VMs). It also requires software abstracted from the hardware so that it does not have to remove support for specific hardware configurations as they age and the software advances. Nothing is more frustrating and wasteful than having hardware idle because the software no longer supports it.

In terms of resiliency, the infrastructure software must move beyond no single point of failure, to multiple points of redundancy. Aging hardware is more likely to fail than new hardware; also, maintaining aging hardware under a service contract is more expensive. The infrastructure software should deliver such high levels of redundancy and availability that older servers can run until they fail, and when they fail, there is minimal disruption to operations. This capability also requires the software to be able to mix servers within the infrastructure from different server brands, processor generations, and storage configurations.

On-Premises Server Longevity

On-premises IT can learn from MSPs and use a similar strategy. In these data centers, there are often more than enough computing resources, and the only reason for a server refresh is to maintain warranty coverage. Suppose the infrastructure software can enable these servers to operate safely and with support beyond their original warranty. In that case, the on-premises IT operator can meet the challenge of flat or shrinking IT budgets. If the infrastructure software can also support the intermixing of new and old servers on-premises, IT can gradually add servers to the infrastructure, finally ending the never-ending cycle of storage refreshes and mass migrations.

VergeOS Extends The Life of Servers

VergeOS is unique in infrastructure software. Instead of creating an “IT stack” of loosely coupled software applications, we tightly integrated all infrastructure services into a single code base. This code base includes all the services required for infrastructure, including virtualization services, storage services, networking services, and cloud services. The integration enables VergeOS to deliver near-bare-metal CPU performance, outperform dedicated all-flash arrays, and maximize network efficiency.

VergeOS is also highly portable. It runs on your existing hardware. Its unprecedented level of abstraction from the hardware means that within the same instance, it can support servers of different brands, CPU generations, and storage media types. Six-year-old servers can run alongside six-month-old servers with operational simplicity. As a result, IT can scale its environment from two nodes to over 200 servers within a single instance, and those nodes can come from various server manufacturers with different configurations.

on-premises IT can learn from MSPs

Lastly, VergeOS is resilient. High availability is built into the software. It protects from drive and server failures, and ioGuardian extends the resiliency to withstand multiple drive failures and near-catastrophic server outages. Its Virtual Data Center (VDC) tenant technology, popular with MSPs to isolate customers, also simplifies disaster recovery for on-premises IT because it encapsulates the entire data center as a single, consistent object that makes replication and recovery at a remote site work the first time every time.

Applying MSP/CSP Best Practices for Data Center Density

Successful MSPs/CSPs face the challenge of building highly compact data centers. On-premises IT can learn from MSPs because, like them, they are always looking for ways to reduce their physical footprint, which lowers power and cooling costs. MSPs must also maximize the number of VMs per physical host without compromising performance. This requires an infrastructure software solution that doesn’t burden CPU resources, protects against the disruptive effects of ‘noisy neighbors,’ and has a licensing model that doesn’t penalize customers for investing in robust, dense, quad-processor servers. No one in IT wants to have to explain why the software is twice the price of the hardware.

On-Premises IT Density

On-premises IT operators can benefit from a similar strategy. Imagine cutting the physical server count by two-thirds. While quad-processor servers are more expensive than dual-processor servers, you will need fewer of them, so there is a significant opportunity to reduce server acquisition costs, which will lower power and cooling costs. Using highly dense servers to decrease footprint generally has two problems. First, most infrastructure software solutions are licensed by the number of cores, often making the software more expensive than the server itself.

The second problem is managing potentially double the number of VMs per physical server and protecting against the “noisy neighbor” problem. Most infrastructure software solutions are complex and limited in their ability to isolate workloads.

VergeOS Delivers Affordable Density

VergeOS solves the licensing and noisy neighbor problems. First, it is licensed by the physical host, not by the number of processors or cores. Customers can use the most potent servers without fear of a software penalty. Second, it enables on-premises IT to allocate specific physical hardware resources to specific VDCs. Mission-critical or performance-sensitive workloads could be placed in a particular VDC, and resources could be hard allocated to those VDCs and made available exclusively to those workloads.

Applying MSP/CSP Best Practices for Security

Security is a, if not the, top concern of MSPs. If, for example, ransomware sneaks its way into their environment because of a careless customer, all the customers in their environment could potentially be impacted. They must ensure they invest in capabilities to detect an attack, minimize its impact, and rapidly recover customers in the event of a ransomware detonation. MSPs are looking to move away from the multiple-point solutions they are using to protect and recover from the various attack angles. Instead, they are looking for software that takes an infrastructure-wide approach that is resilient to an attack and can aid recovery.

On-Premises IT Security

On-premises IT can learn from MSPs’ attention to security details. Ransomware protection and recovery are priorities for all organizations, not just MSPs. While the scope of the ransomware event may not be as broad, on-premises IT doesn’t have the same time, budget, or personnel available as MSPs. In addition to the MSP requirements of limiting the attack surface, detection, and recovery, simplicity must be added to the on-premises IT requirements.

VergeOS Delivers Ransomware Resiliency

Storage Features Only

VergeOS takes an infrastructure-wide approach to ransomware protection and recovery. First, it uses multi-factor authentication for all login attempts. Second, when VergeOS is installed, it is installed read-only so that it cannot be modified during an attack. When a VDC is created, a read-write copy of VergeOS is placed inside the VDC. If the OS within the VDC is ever compromised, a quick refresh of the VDC loads a new copy of VergeOS. Each VDC is firewalled off from the others, so an attack within the VDC will not spread to other VDCs. Our alert subscription technology powers our ioFortify product, and you can build an alerting mechanism that allows you to receive near real-time notifications in the event of an attack. We’ve demonstrated this capability on multiple live webinars where we’ve detected an attack within five minutes. Finally, our snapshots are read-only and protected from attack.

All of these capabilities work together to enable you to limit the spread of an attack, detect an attack quickly, and recover to the last known good snapshot prior to the attack within minutes. A typical recovery time for a VergeOS customer to successfully recover from and eliminate a ransomware attack is less than thirty minutes.

Conclusion

On-premises IT can learn from MSPs by adopting their best practices. These practices enhance efficiency, scalability, security, and cost management. Modern infrastructure software, like VergeOS, integrates virtualization, storage, networking, and cloud services, extending server longevity and supporting diverse hardware configurations while ensuring high availability and reducing the need for frequent server refreshes. This approach achieves greater data center density with efficient resource utilization and cost-effective licensing models. VergeOS enhances security with features like multi-factor authentication, read-only OS installations, and isolated Virtual Data Centers (VDCs), ensuring rapid recovery from cyber threats.

Integrate HCI into a Three-Tier Architecture

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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

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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.

Overcoming HCI Shortcomings

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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.

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HCI as a VMware Alternative

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VMware’s recent price increases, a singular focus on large accounts, and declining support quality have IT professionals within small to medium-sized data centers looking at HCI as a VMware alternative. To provide that alternative hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), solutions must deliver on a set of crucial requirements, or the organization may find itself in a worse position than putting up with the state of VMware affairs.

Top Three Requirements for HCI as a VMware Alternative

  1. Use a non-VMware Hypervisor at a lower cost
  2. A seamless VMware Exit
  3. Provide a superior data protection experience

    HCI VMware Alternatives Can’t Run VMware

    While it may seem obvious that using HCI as a VMware alternative requires not using VMware as your hypervisor, most HCI solutions on the market require VMware. These HCI products are not HCI at all; they are software-defined storage solutions (SDS) that run as a virtual machine (VM) within VMware.

    These SDS, as HCI solutions and their customers, are still entirely at the mercy of VMware’s pricing and support antics. In addition, by running storage as a VM instead as an equal citizen to the hypervisor, the storage performance on these solutions is subject to the same virtualization tax as any other application running within a VM. This tax can impact I/O performance by as much as 25%. Even HCI solutions that don’t use VMware, if they are running storage as a VM, which most do, are subject to a similar tax.

    The Impact of the Virtualization Tax on Storage

    This tax requires IT professionals to spend more money on hardware. They must configure more nodes with more powerful processors, cores, and the highest possible performance flash drives. The requirement to buy more nodes with more processing power also increases the HCI software license cost. HCI solutions that require VMware, or use an alternate hypervisor, or run storage as a VM may not be cheaper than VMware.

    VergeOS Minimizes the Virtualization Tax

    VergeIO took a different approach than other vendors. Instead of creating a storage solution within a VM, we created a data center operating system (DCOS). This data center operating system, VergeOS, integrates the hypervisor, storage, and networking into a single code base. Storage and networking are equal citizens to the hypervisor. VergeOS is an Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) and is superior to standard HCI solutions.

    The result is a highly efficient operating environment that requires less physical hardware. We repeatedly hear from our customers that they see significantly better performance and can increase VM density after switching to VergeOS, even though they are running on the existing hardware that used to run VMware. To learn more about the efficient VergeOS architecture, watch this on-demand LightBoard session with our Founder and CTO, Greg Campbell.

    HCI VMware Alternatives Require a Seamless Exit

    Using HCI as a VMware alternative to save money and improve performance is very appealing. Still, the project will never take off if the effort to transition the infrastructure is too great. HCI solutions must provide a seamless transition to the new hypervisor. Besides potential performance differences, the user and application experience is mostly unchanged. They still run the same operating system within a VM, now managed by a different hypervisor.

    It is essential, though, that the transition to a VMware alternative is also easy on IT. Most HCI VMware alternatives require a complete shutdown of the VMware environment while migration occurs. Also, since most HCI solutions require that you purchase the vendor’s hardware or they have a rigorous hardware compatibility list (HCL), IT needs to make room for and install new hardware.

    The Impact of Disruptive Migration

    While most organizations can complete this migration over a weekend, there is some significant impact from the process. First, it is, for the most part, an all-or-nothing process, which places much more pressure on pre-purchase evaluation. There is also the impact of being down for a weekend, which an increasing number of organizations can no longer tolerate. Finally, if the conversion does not go according to plan and extends past the weekend maintenance window, IT has to quickly roll back to the VMware environment and try the conversion again next weekend.

    VergeOS Makes VMware Exits Smooth and Gradual

    VergeOS can directly communicate with VMware and make scheduled copies of each VM as frequently as IT chooses. Also, because VergeOS can run on existing hardware, the customer can use VergeOS by using a few extra servers or carving a few nodes out of their VMware environment. The process is so seamless that many customers use VergeOS as a disaster recovery copy of their VMWare environment using our IOprotect capability. Then when you are ready, you can gradually move VMs to be solely hosted in the VergeIO environment. This process takes the pressure off the evaluation phase and provides an extended “test” of the solution while adding value and lowering costs. Most customers that start by using VergeOS for DR realize a 50% cost reduction in the DR process.

    HCI VMware Alternatives Must Improve Resiliency

    Given the ever-increasing risk to and value of data, using HCI as a VMware alternative can not come at the expense of lowering resiliency. Most solutions are surprisingly weak in these terms. The latest DCIG analysis, “Top 5 Rising Vendor HCI Software Solutions,” shows that HCI vendors are all over the place regarding data protection. Most provide some snapshot or clone capability, but not all have VM-level granularity. Most also did not provide any form of immutability to their snapshot capabilities. Finally, many solutions didn’t have asynchronous replication, which is critical for disaster recovery planning and recovery.

    HCI as a VMware Alternative

    Join DCIG and VergeIO tomorrow for our live webinar, “Overcome The Not-So-Magnificent Seven IT Challenges,” to learn how hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) can solve the current challenges IT organizations face, including limited resources, management complexity, and providing IT services at the Edge.

    VergeOS Improves Resiliency

    VergeOS UCI based storage services are built on a foundation of Global Inline Deduplication. Starting with deduplication instead of adding it later means you can get all the benefits without the significant overhead, the deduplication tax, that other solutions impose. As a result, our IOclone, in one feature, delivers the speed and efficiency of snapshots with the independence and resiliency of clones. They are immutable, and IT can retain and repurpose as many of them as they choose.

    HCI as a VMware Alternative

    Global Inline Deduplication combined with VergeOS’ network integration also enables powerful disaster recovery capabilities and Edge protection. Watch our on-demand virtual whiteboard session to learn more about using VergeOS for VMware Disaster recovery.

    Conclusion

    As IT professionals in small to medium-sized data centers explore alternatives to VMware, VergeOS emerges as the compelling choice. With VMware’s recent price increases, focus on large accounts, and declining support quality, organizations seek an HCI solution that meets crucial requirements while providing a seamless transition and superior data protection experience. VergeOS’ UCI design distinguishes itself from other HCI solutions by offering a non-VMware hypervisor at a lower cost, ensuring a smooth exit from VMware, and delivering a superior data protection experience.

    VergeIO Named a ‘Rising Vendor’ in DCIG TOP 5 HCI Software Solutions Report

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    Ann Arbor, Mich, May 15, 2023 — VergeIO, the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) company, today announced its inclusion in the 2023-24 DCIG TOP 5 Rising Vendors HCI Software
    Solutions Report    . The company was awarded placement on this list based
    on an evaluation of VergeOS features in the categories of deployment
    capabilities, data protection, product and performance management, and
    technical support.

    VergeIO is a Top 5 HCI Solution

    DCIG evaluated 15 software solutions for hyperconverged infrastructure
    (HCI) use cases across these four different categories. The report
    provides guidance on the TOP 5 Rising Vendors that organizations should
    consider for HCI software solutions, including a profile of VergeIO and
    the notable features that earned it a DGIG TOP 5 award. The report is
    available for free download.

    “IT organizations have a number of issues to consider these days, such
    as funding challenges, limited resources, management complexity, and
    providing IT services at the edge,” writes report author Todd Dorsey,
    Senior Storage Analyst at DCIG. “IT leaders look for solutions that
    solve problems and provide positive outcomes in many ways. HCI software
    fulfills these goals while addressing current IT challenges.”

    VergeOS moves beyond legacy HCI configuration with its
    ultra-converged infrastructure (UCI), which integrates virtualization,
    storage, and networking into a single piece of software. This
    integration provides a high degree of efficiency that enables VergeOS to
    deliver more performance from existing hardware and a wide range of
    scale. VergeOS can scale up to meet the needs of the enterprise and
    scale down to fit the constraints of the edge.

    UCI provides superior efficiency, performance, simplicity, and scalability

    This ability to create a data center operating system from a single
    piece of software was among the “Distinguishing Features” listed in the
    report for VergeOS, as were the benefits of data center agility and
    unified management of disparate clusters. These characteristics were
    included with the benefits provided by HCI software, in general, to
    offer IT leaders a solution that they can deploy to adapt to the
    changing needs of their organization to ensure that they can respond to
    new business requirements and opportunities.

    A Single Data Center Operating System delivers superior efficiency, performance and scale

    “I am thrilled that Verge.IO has been recognized as a DCIG TOP 5 HCI
    solution,” said Yan Ness, CEO of VergeIO. “Our goal has always been to
    deliver a simple, efficient, and scalable IT infrastructure solution
    that is easy to use and provides superior performance and value to our
    customers. This recognition is a testament to our team’s hard work and
    dedication and the impact that VergeIO is having on our
    customers’ businesses.”

    Dorsey joins DCIG’s Principal Storage Analyst Ken Clipperton and
    VergeIO’s CMO George Crump for a live, 1-hour webinar discussing how to
    overcome “The Not So Magnificent Seven Challenges of Small to Medium
    Sized Data Centers” on May 24 at 1 p.m. EDT. Part of the event covers
    the DCIG evaluation of the 15 HCI/UCI software solutions from the report
    and how they narrowed down the list to the DCIG TOP 5 solutions. The
    full webinar agenda with a registration link is available here.

    About DCIG

    The Data Center Intelligence Group (DCIG) empowers the IT industry with
    actionable analysis. DCIG analysts provide informed third-party analysis
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    Lowering VMware DR Costs

    by

    As IT budgets tighten, an area to explore is lowering VMware DR costs. The costs to maintain a disaster recovery (DR) process and site add up quickly. Cutting costs, though tempting because it is rarely actually used, may put the organization at risk if a disaster strikes. Fortunately, lowering VMware DR costs does not always have to come with greater risk.

    Three Steps to Lowering VMware DR Costs

    1. Lower the cost of the software license
    2. Make more efficient use of the hardware
    3. Expand beyond the DR Use Case

    We’ll explain the three steps below and in our upcoming virtual whiteboard session, “VMware Disaster and Ransomware Recovery—The Three NEW Best Practices.“

    Lowering VMware DR Software Licensing Costs

    The first step is to lower the cost of the software licensing used to replicate and support the remote site infrastructure. Most VMware DR initiatives require a software or hardware solution to replicate the data to the DR site and then a copy of VMware at the DR site to perform testing and host workloads in the event of an actual failure. Reducing the number of solutions the DR process requires and paying less for them without exposing the organization to greater risk will show almost instant savings. These savings increase significantly if the potential solution can run on existing hardware.

    Lowering VMware DR costs starts with a cost-efficient solution that is easy to install

    VergeIO’s IOprotect is easy to install and seamlessly protects your VMware environment from a disaster or ransomware attack. It typically costs 60% less than the equivalent software from VMware or a third party. There is also just one software package to buy. IOprotect does not require a VMware license at the DR site. Finally, IOprotect runs on your existing hardware, so in most cases, there is no additional hardware to purchase.

    The result is a rapid return on investment (ROI). Most customers can install VergeOS onto hardware they already own and begin replicating data from their VMware site in a couple of hours. The time for payback starts immediately, and the investment cost is returned in weeks rather than years.

    Make More Efficient Use of Hardware

    Because of cost reasons, most organizations have to designate a “select few” workloads for inclusion into the DR process. Each workload they add increases the software licensing and physical hardware requirements at the DR site. In some cases, the storage solution at the DR site will require more capacity, which also means an increase in capacity-based storage licensing. Lowering VMware DR entry costs enable IT to protect more workloads and amortize the investment. Efficiency also extends the life of the hardware, further lowering costs.

    IOprotect is integrated into VergeOS, a highly optimized ultraconverged infrastructure (UCI) solution. Thanks to its efficiency, the hardware has more resources available, and customers can add additional workloads to the DR process with minimal or no additional cost. VergeOS also includes global inline deduplication, so adding additional workloads does not significantly increase DR site storage requirements. Sometimes, even with the additional workloads, customers can decommission hardware or repurpose it elsewhere in the organization.

    Don’t Use The Cloud for Lowering VMware DR Costs

    Companies that look to lower VMware costs inevitably look to cloud options. The options often appeal because there are no upfront hardware costs. The problem is that paying monthly for the servers and storage that DR requires adds up quickly. IOprotect, because it uses existing hardware, is a more cost-effective solution, both upfront and especially long-term. With it, you use the hardware you have already paid for, so there is no monthly surprise. Even if you can provision servers on the fly, the storage must be paid for each month.

    Lowering VMware DR Costs with More Use Cases

    What if you could make your DR process do more? If the software driving that process is efficient, you can do more with the DR process without buying more hardware. The software also has to have the capability to support whatever you define as “more.” Because of the low cost and efficiency of IOprotect, many customers will create an on-premises DR solution using spare servers in addition to the remote DR solution. An on-premises DR solution enables you to recover quickly from disasters that are not site-wide and not have to fail over to another data center. It is ideal for situations like a storage system failure, a rack failure, or even a ransomware attack.

    Lowering VMware DR costs can enable IT to expand the use case

    With an on-premises or remote DR solution and efficient software, you can expand out of the DR use case and use the solution for Test-Dev, Quality Assurance, and reporting. Some customers leverage VergeIO’s Virtual Data Center (VDC) technology to create a secure instance of their data center for cyber-response training.

    The last use case is migrating your production VMware environment to VergeOS, amplifying the cost savings across both use cases, and completing your VMware Exit.

    Next Steps

    • Sign Up: for our Video Digital Learning Guide – “Modernizing VMware Disaster Recovery.”
    • Register: for our next virtual whiteboard session – “VMware and Ransomware Recovery—The Three NEW Best Practices.”
    • Read: about creating a VMware Exit Strategy.