What is hyper-converged infrastructure? Proven Guide 2023

Hyper-converged infrastructure is a single system that brings together computing, storage, and networking tools. And hyperconverged systems use a mix of virtualization with hypervisors like VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, and Citrix (formerly XenServer) and SAN management controllers or SAN controllers to integrate and use multiple layers of hardware well.

A hyper-converged system can be a hardware appliance with everything built-in or bought as a separate piece of software that can be put on x86 servers. Both types of options give business owners access to all of the features of hyper-converged technology. The significant difference is the price and how it can be used.

Hyper-converged Infrastructure Architecture

The following are the parts of a common hyper-converged infrastructure:

• You will need hardware chassis if you install a hardware appliance or multiple High Availability cluster appliances (USSTM).
• This can be VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, Citrix/XenServer, or StoneFly Persepolis.
• SAN management controller or SAN controller (SCVM™)

How Hyperconverged Infrastructure Works?

Hyperconvergence unifies and tightly blends computing, network, and virtualization. It replaces complex legacy infrastructure hardware with a turnkey platform and industry-standard x86 servers that can start small and grow one node at a time.

In a hyper-converged system, virtualization essentially hides storage resources, and the SAN management controller gives them to applications running on Virtual Machines (VMs) or containers.

Hyper-convergence and converged

Most of the idea of hyper-convergence came from the idea of converged systems. With HCI, vendors put all the gear and software for storage, servers, and networking into a single chassis. This is done to minimize compatibility problems and make control easier.

In other words, hyper-converged technology depends on the virtualization (or abstraction) of existing resources to give more flexibility and scalability than converged infrastructure since its parts are software-defined.

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In contrast to software-defined hyper-converged appliances, hardware is used by converged appliances. Like HCI appliances, converged (or sometimes called “unified”) appliances combine computing, storage, and networking into a single device. But virtualization technology is not part of converged equipment.

HCI is not a replacement for connected infrastructure. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and can meet different business needs.

Benefits of HCI

Here is a short list of some of the benefits of using hyper-converged technology for your workloads:

Data center consolidation

Hardware servers, storage arrays, and network switches can be replaced with a single solution that is easy to manage, scalable, and cheap.

Flexibility

Keep up with today’s fast-changing digital world by scaling up and changing with complex apps and use cases.

Simplicity

Simplify setting up and using virtual NAS, SAN, and S3 object storage, and handle the storage infrastructure more effectively.

Cost-Effectiveness

Cut down on the space needed for your data center and the costs of buying and maintaining standard hardware infrastructure. With hyper-converged technology, your TCO and ROI will be better.

Unified Storage

Combine the experience of purpose-built NAS, SAN, and S3 object storage into a single, easy-to-manage system just as capable as the specialized storage systems.

Agility

Quickly add storage, start-up tasks, and speed up mission-critical apps like MySQL, NoSQL, and other relational databases.

Cloud-Friendly

Integrate the cloud of your choice (Azure, Amazon, or other S3-compatible clouds) with StoneFly hyper-converged technology and build a cloud-native hyper-converged system.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure and the Cloud

Clouds, like Azure, Amazon S3, etc., give businesses the flexibility and operational efficiency they need in their work settings. With hyper convergence, users can mix infrastructure on-premises with cloud capabilities to build a hybrid system.

Which workloads are best suited for hyper-convergence?

Virtual desktop systems are where hyper-convergence works best. Forrester found that the most common workloads for hyper-converged systems are databases like Oracle or SQL server (50%), file and print services (40%), collaboration tools like Exchange or SharePoint (38%), virtual desktops (34%), commercial packaged software like SAP or Oracle (33%), analytics (25%), and Web-facing workloads like LAMP stack or web servers (17%).

What makes StoneFly USS HCI Appliances the best in the market?

StoneFly Unified Storage and Server (USS) are HCI appliances made for the business ready to go out of the box. The infrastructure owner, unlike standard HCI appliances, has complete control over the USS.

Some of the things that make USS truly special and the best hyperconverged infrastructure are listed below:

Hypervisor Agnostic: The USS machines work with VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, Citrix (XenServer), and StoneFly Persepolis hypervisors. Our customers don’t have to work with the only virtualization environment that the HCI device supports as they do with most other HCI appliances. Instead, they can choose the one that works best for them.

8th Generation storage OS: Our unique 8th generation storage operating system, SCVM, is already set up on StoneFly USS HCI appliances. The SCVM is set up on the host as a Virtual Machine (VM).

Users can set up a wide range of data protection and storage optimization options with the SCVM. The SCVM also has an easy-to-use console that shows data graphs like CPU usage, network usage, bandwidth usage, and more in real time.

With StoneFly SCVM, users have complete control over their hyper-converged system.

Built-in Cloud Connect: The storage operating system (SCVM) also lets users set up storage in Azure, AWS, and other S3 clouds and connect it to their HCI device to use it like local storage.

Also, this lets our customers use public cloud repositories to copy data offsite, store backup data, and archive data in the cloud at a reasonable price.

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Backup & DR support: StoneFly customers can also connect backup tools like Veeam, Acronis, Veritas, Rubrik, etc., to their USS appliance, but this is not required. This lets them use the same infrastructure to set up backup and DR for critical workloads without buying new infrastructure or hardware.

Because of this, the USS HCI device is a great way to prepare for the future.

Cloud DR support: StoneFly customers can also use SCVM to set up real-time replication to StoneFly’s private cloud and start up straight in the cloud in case of a disaster. This means that business must go on as usual, that availability must be high, and that Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) must be quick.

Unique features of StoneFly HCI

SCVM lets users set up the following tools to protect data:

• Write-Once, Read-Many, or WORM, storage systems,
• Air-Gapped Volumes are software-defined storage targets that users can detach and turn on or off.
• Backup Vault is a virtual Linux appliance that copies mission-critical data files the user chooses in real-time.
• The Latest in Data Encryption
• Protection from viruses and ransomware

The factors that improve storage are:

• Duplicate data is removed from NAS, iSCSI SAN, and S3 files.
• Thin provisioning lets you use storage that isn’t being used and quickly set up storage for new projects and apps.
• Automatic tiering of storage
• FlashCache is high-performance SSD caching at the front end.
• Hot-tier storage is set up on NVMe SSD drives for zero-tier (hot) tasks.

These are just a few of the benefits that our customers love. StoneFly’s pre-sales engineers can give you a more detailed list of benefits.

Conclusion

With hyperconverged infrastructure, your server and storage systems are combined into a single device that is easy to control. This lets electricity and cooling prices go down by a lot.

StoneFly’s HCI includes NAS, SAN, and S3 object storage, which works with common hypervisors in the business.

StoneFly’s hyperconverged systems also come with SCVMTM Virtual Storage Appliance and built-in cloud connections to both public and private clouds. This makes them the best infrastructure pick for SMBs, SMEs, and large companies.

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