Address All Your Business Needs With A Hyper-converged Solution

Let me start with some questions.

Is the technology that you use at your business keeping pace with your needs or giving you frequent headaches?

Are you in search of something that is more cost-efficient and that has better redundancy?

If your answer to all the above questions is a YES, then a hyper-converged solution is what you are looking for. It holds the power to simplify the way your data centre is managed and can also provide a clever and effective way to regain your stronghold.

Understanding a Hyper-converged Infrastructure

This IT framework is responsible for the unification of the computing, storage, networking and software into a single system. A simple data centre and increased scalability are two things that can provide you with a new environment with a growth factor that your business needs!

Do you know?

According to Gartner Inc.,
Worldwide integrated systems revenue was expected to rise by 18.4 per cent from $10.2 billion in 2017 to $12.3 billion in 2018 based on previous market trends.

So what are the benefits that your business can see in adopting a hyper-converged infrastructure?

1. Reduced costs

A merger of the compute and storage will help reduce the initial footprint and investment of your new private or public cloud. The hyper-converged cloud is easier to run and maintain when compared to managing numerous components.

This reduces the need for an expensive and specialized staff.
While cost is not the only factor to consider when you design your IT solution, also you won’t be benefitting if you have the fastest data centre and not the profit margin to run it.

Hyperconvergence saves you big bucks by helping you reduce the large infrastructure purchases every year. Low-cost commodity hardware is used and the size of the data centre is made small in easy-to-manage steps.

For eg: Earlier if you had to run and manage ‘n’ number of servers, then switching to a hyper-converged infrastructure will cluster all your resources in less than ‘n’ number of servers. This will allow you to reduce the cost of entry as you will only pay for the amount of space that you need at present and not what you will need in the future.

The cost of ownership of an HCI compared with legacy infrastructure is always less.

2. Workload union

• Hyper-converged solutions unify some or all of the 3 basic hardware components of the IT stack – compute, storage and networking into a single, highly virtualised solution.
• You can improve performance by consolidating multiple tasks such as backup, deduplication all at one place. Appealing, right?
• All the workloads fall under the same umbrella and now all you will need is a safe pair of hands. Your network will become an easy place to switch VMs between different appliances, or even between data centres.

3. Data protection

Some built-in features that you get with HCI help in increasing the productivity and security of data storage at your workplace.
Features like

• snapshotting
• data deduplication

make full and secure data recovery as sure as God made little green apples!

The software-defined nature of HCI will also allow your organisation to use public cloud storage as a target for backups.

One more benefit that you get is that in case an appliance goes down, you can restore it immediately without any hassle. Your system won’t have to remain closed for a long time. For some organisations, even a shut down for a few hours can mean much. If you are among them, then hyper-converged infrastructure is for you.

An HCI will ensure that your performance and availability don’t suffer much when such a thing happens. All thanks to the scale-out model that relies on data being spread across multiple nodes throughout the data centre.

4. An automated infrastructure

Automation becomes impossible in many legacy IT infrastructures as they are so varied and complex. On the other hand, an HCI works on the principles of the software-defined data centre (SDDC), which virtualizes everything including storage, servers and supporting services. Hence automation becomes easy to implement by using management tools such as scheduling.

Working in an HCI, your IT guy won’t have to worry about creating automated structures with hardware from different manufacturers or product lines. Everything is included in a single environment.

Your business will have the privilege to stay agile and competitive when automation will help your organisation increase its efficiency.

5. Procurement and support get simple

• If you get a hyper-converged solution, then you will get one point of contact for the life – from the first inquiry to the system stand-down. You will find a single-vendor approach to procurement, operations, and support.
• Hyper-convergence is less expensive and upgrades are also simpler when compared to integrated systems.
• One manufacturer means only one upgrade in place of numerous updates that you used to do in legacy infrastructure.
• You also get the benefit of updating the software immediately to add the new features that the vendor releases – all without any need to replace the hardware.
• The reduction in all these complex processes will eventually save time and lower the operational costs for you.

6. IT staff becomes small and more efficient

• When the legacy data centre gets transformed into a hyper-converged environment, the needs of your company will change. Your business requires less staff than it did earlier.
• You will no longer feel the urgency for a specialist staff with deep subject matter knowledge for each separate resource area.
• In HCI the basic components are the virtual machines (VMs).
• The policies to use and manage these supportive resources are created by the software which lets the IT admins plan and work on a higher level.

7. Scalability becomes very easy

An HCI can be scaled easily as it is totally based on software. Remember the LEGO blocks? Hyper-converged infrastructure uses the same approach to scalability.
Each block is a self-contained unit designed to include every type of hardware that the data centre needs to maximize agility and compatibility.

You can simply connect a new node to the cluster when you want to add some additional resources to the cluster.
The hyper-converged system will also let you scale compute and storage separately. The identification and integration of the new unit will be automatic.

The manual work of specifically provisioning, configuring and deploying more storage or compute capacity will be eradicated with the help of HCI.
Some other benefits will be:

• No wasting time to create complex plans before expansion
• No opening and risking costly components

Hyper-converged solutions are taking up more space in the market and are becoming the first choice for many in place of the legacy infrastructure that was used earlier. The question for them no longer is what the benefits are. Your competitors now want to know how to take more benefits of the hyper-converged infrastructure.

To conclude:

Hyperconvergence can seem to you as a new approach, but the benefits that it can bring to you can certainly not be ignored. This can eliminate the compatibility and integration issues that arise in multi-vendor data centres and leave you only with a single vendor to deal with.

Adopting the hyper-converged solutions can help your organisation and can turn out to be just the ticket that your business needs. You can talk to our experts at GBB any time when you need assistance or help in selecting HCI over your current infrastructure.

GBB is an end to end IT Infrastructure Solutions and Services Company based in Hyderabad. We focus on helping customers transform their businesses through the innovative use of technology. We have the aim of providing our clients with the best service by partnering with the best vendors in the respective areas.