Over the last few years, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) deployments have been on the increase. HCI combines server, storage and networking into a single system building block, however, it introduces many new complexities into your environment. Join Storage Switzerland and Datrium as we discuss the three key questions that enterprises need to ask when considering hyperconverged architectures.
Webinar: Considering Hyperconverged for Your Enterprise? 3 Key Questions to Ask
1. Three Critical Questions to Ask:
● What complexities will HCI introduce into the environment?
● Will HCI extend your on-premises data center to the cloud?
● Will the HCI scale to meet the organization’s performance demands?
Considering Hyperconverged for
Your Enterprise?
Webinar
For audio playback and Q&A go to: http://bit.ly/HyperConv3
2. Our Speakers
Clint Wyckoff is the Senior Solutions Engineer at Datrium and has over a decade of real-world enterprise
data center architecture experience. He places a large emphasis on helping IT Professionals solve the
issues they're challenged with daily. Clint is an energetic and engaging speaker, blogger and author that
has been recognized in the community for significant contributions. He is a 2x Microsoft Most Valuable
Professional (MVP) for Cloud and Data Center Management, a VMware vExpert for 2015, 2016 & 2017,
Cisco Champion and an inaugural MODE charter member. Clint is also a certified AWS Solutions
Architect.
George Crump is the founder of Storage Switzerland, the leading storage analyst focused on the
subjects of big data, solid state storage, virtualization, cloud computing and data protection. He is widely
recognized for his articles, white papers, and videos on such current approaches as all-flash arrays,
deduplication, SSDs, software-defined storage, backup appliances, and storage networking. He has over
25 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US.
3. Level Set: The
What and Why of
Hyperconverged
Infrastructure
● Single Node with
Compute, Storage
● Focus in on simplifying a
dynamic, sprawling data
center
● Auto-scales as nodes are
added to HCI cluster
4. The Challenges
of HCI in the
Enterprise
● As nodes are added complexity increases
and efficiency declines
● Problem is that each node includes compute,
storage and network
● Specifically Storage
○ Each node has to deliver high performance
○ AND long term data retention
● Expansion is inefficient
○ Most data centers scale one of the three vectors
■ Storage performance
■ Storage capacity
■ Application compute performance
5. Understanding the Typical HCI Storage Architectures
● Each node is self-contained storage asset then replicated to another node for
availability and data protection
○ Networking less of an issue
○ Limited to storage performance of single node
○ VM mobility limited to other nodes with replica
● Data is striped across nodes
○ Networking is major issue
○ Metadata/Cluster management is more complex
○ Performance is impacted because data must be accessed across the network
6. The Performance
Problems of HCI in the
Enterprise
● Compute is overworked
○ Drives applications performance
○ Drives storage software
○ Drives cluster management (which is often complex)
● Leads to
○ Inconsistent performance
○ Concerns about noisy neighbors
○ Concerns about network performance
7. HCI Performance Workarounds
● All-Flash NDI
○ Expensive
■ HCI storage also has retention
responsibilities
■ HCI storage also has protection
responsibilities
● 3X increase in consumption
with replication
○ Overkill
■ Most applications don’t need it
■ 80% of data is inactive
■ Node level protection may be
misplaced
8. The Complexity
Problems of HCI in the
Enterprise
● Complexity comes with scale and
enterprises need scale
● As Node count increases networking
becomes more complex
○ 75% of HCI network traffic is cluster related
■ Replication/erasure coding traffic
■ Cluster synchronization
● Networking becomes complex
9. The Integration of HCI into the
Enterprise Cloud Strategy
● Most HCI Vendors don’t support Cloud
○ Data can’t replicate to cloud via
HCI Software
■ Customer has to use third party
tool
○ VM in the Cloud
■ Customer has to manually move
VM to Cloud
■ Manually perform transformation
■ Manually start cloud instance
10. Solving the Cloud
Integration Problem
● For HCI Cloud Integration
○ Storage component of HCI
needs to run in the cloud
○ On cloud supported hypervisor
○ The value of cloud integration
○ Cloud storage for DR copy
○ Cloud storage for compute for
DRaaS
○ Cloud storage and compute for
cloud bursting
28. It’s Easy As
Black and White
The Final Product
You Have:
ESX Hosts
Any x86 Server
Blades / Rack
You Add:
Flash at
Commodity
Pricing
We Bring:
Durable Capacity
2U Data Backup
We Load:
Datrium DVX
Controllers on each
ESX Host to drive
performance