Hyper-converged infrastructure is a software-centric architecture that integrates compute, storage and virtualization resources on commodity hardware.
Before discussing hyper-converged infrastructure, it’s necessary to understand converged infrastructure and the problem that it tries to solve. Traditionally, IT infrastructure has been relatively siloed with different IT groups. These groups are responsible for provisioning, managing and supporting server, storage, virtualization, and network resources. For example, the IT storage team is responsible for all storage hardware and software purchase and support.
The concept of converged infrastructure seeks to break down these silos by combining them in various configurations. This means that compute, networking, virtualization, and storage resources are tightly coupled in pre-engineered packages linked together with software.
Hyper-converged Infrastructure takes this a step further. While converged infrastructure is separate components engineered to work well together, hyper-converged systems are modular appliances sold by a single vendor. These appliances are usually commodity hardware boxes, containing computing, virtualization, and storage resources. These can be added together for simple scaling; the more appliances, the greater the capacity.
With simple converged infrastructure, a vendor provides a pre-configured bundle of hardware and software which can be used separately. Hyper-converged infrastructure does not allow the components to be used independently. Each appliance is so tightly integrated that it functions as an indivisible unit.
The modular approach of hyperconvergence presents many advantages and a few disadvantages. Among the advantages: ease of scaling, decreased maintenance overhead, simplified vendor management, and lower cost.
The price for these advantages is an inability to tweak the systems. For example, if more storage is needed for a particular cluster but not more compute, it’s not possible to just add storage. Instead a new appliance including all resources must be added. There can also be challenges in breaking down entrenched IT silos, although this is likely to be worth the effort in the long term.
Hyper-converged appliances usually come with single administration console that allows management and control of all resources. The administration console usually provides visibility into compute and storage statistics. It also provides integration with other datacenter tools and cloud orchestration solutions via APIs.
Scale Computing’s HC3 virtualization platform is a complete ‘datacenter in a box’ with server, storage and virtualization integrated into a single appliance to deliver simplicity, availability, and scalability at a fraction of the cost. According to the vendor, key features and benefits include:...
Nutanix in San Jose, California offers their software-defined platform as a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. The Nutanix solution combines software via Nutanix Acropolis virtualization solution, Nutanix AHV hypervisor (though Acropolis works with other hypervisors), Prism cluster manager,...
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. HPE acquired SimpliVity for its Omnicube line of products in January 2017.
Dell-EMC VxRail is a VMWare-based hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.
Pivot3 in Austin, Texas offers Pivot3 Acuity (formerly the vSTAC line of products), a hyperconverged infrastructure solution.
DataCore in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida offers Hyperconverged Virtual SAN, a hyper-converged infrastructure solution.
Cisco HyperFlex Systems is a hyper-converged infrastructure product, based on technology licensed from SpringPath.
Riverbed Technology in San Francisco offers SteelFusion Edge, an HCI solution featuring SteelFusion Edge, a hyperconverged appliance, and SteelFusion Core, a storage delivery controller.
FusionCube from Chinese company Huawei is a unified, pre-integrated hyper-converged infrastructure solution.
VMware's vSAN is hyper-converged infrastructure solution.
The Dell EMC XC Series Hyperconverged Appliances support virtualized workloads boasting scalability, efficiency, and a low footprint.
The Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series (Hitachi UCP HC) from Hitachi Vantara provides a hyper-converged infrastructure designed to support a VMware environment.
HVE ConneXions, a Sphere 3D company based in Texas, offers a hyperconverged appliance via its HVE 3DGFX appliance.
Dell EMC offers VxRack FLEX, a rack-scale hyper-converged solution.
Dell EMC offers the VxRack SDDC hyper-converged solution for hybrid cloud.
The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.
IBM CS821 and CS822 are hyperconverged systems designed to work with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud to support mission critical and deep learning applications and analyses.
CenturyLink® Private Cloud on VMware Cloud Foundation™ is a Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) solution that brings VMware’s vSphere®, vSAN™ and NSX® into a natively integrated stack, delivering enterprise grade, globally available hyper-converged-infrastructure based on HPE® with CenturyLink au...
Lenovo provides the ThinkAgile HX series appliances to support a hyperconverged data center infrastructure. The ThinkAgile HX series is designed to work with Nutanix software. The HX series includes ThinkAgile HX 1000 (including models HX1320 and HX1520-R), the ThinkAgile HX 2000 series (models H...
Lenovo offers the ThinkAgile VX Series of hyper-converged appliances, designed to support easy deployment of VMware vSAN. Presently the series includes the ThinkAgile VX 3000 series (including the VX3320 model), the VX 5000 series (including the ThinkAgile VX5520 model), and the VX 7000 series (...
The Lenovo ThinkAgile SX Series for Microsoft Azure Stack supports a hyper-converged infrastructure and includes the entry level SXM4400, the Enterprise Starter SXM4400, and the Enterprise Full SXM6400 rack options.