Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Systems

TrustRadius Top Rated for 2023

Top Rated Products

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1
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.

2
Scale Computing Platform

Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these…

3
Cisco HyperFlex

Cisco HyperFlex Systems is a hyper-converged infrastructure product, based on technology acquired with SpringPath (acquired September 2017).

All Products

(1-25 of 32)

1
Scale Computing Platform

Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these…

2
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure

Nutanix in San Jose, California offers their software-defined Enterprise Cloud as a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. The Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure solution combines the Nutanix Acropolis virtualization solution, Nutanix AHV hypervisor (though Acropolis works with other…

3
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.

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4
Cisco HyperFlex

Cisco HyperFlex Systems is a hyper-converged infrastructure product, based on technology acquired with SpringPath (acquired September 2017).

5
VMware vSAN

VMware vSAN is an enterprise-class storage virtualization software that provides a simple path to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and multi cloud. VMware vSAN is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.

6
SANsymphony

DataCore SANsymphony software-defined storage aims to deliver flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency in a HCI platform. Powered by a block-level storage virtualization technology, SANsymphony is designed to provide flexibility to control how data is stored, protected, and…

7
HPE SimpliVity

HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution. HPE acquired SimpliVity for its Omnicube line of products in January 2017.

8
Dell VxRail

The Dell VxRail is a VMWare-based hyper-converged infrastructure appliance.

9
Dell PowerFlex

Dell PowerFlex (formerly VxFlex) software-defined storage solutions aim to enable transformational agility for organizations looking to modernize their datacenter operations. The vendor states PowerFlex enables extreme flexibility, massive scalability, and enterprise-class performance…

10
Azure Stack HCI

Microsoft offers hyperconverged infrastructure solutions via Azure Stack HCI. Azure Stack HCI provides a variety of preferred hardware solutions for building a hybrid cloud infrastructure, allowing the user to run virtual machines on hyperconverged systems and use Windows Admin Center…

11
Pivot3 Acuity

Pivot3 in Austin, Texas offers Pivot3 Acuity (formerly the vSTAC line of products), a hyperconverged infrastructure solution.

12
Lumen Edge Private Cloud

Lumen Private Edge Cloud (replacing the former CenturyLink® Private Cloud) 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…

13
SUSE Harvester

Suse's Harvester is a cloud-native hyperconverged infrastructure. It is used to unify infrastructure workloads with Harvester and is designed to help operators consolidate and simplify their virtual machine workloads alongside Kubernetes clusters. Harvester is presented as a next…

14
VMware Cloud Foundation

VMware Cloud Foundation is a hybrid cloud platform for managing VMs and orchestrating containers, built on full-stack hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) technology. With a single architecture that is desribed by the vendor as easy to deploy, VMware Cloud Foundation aims to enable…

15
Array AVX Series Network Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Array network hyperconverged infrastructure platforms provides virtualization combined with purpose-built networking and security hardware. Deployed in the enterprise or service provider data center, the AVX enables consolidation of services such as next-generation firewalls, SSL…

16
StarWind HyperConverged Appliance for Video (HCA for Video)

To meet the distinct requirements for video surveillance cases, StarWind offers purpose-built platforms that leverage fault tolerant architecture from storage and up to application management. StarWind HCA platforms combine server, storage, networking, and hypervisor as well as a…

17
Quantum VS-HCI Series

Quantum offers the VS-HCI Series surveillance recording appliances, hyperconverged infrastructure for surveillance recording and management.

18
HVE 3DGFX
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HVE ConneXions, a Sphere 3D company based in Texas, offers a hyperconverged appliance via its HVE 3DGFX appliance.

19
Lenovo ThinkAgile SX 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.

20
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series

The Hitachi Unified Compute Platform HC Series (Hitachi UCP HC) from Hitachi Vantara provides a hyper-converged infrastructure designed to support a VMware environment.

21
Maxta HCI
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Maxta, a brand of Huayun Data International headquartered in Hong Kong, is the company' hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software solution. Maxta Hyperconvergence Software aims to reduce capital and operating costs by up to 70 percent and free IT from the refresh and upgrade…

22
Fabulix - Hyperconverged Infrastructure Platform

ISSQUARED® Fabulix is a hyperconverged infrastructure platform that combines compute, storage, network, and virtualization resources into a single system. Fabulix combines software and hardware together and extends or creates - a private cloud or hybrid environment in the user's…

23
Nfina Hybrid Cloud

Nfina is an IT infrastructure platform provider targeting small-to-mid-size businesses. Nfina Technologies supplies cyber resilience for business continuity. Their solutions and data protection services include edge, computer servers, HCI appliances, hybrid cloud, storage, IaaS, HaaS,…

24
Dell XC Family

The Dell XC Family of Hyperconverged Appliances support virtualized workloads boasting scalability, efficiency, and a low footprint.

25
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series

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…

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Systems TrustMap

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Learn More About Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Systems

What are Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Systems?

Hyper-converged infrastructure is a software-centric architecture that integrates compute, storage and virtualization resources on commodity hardware.

From Converged to Hyper-Converged

Converged Infrastructure: The first phase

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.

How Hyper-converged infrastructure differs

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.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

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.

Management Tools Software Comparison

Before investing in either a new Hyper-converged infrastructure(HCI) solution, consider these three key factors:

  1. Management Tools: Many Hyper-converged infrastructure tools come with administration panels where all resources can be accessed and managed. Consider what management tools you need when selecting an HCI tool.
  2. Integrations: Hyper-converged infrastructure tools include built in integrations with other data tools, and provide APIs for building new integrations. If you aren’t able to build your own integrations, consider what integrations are offered by each HCI solution out of the box.
  3. Included Components: Since HCI solutions are modular, not every solution includes the same pieces. If you are looking for a specific feature or specific hardware specs, check what is included in each modular HCI solution.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What can Hyper-converged infrastructure do better than traditional infrastructure options?

HCI solutions are highly resource efficient compared to other options, allowing users to easily provision the exact amount of resources they need. The simple, modular approach HCI takes also makes it easier to manage and more affordable than other solutions.

What are the best Hyper-converged infrastructure solutions?

The top rated Hyper-converged infrastructure solutions are as follows:

  1. Nutanix AOS


Do Hyper-converged infrastructure solutions offer good performance?

Hyper-converged infrastructure provides all-flash storage that results in good read/write throughput with minimal latency. Businesses can expect good performance compared to other options.

How customizable are Hyper-converged infrastructure solutions?

Hyper-converged infrastructure solutions are modular, so many vendors offer high levels of customization, allowing businesses to purchase only what they need. Some vendors even provide HCI software that businesses can use with existing hardware. What degree of customization is available is highly dependent on the vendor.