Combining storage, computing, networking, and management — hyper-converged infrastructures (otherwise known as HCI) are replacing the legacy infrastructures, and for good reasons. For one, they are unified systems that are highly intelligently designed and counter the pain points common with legacy systems.
Scroll down to find why the HCI solution is the best choice for a data center. However, first, let’s understand what HCI is and how it works.
Hyper-converged Infrastructures: How It Works?
HCI is a software-defined IT infrastructure that can visualize all the elements of hardware-defined systems. Hyper-converged infrastructure uses the same components as the converged infrastructure. However, instead of a shattered system, hyper-converged systems unify everything, receding more flexibility, decreasing cost, and improved performance.
Settle the debate: HCI Vs. Cloud
Cloud comes with many benefits; however, it brings its own challenges. For instance, one of the most significant problems of organizations trying to consider cloud technology like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud is data security. Data security challenges remain the top challenges that are stopping most companies from shifting to the cloud.
Nevertheless, one thing is clear. And that almost all the companies are moving away from legacy systems. Organizations understand that change is necessary to move forward with businesses in the modern world. In fact, a survey from IBM reveals that at least 91% of business leaders’ digital transformation is one of the key aspects that will keep them moving forward. And one of the most important aspects of digital transformation is the shift from old and legacy systems to modern technologies. The same is the case when it comes to how companies prefer to store data. Take, for instance, the ERP systems — while as much as 95% of companies are open to the cloud, at least 35% are afraid to move to the cloud because of data security concerns. But that does not mean that organizations are not replacing the existing technologies.
Benefits of HCI Solutions
Lower Cost
One of the core features of the HCI is it integrates all the processes into one platform. And that not only reduces the storage footprint. But it also lowers the maintenance cost and power user — saving a ton of money in the process. Moreover, the reduced manpower is another upside. There is no better way to enable data into small and easily managed steps than HCI in the market. So, one of the biggest benefits of using HCI will be the lowered cost. And all the features of the HCI may not directly have an effect on the cost. But the processes it modifies — or to say, upgrades — have many additional improvements that, in turn, bring down the cost associated with individual processes.
Simplicity
Another biggest benefit of integrating all the processes into one platform is everything becomes simple. For context — your IT team will be able to deploy these systems within a fraction of the time compared to converged systems and non-converged systems. Moreover, the organization’s change will be simple to deal with. For instance, many organizations that bring new technologies often face problems with technological aspects and organizational change and have to deal with training the staff. However, the simplicity of the HCI ensures that there will be no such problems whatsoever. Additionally, the automation it brings forward gives the staff and administrators more time to focus on other areas rather than spending their precious time on the processes related to managing data.
Improved Performance
Needless to say, unified systems help organizations to decrease workload and improve organizational productivity. Moreover, organizations of all sizes are using HCI for working on intensive workloads like developing SQL servers and enterprise-grade apps. The benefit of unified systems significantly improves the performance of teams that have to work around such systems to manage their work. So, regardless of the workload — you are aiming for — with HCI, you can enjoy high levels of performance without any worry.
- Many organizations are also using HCI systems using a combination of both SSD and HDD to meet varying workloads — including in the desktop infrastructure. So, it will work for running multiple application types.
- The benefit of the software-defined infrastructure is it allows you to increase or decrease the speed requirements depending on your personal needs without having to reconfigure the hardware system.
- Plus, the cable and storage systems — are connected nearby. This does not seem like much. But it will decrease the latency rates and improve performance throughout.
Scalability
To dig down into the HCI infrastructure — these systems are made of self-contained nodes. These are present in clusters, and these can be removed or added depending on the requirement.
And for this very fact, many organizations choose HCI systems — given they can add more nodes without having to invest in additional infrastructure like the conventional data centers.
Moreover, there are no technical aspects that the IT team has to deal with while adding or removing nodes. Depending on the need — admins can add or decrease the nodes — while ensuring there is no delay in the organization’s processes because of scaling.
Reliability
HCI comes with self-healing properties for the most part. These systems are designed to automatically identify any issues — in most cases even before they occur — and address the issues on their own without any additional support. Moreover, one of the most valuable things about the node-based infrastructure is there is fault tolerance capacity in each node. So, if any one node fails, the others will not be affected, and the processes can be continued as usual.
Similar To Cloud
As mentioned earlier, HCI systems are pretty much similar to cloud infrastructure. So, the integration of the systems with other organizational processes will be simple, and there is no need for silos. Each department can access the data from an integrated system, and work more efficiently.
Conclusion,
From bringing down the cost of infrastructure to improving organization-wide processes, HCI systems are valuable in many ways. In fact, these systems are similar to the cloud storage solutions like Amazon Web Services. But the added benefit is there are no data security concerns. Plus, these systems come with self-healing processes that can limit as well as address the issues on their own.
