What is Hyper-Convergence?

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) combines common datacenter hardware using locally attached storage resources with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays. Benefits include lower TCO, increased performance, and greater productivity within IT teams

Hyper-convergence combines compute, storage, and networking in a single system. Enterprises can choose an integrated HCI appliance from a single vendor, or hardware-agnostic hyper-convergence software. How does hyper-convergence differ from converged infrastructure?

Hyper-convergence adds deeper levels of abstraction and greater levels of automation.

Converged infrastructure involves a pre-configured package of software and hardware in a single system for simplified management. But with a converged infrastructure, the compute, storage, and networking components are discrete and can be separated. In a hyper-converged environment, the components can’t be separated; the software-defined elements are implemented virtually, with seamless integration into the hypervisor environment. This allows organizations to easily expand capacity by deploying additional modules.

Who uses Hyper-Converged Infrastructure and why?

• Hyper-Converged infrastructure is used in enterprise data centers, small and medium businesses, and remote and branch offices to quickly extend a virtual environment, simplify operations and support any new and growing workload requirement. HCI systems provide scale-out solutions with predictable results and operational costs.
• How Hyper-Converged Infrastructure works?
• Hyper-Converged infrastructure integrates compute and storage elements with virtualization software onto x86 servers. Resources are abstracted from the underlying hardware and managed at the VM level.
• The Components of Hyper-converged 
• Most HCI solutions consist of two fundamental components:
• A Distributed Data Plane
• Run across a cluster of nodes delivering storage, virtualization, and networking services for guest applications – either VMs or container-based applications.
• A Management Plane
• Allow for the easy administration of all HCI resources from a single view, and eliminates the need for separate management solutions for servers, storage networks, storage, and virtualization.
• Hyper-converged infrastructure benefits:
• Besides consisting of less physical equipment, hyper-convergence provides a number of important benefits to the IT environment and the business as a whole.
• Software-defined storage: Storage in a hyper-converged infrastructure is software-defined. The storage nodes act as one highly-reliable and a redundant pool of storage. Should one node go down, the rest will remain unaffected?

• Agility: In a hyper-converged infrastructure, your workloads all fall under the same administrative umbrella. This makes it easier to migrate workloads from one location to another.
• Scalability: Because of the node-based architecture, it is very easy to scale up your hyper-converged data center. Simply add or subtract nodes to match your resource demand.
• Data protection: Hyper-convergence gives an organization the ability to easily restore data.   

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