TIERED SILO ARCHITECTURE TO HYPERCONVERGANCE (HCI) =ROI

Legacy architectures (known as a Three -tier architecture) split the environment into silos such as server, storage, networking, and virtualization, which have served enterprises well in the past.

However, with the ever-evolving business requirements, user demands and network access from anywhere by any device, three- tier architecture is no longer an option. 

Each tier requires specialized skills, are hardware dependent, require the services of multiple vendors and most importantly, have limited interoperability rendering the environment irrelevant, hence Hyper- Convergence. 

The above statement seems simple, and companies should be employing Hyper Convergence at speed, however there is still a lot of resistance, mainly due to a lack of understanding of the HCI. 

^{What is HCI?}

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is based on commodity X86-based hardware and virtualization software. In short HCI is a software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all the elements of conventional "hardware-defined" systems.

HCI includes, at a minimum, virtualized computing (a hypervisor), software-defined storage, and virtualized networking (software-defined networking). HCI typically runs on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers.

In other words, the HCI infrastructure, the storage area network and the underlying storage abstractions are implemented virtually in software (at or via the hypervisor) rather than physically in hardware. Because software-defined elements are implemented in the context of the hypervisor, management of all resources can be federated (shared) across all instances of a hyper-converged infrastructure. (Source Wikipedia)

HCI can be best described as two primary components: 

• A single platform that unifies the integration of virtualization, storage, networking, computing (Hypervisor) and security as clustered resources (also referred to as POOLS).
• Unified management. The pooling of resources allows for the ease of provision and combine resources into Virtual Machines (VMs) which offers optimized administration of the overall architecture and workloads are provisioned and integrated regardless of the locale of those resources, thus simplifying the infrastructure management.

 The most important aspect of HCI is the ability to streamline the environment with the use of a single vendor from procurement to workload download and unify the management of the infrastructure via a single management interface. The benefits to organizations who are opting to move to HCI are: Simplification: 

• HCI’s software designed infrastructure simplifies the allocation and deployment of resources.
• Administration working via a single management platform, rather than multiple management tools as in a traditional infrastructure.
• Day to day administration is automated via the software (automation) freeing up IT resources to focus on innovation and security management.

 Scalability and agility: 

• HCI is based on Nodes and Clusters therefore Nodes can be created or removed as required, which are automatically loaded into the necessary cluster. Thus, companies can start as small as a single node in a single cluster and scale up when required.
• Furthermore, when utilizing a comprehensive HCI architecture, which includes a full stack installer, the system is easy to install and automates deployments throughout the entire network.
• In addition, automation allows for IT stack upgrades, from firmware up through HCI and hypervisor software, which can be achieved from anywhere and without downtime to running workloads.

 Economics: 

• Reduced dependency on hardware and hardware maintenance which can reduce costs significantly.
• HCI no longer requires specialized skill sets and can merge their IT departments into one cohesive entity.
• HCI automation and its management systems can automatically run the day-to-day functionality of the network, selfheal, solve minor issues without staff involvement freeing up the IT personnel to focus on business-critical events.
• HCI offers dynamic scalability, enabling organizations to easily change course as business needs change.
• HCI is subscription based therefore companies only pay for what they use.

HCI and Citrix

Delivering a secure, scalable, and reliable Hybrid Multi - Cloud solution for Citrix DaaS, is now made possible by the partnering of Citrix and Nutanix hyper convergence infrastructure (HCI) and multi-cloud deployments. The solution provides secure, on-demand and elastic access to apps, desktops from any device and any location.

Read More

OAS is one of South Africa’s leading Citrix specialists and has joined forces with Nutanix to offer organizations the best-in-class Virtual Apps and Desktop as a service in a Hybrid multi cloud capacity.