Introduction
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is the logical evolution of earlier so-called converged infrastructure architectures that combined server, storage and networking, but which still presented some management complexity, and which didn’t scale easily enough for the hybrid cloud era. HCI is designed to make scaling easier. When IT needs to deliver more compute power, storage performance, or storage capacity, just add another HCI node. But what if you’re responding to just one of these issues, say, compute power? By adding another whole HCI node to the cluster, you’re potentially risking wasting the other resources in the new node.
In addition, the more nodes that you add to the cluster, the greater the level of complexity, and the greater the level of overhead within the cluster. Adding nodes changes the data protection scheme within the cluster – portions of the data are moved to the new node, freeing up capacity on the other nodes, but adding strain to the network. In fact, when the node count reaches double digits, the communication between nodes is incredibly high, representing as much as 70% of the cluster’s network IO.
What is needed to support business-critical workloads is an end-to -end solution for VMware Datacentre that combines the best attributes of both converged infrastructure and hyperconverged infrastructure, merging the simple deployment and management of HCI with the resilience, performance, granular scalability, and flexibility of CI.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Nimble Storage dHCI
Enter HPE’s Nimble Storage dHCI, or disaggregated HyperConverged Infrastructure. The value proposition for Nimble dHCI is that it offers the flexibility of converged infrastructure, and the simplicity of hyperconverged infrastructure. dHCI provides the flexibility to scale storage and compute independently, which makes it ideal for mission-critical databases and data warehouses. Nimble Storage dHCI is a converged system built on HPE Nimble flash storage with self-management provided by HPE InfoSight, and integrated hyperconverged control using the industry-leading HPE ProLiant server.
What do you get?
Full-stack intelligence and policy-based automation for VM-centric management
Absolute resilience with 99.9999% availability
All-flash speed and sub-millisecond latency for always-on applications
Efficient scaling – grow compute and/or storage independently, extended across a hybrid cloud, with zero wasted resources
VM admins can stand up full-stack infrastructure including compute, storage, and network in minutes via automation software
5 Key Attributes
Global Intelligence. Nimble Storage dHCI delivers a self-managing private cloud with the industry’s most advanced AI for infrastructure – HPE InfoSight.
Hyperconverged control. Collapses storage and compute silos with policy-driven automation and native vCenter management.
Disaggregated scale. Scales compute and storage (performance and capacity) independently and efficiently.
Fast, resilient storage. Delivers sub-millisecond latency and 99.9999% guaranteed availability through HPE Nimble Storage.
Data efficiency. dHCI provides global deduplication, compression, zero pattern elimination, thin provisioning and zero-copy clones to achieve up to 21x data reduction.
ESG Technical Validation
HPE commissioned the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to provide independent validation of the Nimble Storage dHCI Solution value propositions. ESG is an IT analyst, research, validation, and strategy firm that provides market intelligence and actionable insight to the global IT community. Among their conclusions, they stated that:
“ESG deployed a new HPE Nimble Storage dHCI cluster with vSphere in less than 12 minutes and scaled compute resources by adding a server non-disruptively in less than three minutes. Management was clean and simple using the vSphere plug-in, enabling day-to -day operations to be handled by a VM administrator, without involving storage and network teams. HPE InfoSight identified issues and their root causes regardless of their place in the infrastructure—whether from the server, storage, network, or VM—while pinpointing other possible affected areas. The ease with which an administrator can identify the potential overall impact of an issue minimises disruption to the business. Forecasting the behaviour of metrics against predefined thresholds helps administrators plan and budget accordingly for future resource requirements.”
Next steps
To have a discussion with Onel about HPE’s Nimble Storage dHCI Solution, or to receive your copy of the ESG Technical Validation, please contact us as follows:
Phone: (03) 9653 6400
