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Over the years, digital services have become an integral part of every company and its operations. Networks continue to improve in complexity and scope. Many companies are adopting modern technology tools to regain control of their infrastructure. According to Insightforprofessionals, hyperconverged infrastructure is one of the most popular solutions. Converged infrastructure has attracted the attention of many enterprises because it provides an effective way to simplify systems.

Hyperconverged solutions work by running multiple components of the infrastructure within a single, centralized system. Therefore, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provides a more efficient and cost-effective way to manage huge IT infrastructure. Most developers and technology enthusiasts in the tech industry praise hyperconvergence for its simplicity, ease of management, and cost-saving capabilities. Let’s take a closer look at HCI to discover what it is, how it works, and other important information.

What is hyperconverged infrastructure? 

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a technology solution that combines servers and storage into a distributed infrastructure platform with intelligent software to develop dynamic building blocks that replace traditional infrastructure. This is the sum total of individual servers, storage networks, and storage arrays. Typically, HCI combines hardware servers in commodity data centers with locally allocated storage. A distributed software layer enables HCI, eliminating common issues associated with traditional infrastructure.

Hyperconverged infrastructure follows the principles of hyperconvergence. Hyperconvergence is an IT framework that combines computing, storage, networking and software into a single system to reduce data center complexity and increase scalability.

Platforms that are compatible with this approach are called hyperconverged. These platforms have software-centric architecture that tightly integrates and virtualizes all their resources. Basically, a hyperconverged platform has a hypervisor that handles virtualized compute, software-defined storage, and virtualized networking and runs on standard off-the-shelf servers. These four components deliver substantial performance and savings in cost and rack space while eliminating dependence on external storage area networks.

How does hyperconverged infrastructure work? 

Hyperconverged infrastructure manages integrated technologies as a single system through a common toolset. In a hyperconverged system, each server is called a node. A group of nodes is called a cluster, which includes x86 processors with solid-state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD). Function software on each node distributes all running functions across the cluster to improve performance.

Hyperconverged integrated systems require at least three hardware nodes to achieve significant availability. These systems can be expanded by adding nodes to the base unit. To better understand how hyperconverged infrastructure works, organizations must create models of their environments to understand them in a more realistic way. To do this, organizations must consider factors such as:

• Required computing power.
• The number of data models that should be available.
• The amount of available storage required.
• The number and types of hypervisors available.
• The degree of data redundancy.

Based on these considerations, organizations will need to decide on the necessary hardware requirements to discover for each node in their HCI cluster. After determining the hardware requirements, the next step will be to find out the number of nodes required for uninterrupted operation of the virtual machine, even if an unexpected disaster occurs and some nodes stop working. Each node requires a hypervisor to be installed and configured.

Then, configure the internal network for virtual machine traffic, storage input/output traffic, and virtual machine management. Best practice is to isolate all different types of traffic and avoid passing them through one network link, as this will cause oversaturation at some point.

HCI consolidates all functions of the data center stack, including compute, storage, networking and virtualization. Not only that, but it combines commodity data center hardware with storage equipment. Complex and expensive legacy infrastructure is replaced with a platform running on industry-standard commodity servers, allowing enterprises to accurately measure their workloads and scale flexibly.

Additionally, hardware platform configurations can independently scale available resources (CPU, RAM, and storage) based on any workload. Improved storage performance for all applications with all-flash nodes continuously delivering maximum I/O throughput and minimal latency.

Finally, the HCI solution also includes a seamless management plan that allows users to consume HCI resources from a single interface. This saves organizations the stress and resources of providing servers, storage, storage networking, and virtualization separately.

Advantages of hyperconverged infrastructure 

The motivation for HCI is to make managing rapidly expanding networks as simple as possible. Some of the benefits that businesses can expect from this.

• easier to manage

Once hyperconverged systems are deployed, maintaining and operating them effectively is straightforward. Monitoring and optimizing these systems is simpler than traditional alternatives that offer many automated software features. Additionally, when changes need to be made, administrators can operate from a remote location using a single pane of glass. At the same time, necessary processes, such as backups, are completed with simple point-and-click operations.

• better scalability

The simplicity of an HCI solution extends to its scalability. Since HCI solutions are easy to deploy and come in blocks of nodes, adding them to the cluster and removing them is very simple. This makes HCI a highly scalable solution. Since the nodes used are from the same vendor, administrators don’t need to worry about integration issues. This means they can launch and test HCI on a relatively small scale as a proof of concept before scaling up. This eliminates the need to refactor its initial deployment.

• better performance

Because HCI operates as a single system, it can be a useful tool for handling workloads. HCI solutions can leverage HDD and SSD storage to ensure the needs of various applications are met in the most cost-effective manner. Additionally, due to optimization of storage and processing capabilities, cabling requirements are reduced, mitigating latency.

Disadvantages of hyperconverged infrastructure 

Although HCI has many advantages, it still has disadvantages.

• Hardware dependencies

Some HCI services revolve around the idea that all required resources come from the same manufacturer, which can lead to issues such as vendor lock-in to guarantee performance. Although it is possible to extend an HCI environment using low-cost commodity hardware, this can lead to performance issues. This is because this low-cost hardware may not run efficiently on a fully converged platform configured to work in this environment.

Ultimately, enterprises must choose between price and performance when scaling their systems.

• Energy consumption

HCI frameworks place large workloads in a constrained space. This often means they will require more power than the data center can possibly provide. One way to solve this problem is to offload some workloads. Administrators may need to reorganize their locations to ensure adequate power and cooling strategies to ensure uninterrupted operations.

Why you still need a backup 

Digital data and applications are one of the drivers of business growth. Protecting business-critical and relevant virtual machines (VMs) and data is critical to business continuity. Backing up hyperconverged infrastructure often means backing up virtual machines. Virtual machine backup protects virtual machines, which are a staple of modern IT.

Backing up your hyperconverged infrastructure ensures the security of data, configurations, and files that can be easily restored after an outage. One of the best practices for protecting HCI systems is to ensure that backup software is compatible with your platform. Although general-purpose backup tools work well with HCI systems, it’s best to stick with HCI backup options that are already fully compatible. Additionally, your HCI vendor may be the best person to recommend hyperconverged backup products for you.

Backup options for hyperconverged systems 

Choosing the most appropriate backup option is one of the most complex aspects of moving to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). Nonetheless, there are some factors that can help you with the selection process.

• incremental backup

Incremental backups are perfect for physical server setups. It can run during off-peak hours, such as during periods of slow traffic or during periods of single change.

• Block level backup

Here, the system uploads only the modified portion of the file instead of the entire file. Source duplication eliminates any redundancy before transfer to the backup site. Additionally, this backup method reduces the impact on the hypervisor without affecting the hypervisor.

• Hypervisor-level backup

This uses software that runs directly at the hypervisor level. Each major hypervisor contains an application programming interface (API) that interacts with the backup system to obtain blocks from the hypervisor that have changed since the last backup.

• Snapshot-based backup

This is also an efficient way to create HCI backups. It operates according to a series of schedules in which the snapshot system interacts with the hypervisor to place various virtual machines into backup mode. At that point, a snapshot of the data is taken and copied to a separate storage system.

HCI is a business technology that brings everything under one unified umbrella. As a result, it eliminates much of the complexity typically associated with data center operations.