5 Factors to Consider When Moving to Hyperconverge Infrastructure

For many of us and other businesses or organizations, time is a commodity. There aren’t enough hours in a day to juggle everything that has been given to us let alone build an IT infrastructure from scratch. In an era where doing more with less is in trend, businesses are also exploring the use of hyperconverge infrastructure and getting this type of service from different providers of IT solutions here in the Philippines. It effectively redesigned the data center to explore the complexity and cost of legacy IT infrastructure. It is considered as one of the fastest-growing segments in the SME space because it gives ease of use and lowers costs for companies and organizations by bringing together storage, networking, compute and virtualization into a single integrated appliance managed by one toolset. The convenience of it, functionality and lower OPEX and CAPEX are the reasons why 85% of respondents in a recent ESG survey have said that they are planning or already using HCI solutions for their business. Not all hyper converged plans are the same therefore you need to consider things before transferring to hyper converged solutions.

Ecosystem

You need to consider how the hyper converged solutions will work with your already existing IT equipment and infrastructure. After all, you are not throwing everything away and replacing it with an HCI solution, so understanding how it will integrate with your data center is vital. Once you sort this one, you will need to assess your tolerance of small management. A streamlined environment will give you one management layer of all your processes, tools and staff. Your decision-making will be determined, to some extent, by your willingness and cost to embark upon new learning.

All-Flash Options

Think critically about all-flash solutions. To gain the full benefits, flash needs to be planned from the outset. For example, flash is the difference between a Maserati and a dusty hatchback. It boasts greater reliability and performance than magnetic media but unlike a sports car, it is not as expensive as you thought. Nowadays, some all-flash solutions can be bought for the same price per gigabyte as data efficiency and hybrid solution services will drive the price down even further.

Service and Protection

Just like any component and information on your data center, you need a plan for how you’re going to protect the HCI solution. Recovery from disaster should be your number one priority. Find out whether your tools are interoperable with your other processes and disaster recovery systems.

Networking

The backbone of HCI appliances is the network. It is where everything happens - like data exchange and management communication within different nodes. Understanding it will help you assess the impact an HCIA will have on performance so you can prepare ahead of time.

Build vs Buy

HCI comes in two primary categories: software-only or fully integrated appliances. Consider what is important to you. Do you want to spend your time assembling your own solution or buy one that is already made? How much of a systems integrator are you planning to be? How important is it to have a solution that is supported and manufactured as one?