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.
How does hyperconverged infrastructure work?
HCI converges the entire datacenter stack, including compute, storage, storage networking, and virtualization. Complex and expensive legacy infrastructure is replaced by a platform running on turnkey, industry-standard servers that enable enterprises to start small and scale one node at a time. Software running on each server node distributes all operating functions across the cluster for superior performance and resilience.
The components of hyperconverged infrastructure
HCI consists of two main components, the distributed plane and the management plane.
The distributed plane runs across a cluster of nodes delivering storage, virtualization, and networking services for guest applications—whether they’re VMs or container-based apps.
The management plane lets you easily administer HCI resources from one place and one view and eliminates the need for separate management solutions for servers, storage networks, storage, and virtualization.
Nearly all modern hyperconverged infrastructure solutions are 100% software-defined, with no dependency on proprietary hardware. Each HCI node in a cluster runs a hypervisor, and the HCI control features run as a separate virtual machine on every node, forming a fully distributed fabric that can scale resources with the addition of new nodes.
Benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure
The benefits of moving from complex legacy infrastructure to the simplicity of hyperconvergence are many, but among the top reasons organizations make the switch are lower costs, improved, consistent performance, a smaller datacenter footprint, greater efficiency and productivity in IT teams, and maximized infrastructure ROI.
Turnkey Infrastructure
Integrated server, storage, networking and virtualization resources along with end-to-end systems management and operations management capabilities.
Fast Deployment
Deploy infrastructure in minutes, so IT teams can elevate their focus to the applications and services powering the business.
100% Software-Driven
Supports a wide variety of different hardware platforms – including three of the four most popular server platforms in the world.
World-Class Platform
Each hyperconverged server (node), includes Intel-powered x86 hardware with flash-based SSDs and traditional HDDs, along with Nutanix software.
Superior Performance and Resilience
Hyperconverged software running on each node distributes all operating functions across the cluster.
Unprecedented Flexibility
A single cluster can have unlimited nodes, with node types having differing amounts of storage, CPU and memory resources, so you can run multiple workloads with maximum efficiency.
The link between hyperconverged infrastructure and cloud
Enterprise IT teams today are looking for ways to deliver on-premises IT services with the speed and operational efficiency of public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. A comprehensive enterprise cloud platform bridges the gap between traditional infrastructure and public cloud services—and hyperconvergence is at the core of an enterprise or hybrid cloud.