VSAN-0130 Hyperconverged Infrastructure For Dummies VMware and Intel Special Edition PDF
VSAN-0130 Hyperconverged Infrastructure For Dummies VMware and Intel Special Edition PDF
VSAN-0130 Hyperconverged Infrastructure For Dummies VMware and Intel Special Edition PDF
These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
HyperConverged
Infrastructure
by Michael Haag
VMware Storage & Availability |
Product Line Marketing Manager
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HyperConverged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River St.
Hoboken, NJ 070305774
www.wiley.com
Copyright 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise,
except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the
prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be
addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ
07030, (201) 7486011, fax (201) 7486008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, The Dummies Way, Dummies.com,
Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used
without written permission. VMware, NSX, vSphere, and vRealize, are registered trademarks of
VMware, Inc. vSphere Storage DRS, vSphere Virtual Volumes, vSphere Replication, vSphere Thin
Provisioning, vCenter Server, vRealize Air Automation, vRealize Log Insight, vRealize Operations,
vRealize Operations Manager, vRealize Automation and Horizon Air Hybrid, Virtual SAN, and Virtual
SAN Ready Nodes are trademarks of VMware, Inc. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Xeon processor, Intel
SSD and Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapters are trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is not associated
with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Publishers Acknowledgments
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
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vi Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Table of Contents vii
Programmable via Application Programming Interfaces..... 45
The VMware Implementation: vSphere Storage
Policy-Based Management................................................... 45
Renewing the Friendship between the Virtual
Infrastructure Admin and theStorage Admin................... 46
Appendix: Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
HCI Backgrounders................................................................... 61
Free eLearning........................................................................... 62
Free Preview of Courses.......................................................... 62
Other Resources....................................................................... 62
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viii Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Introduction
W elcome to HyperConverged Infrastructure For Dummies,
your guide to catching the hyperconvergence wave
thats sweeping through todays data centers.
In this case, the fruit is the return on your data center infra-
structure investments. Are you getting all you can get from
your investments? Probably not, assuming youre using con-
ventional approaches.
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2 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Foolish Assumptions
This book makes a few assumptions about you. If youre read-
ing this book, I assume the following:
Follow the target for advice that can save you time and effort.
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Chapter1
The Data Center Has
Evolved Has Your
Infrastructure Kept Up?
In This Chapter
Highlighting todays infrastructure challenges
Exploring the softwaredefined data center
Introducing hyperconverged infrastructure
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4 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
That capacity growth comes with good news and bad news:
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Chapter1: The Data Center Has Evolved Has Your Infrastructure Kept Up? 5
Additionally, enduser expectations are increasing because of
the widespread use of server virtualization, the rise of cloud
based services, and the emergence of scaleout applications.
End users now expect better application performance and
faster responsiveness from the IT services organization.
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6 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
HyperConverged Infrastructure:
The Fastest Route to the
SoftwareDefined Data Center
Okay, we know that the SDDC helps IT pros overcome many
common challenges stemming from legacy issues. So, how
do you get there? Many roads will move you forward, but the
fastest, most direct, and most popular route to the SDDC is
HCI.Figure11 shows how the SDDC provides an ideal archi-
tecture for private, public, and hybrid clouds, extending virtu-
alization concepts to all data center resources and services.
HCI is the next big step in the evolution of data center archi-
tectures. This ongoing evolution first moved us from tradi-
tional silobased infrastructure to converged infrastructure.
And now its moving us to HCI.In the following sections, I walk
you through each of these types of infrastructure.
Traditional infrastructure
The traditional infrastructure model relies on proprietary,
purposebuilt hardware for storage and networking. These
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Chapter1: The Data Center Has Evolved Has Your Infrastructure Kept Up? 7
components form separate silos with their own manage-
ment software from numerous vendors. They work best
when optimized and managed by dedicated specialists.
Furthermore, because performance is set at the hardware
layer, resources are not properly optimized and overprovi-
sioning often occurs.
Converged infrastructure
A converged infrastructure improves on the traditional model
by bringing compute, storage, management, and networking
into a single rack, as shown in Figure13. Different specialty
vendors typically still provide these elements. The overall
management may be integrated and optimized, but separate
systems, workflows, and management platforms are still
required for many operations and troubleshooting tasks.
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8 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Figure1-3:Converged infrastructure.
Hyperconverged infrastructure
Hyperconverged solutions take the next step: The storage and
compute resource pillars are physically converged onto a single
industrystandard x86 server, forming a seamless, software
defined environment well suited to todays IT challenges.
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10 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter2
A New Approach:
HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Exploring the trends driving hyperconverged infrastructure
Interpreting the role of the hypervisor
Highlighting success factors and use cases
Defining HyperConverged
Infrastructure
First, lets lay out a basic definition. Hyperconverged infra-
structure, as shown in Figure21, collapses compute, storage
(including storage networking), and management onto virtual-
ized, standard hardware, enabling a buildingblock approach
to infrastructure with scaleout capabilities.
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12 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Figure2-1:Hyperconverged infrastructure.
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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure 13
Higherdensity flash technologies that deliver higher per-
formance at lower costs
More powerful servers, thanks to advances in central
processing unit (CPU) and memory densities
Widespread adoption of server virtualization for most
workloads
Influence of cloud principles, economics, and cloudnative
applications demanding an updated approach toIT
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14 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Heres where things get really good: The cost of x86 hardware,
including flash memory, is usually a bargain compared to
purposebuilt storage arrays. As a result, HCI delivers con-
siderable cost savings compared to deploying siloed servers,
storage networking, and external storage solutions.
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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure 15
Because of this widespread use, the hypervisor is the obvi-
ous foundation for expanding on the benefits of server
virtualization to cover storage, networking, and unified
management enabling a clear path to HCI and ultimately
the SDDC without requiring forklift changes to current infra-
structure and expertise.
A proven hypervisor
Radically simple storage
A unified management platform
Flexible deployment choices
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16 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
A proven hypervisor
In an HCI solution, the hypervisor forms your foundation
its the hyper in hyperconverged, and plays a key role in
ensuring data availability, storage efficiency, application per-
formance, and flexible scalability.
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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure 17
Unlike hardwarecentric solutions, hyperconverged infra-
structure software pools serverattached storage to create
highperformance, resilient, shared storage thats optimized
for VMs. What was previously complicated and expensive
becomes just the opposite: simple, powerful, streamlined, and
intelligent.
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18 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Businesscritical applications
Traditional infrastructure makes BCAs slow to provision
and complicated to manage. Tasks like database processing,
email server management, and Web 2.0 workloads require
high levels of performance, availability, and reliability. Older
architectures simply cant deliver without overprovisioned
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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure 19
storage, expensive purposebuilt hardware, and siloed man-
agement tools.
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20 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Management clusters
Businesscritical applications may get most of the attention,
but management clusters play a critical, behindthescenes
role in keeping the overall IT environment running smoothly.
A management cluster is a dedicated group of hosts reserved
for running VMs that provide management services to infra-
structure environments, which can include directory services,
domain name system (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP), and VMware vCenter Server.
Keep in mind that the HCI use cases cited here arent a com-
plete list. HCI solutions can also be used to meet a wide range
of other IT needs, such as systems for hybrid cloud support,
disaster recovery sites, secondary data centers, DMZ deploy-
ments, and test and development functions.
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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure 21
Simplicity
With a fully featured HCI environment, you can eliminate
many of the components and hardware silos found in tradi-
tional infrastructure. In simple terms, with HCI you need a lot
less stuff in your data center. This simplicity helps you reduce
operational time and complexity across your data center.
Performance
HCI accelerates applications and enhances the user experi-
ence. To drive performance gains, HCI
Cost
HCI can help you greatly reduce infrastructure spending
across your data center. In particular, HCI
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22 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Flexibility
With a data center built around HCI, your IT organization is
poised to rapidly respond to changing business demands. To
deliver this flexibility, HCI
Availability
HCI helps you minimize risk with a proven, secure platform
that
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Chapter3
Extending Virtualization to
Storage: SoftwareDefined
Storage
In This Chapter
Introducing softwaredefined storage
Exploring the DNA of a new approach to storage
Explaining the value of hypervisor integration
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24 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
To enable this shift, SDS puts the application and its require-
ments at the top of the IT food chain, enabling storage
resources to respond to the dynamic changes in application
requirements. Now the application is the boss; the supporting
resources are the workers who make sure the boss gets what
the boss needs when the boss needs it.
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26 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage 27
A few examples:
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28 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Path 1: Specialized
storagehardware
The first form of abstraction assumes that you continue to use
your traditional storage architecture based on either SAN or
NAS systems. To enable this abstraction, SDS uses a new inte-
gration framework between the hypervisor and the traditional
storage systems to introduce a new, granular management
solution that delivers perVM control.
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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage 29
The new softwaredefined systems are sometimes referred
to as server SANs, which is really just another way of saying
hyperconverged infrastructure or HCI.This approach
rewrites the old capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational
expenditure (OpEx) rules for enterprise storage. Storage com-
ponents no longer cost premium prices. Your IT shop is free
to select the specific components that best meet your particu-
lar requirements for performance, cost, and capacity.
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30 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage 31
SDS uses policies to create a justintime model for storage ser-
vice delivery. Storage assets and capabilities arent configured
and assigned to specific applications until theyre needed.
Should the policy change, the storage environment responds
with the requested new service level.
Toward a Software-Defined
Everything
Compute virtualization is a mature category that has enabled
benefits in performance and scalability. Today we are
seeing other critical data center components also advancing
and becoming dynamic resource pools that can scale. We
are seeing the rise of software-defined everything from
software-defined networking to software-defined storage
and hyperconverged-infrastructure to software-defined
application services. These all pave the way for the software-
defined data center (SDDC), which is a software abstraction
of your entire data center.
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32 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter4
The VMware Approach
to HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Highlighting the routes to hyperconverged infrastructure
Introducing VMwarepowered hyperconverged infrastructure
Explaining the attributes of VMware Virtual SAN
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34 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter4: The VMware Approach to HyperConverged Infrastructure 35
VMwarePowered HCI
To enable HCI solutions, VMware converges compute, stor-
age (including storage networking), and management onto a
single, integrated layer of software that can run on industry
standard Intelbased hardware, as shown in Figure41. You
can radically simplify your data center and deliver lowcost,
highperformance compute and storage powered by VMware
HyperConverged Infrastructure software and Intel processors
and solidstate drives (SSDs). It is the ideal combination of
proven Intel hardware and VMware software for high perfor-
mance and exceptional reliability.
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36 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter4: The VMware Approach to HyperConverged Infrastructure 37
Virtual SAN works with both flash drives and HDDs in stan-
dard x86 Intelbased servers to deliver enterpriseclass stor-
age for virtualized applications. This is highperformance
storage thats built for the challenges of your businesscritical
applications.
Even better, Virtual SAN seamlessly works with the rest of the
VMware software stack. Management is simplified by using
standard, Intelbased hardware and common VMware tools
and interfaces across compute, storage, and networking. This
makes Virtual SAN the simplest storage platform for your VMs.
Inkernel integration
Hyperconverged solutions use the hypervisor to support and
deliver storage functions and storage networking in software.
Theres no need for dedicated storage hardware, such as a
storage array, or for complex storage networking, such as a
Fiber Channel switch.
Flashoptimized performance
Because softwaredefined storage depends on the hypervisor,
the hypervisor is like the engine that moves the load along. So
topnotch hypervisor performance is key to topnotch storage
performance.
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38 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Efficiency advantages
In addition, advanced storage efficiency features include
deduplication, compression, and erasure coding. Intel proces-
sors and SSDs provide the performance to run these efficiency
and data reduction technologies inline before any data is writ-
ten to the capacity tier of Virtual SAN.These features drasti-
cally improve the storage utilization rate (meaning you need
less physical storage to store the same amount of data).
Operational advantages
Operational advantages are perhaps the biggest win of the
hyperconverged approach. A hyperconverged storage
approach is built from the ground up to integrate and lever-
age all the functionality of the hypervisor, without more
operational overhead or any reduction of core functionality.
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Chapter4: The VMware Approach to HyperConverged Infrastructure 39
Hardware choice
To deliver the maximum value and flexibility, and ultimately a
path to the complete softwaredefined data center (SDDC), an
HCI solution shouldnt be tied to a specific hardware platform.
This is where the hardwareagnostic approach to deploying
VMware HCI solutions delivers differentiating choice, letting
you control your infrastructure.
There are two ways to scale, and both are pretty simple:
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40 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter5
Transforming the
Operational Model with
Unified Management
In This Chapter
Managing and monitoring the hyperconverged infrastructure
environment
Taking operations down to the virtual machine level
Using policydriven automation
Enabling dynamic control of storage services
SinglePaneofGlass
Management
If youre in IT operations, you know all about swivelchair
management when you hop from one interface to another
to manage different aspects of your environment. HCI helps
you simplify your life with singlepaneofglass management.
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42 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
But dont assume that all HCI environments offer unified man-
agement. Be on the lookout for systems that require different
tools for HCI system, hypervisor, and/or storage management.
Advanced Monitoring
When it comes to system monitoring, your HCI environment
should incorporate builtin monitoring features.
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Chapter5: Transforming the Operational Model with Unified Management 43
HCI conforms to how users see the world, not how IT defines
infrastructure components. This is quite different from the
status quo in storage. Todays storage devices usually have
poor knowledge of applications. They see the world as
storagecentric logical unit numbers (LUNs) and file systems;
each offers a container with a static combination of capacity,
performance, and protection.
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44 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Dynamic Control of
StorageServices
With todays static storage model, storage admins must
estimate (or make guesstimates) about the needs of d ifferent
applications well in advance of deployment. They then
acquire the physical hardware and allocate it into pre
provisioned resource pools with different service levels for
capacity, performance, and protection. At that point, the
application is made available for consumption.
Its easy to see why this conventional model isnt ideal. Here
are a few of the many problems with this approach:
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Chapter5: Transforming the Operational Model with Unified Management 45
supply without having much foreknowledge of the spe-
cific application requirements. Youre prepared for whatever
comes your way.
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46 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter6
Getting Started with
HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Introducing deployment choices for VMwarepowered HCI
Exploring certified solutions
Explaining hyperconverged infrastructure appliances
Implementing VMwarePowered
HCI: Deployment Choices
You have two main options for implementing VMwarebased
HCI, as shown in Figure61:
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48 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
VMware Virtual SAN offers the best storage value with radi-
cally simple management, high performance, low cost and a
futureproof road map supporting any app and any scale.
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Chapter6: Getting Started with HyperConverged Infrastructure 49
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50 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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Chapter6: Getting Started with HyperConverged Infrastructure 51
Create balanced configurations. As a best practice,
deploy ESXi hosts with similar or identical configurations
across all cluster members, including similar or identical
storage configurations. This ensures an even balance of
virtual machine (VM) storage components across the
disks and hosts cluster.
Design for the life cycle of the Virtual SAN cluster. For
both hybrid and allflash configurations, its important to
scale in a way that enables an adequate amount of cache
and capacity for your workloads.
Consider choosing hosts that have disk slots for addi-
tional capacity and provide an easy way to install addi-
tional devices into these slots.
Size for capacity, maintenance, and availability. A con-
figuration with four nodes (or more) provides more avail-
ability options than a threenode configuration. Be sure
you have enough storage capacity to not only meet your
availability requirements but also allow for a rebuild of
components after a failure.
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52 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
A familiar experience
Built on the foundation of VMware HyperConverged
Infrastructure and managed through the familiar VMware
vCenter Server, VxRail Appliances provide current VMware
customers with a familiar experience, plus the hallmark ben-
efits of the virtual computing environment (VCE) increased
agility, simplified operations, and lower risk.
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Chapter7
Ten Reasons to Love
HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Exploring operational benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure
Highlighting business benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure
Understanding evolving application needs
T his book saves the best for last (or next to last, if youre
a stickler about chapter numbers). Heres the payoff for
hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI): really good outcomes
for both business and information technology (IT).
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54 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Improving Operational
Efficiency
One thing stands out when comparing HCI workflows with
traditional storage workflows: There are far fewer steps, and
theyre usually done by far fewer people. This is intentional.
HCI environments are designed to be automated from the
outset, not as an afterthought.
Enabling Dynamic
Responsiveness
Application storage service requirements change over time.
An application moves from pilot to production. A heavy work-
load needs more storage resources. Another workload needs
to be decommissioned.
Improving Precision
and Granularity
In hardwarecentric conventional storage environments, over-
provisioning is the norm. Admins configure static pools of
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Chapter7: Ten Reasons to Love HyperConverged Infrastructure 55
storage resources according to their best guesstimates about
the maximum storage and application needs. This leads to a
lot of wasted capacity.
Scaling Elastically
In HCI with Virtual SAN, you can scale in an elastic, nondisrup-
tive manner by taking advantage of x86 servers for storage:
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56 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Providing Consistent
Performance for Every
Application
Ensure you can run any application with confidence from
businesscritical applications to future cloudnative appli-
cations. Scale knowing that performance will not be com-
promised. And with options for allflash, you get the most
costefficient performance. Additionally, you can utilize space
efficiency features with minimal impact on CPU and memory
overhead.
Providing EnterpriseClass
Availability
With HCI, you can eliminate costly downtime. Enable maxi-
mum levels of data protection and availability with builtin
failure tolerance, asynchronous longdistance replication, and
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Chapter7: Ten Reasons to Love HyperConverged Infrastructure 57
stretched clusters. With fivenines (99.999%) availability, you
have peace of mind even when the unexpected occurs.
(continued)
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58 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
(continued)
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Notes
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Notes
These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.
Appendix
Resources
R eady for a deeper dive into hyperconverged infrastruc-
ture (HCI)? Here are some top resources for your further
exploration.
HCI Backgrounders
Why HCI and Why Now? Explore the data center
infrastructure strategy that radically simplifies storage.
http://learn.vmware.com/36403_vSAN_HCI_ToF_
Reg?asset=vsantech&touch=1
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62 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
Free eLearning
VMware Virtual SAN Fundamentals [V5.5]: Learn how to
deploy and manage a softwaredefined storage solution with
VMware Virtual SAN. https://mylearn.vmware.com/
mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_
subject=55806
Other Resources
VMware HCI site: Explore deployment options and find
resources to get you started down the path to HCI. www.
vmware.com/products/hyperconvergedinfra
structure.html
Virtual SAN free trial: Try Virtual SAN for 60 days at no cost
in your own environment. https://my.vmware.com/web/
vmware/evalcenter?p=vsan
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Appendix: Resources 63
Virtual SAN TCO and Sizing Calculator: Quantify the
economic impact that Virtual SAN can have in your environ-
ment. https://vsantco.vmware.com
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64 Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition
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