Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Article | July 13, 2023
The year of the pandemic – that is how many of us will remember 2020 for generations to come. Challenging circumstances brought by the sudden and devastating spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) has made us witness the world making quick changes to remote working, businesses struggling to survive, the distress of social distancing rules, the emotional rollercoaster for people isolating, an overall crisis for health systems and the economy of countries, no matter where you were in the world.
When reflecting on what it has meant so far, however, we must realise that it’s not all doom and gloom. As Albert Einstein once said, “in the midst of every crisis lied a great opportunity”. The crisis has prompted companies to reinvent and accelerate digital plans, to adopt new technologies and sales models in order to adapt and survive – and for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to step up to support businesses and employees in every way possible.
On the other hand, let’s also not forget what the changes have meant for the health of our ecosystems. With industries across varied sectors forced to work remotely and shut down operations, the changes have led to benefits for the environment – and we could argue that such break was something that our planet was desperately in need of.
Even now, as we start to see our way out of this situation, it’s hard to believe how it all happened. For most countries, it was a similar case: we were hearing news about a new virus spreading in China; and before we knew more about it, the virus arrived in our own territories. It seemed unlikely, and yet, a few days later, the virus was quickly spreading, and lockdown restrictions came into effect for almost every nation in the globe. Millions of workers around the world had to leave the office and make a quick switch to remote working, without much notice at all.
In the initial stages of lockdown, MSPs had to work around the clock to help customers that weren’t ready for flexible working, to enable people to work from home. As every other industry and business type, MSPs also encountered challenges. Not being able to help a client on-site can sometimes significantly affect the speed of project delivery. So, adjustments had to be made, wherever possible, to deliver services remotely, as quickly and seamlessly as possible.
“We are all in this together” is a phrase that became widespread in the UK. IT professionals, like many other sectors, had to support each other, and they have been working together as a community, to assist clients, businesses, and the wider public, since working from home was suddenly imposed for the vast majority. In the technology space, there is a lot of knowledge to share and to work with, which has led to many tech leaders and companies offering free advice, webinars and other tools to help with the struggles that have risen in the midst of the pandemic.
Shifting priorities based on customer needs
In the initial stages of the pandemic, MSPs played a critical role providing small and medium sized businesses with the tools and the IT infrastructure to keep their business running. Enabling office-based workers to continue their work from home was only the first step, however.
The sudden shift to remote working has required new tools and exposed new security vulnerabilities. All around the world, we saw an increasing number of cyber-attacks and threats taking place. Remote working means many people were using personal computers for work and business purposes, and so, products that are designed to keep personal computers protected became essential.
MSPs have also focused on increasing security measures for protecting password and identities for customers. Passwords on their own are not secure enough and can be easily compromised, so it has been a case of quickly deploying password management and Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), also known as two-factor authentication (2FA). MFA immediately increases security and ensures that clients’ accounts are significantly less likely to be compromised. In a few simple steps, IT providers can deploy MFA to help protect an organisation against breaches due to lost or stolen credentials.
Beyond helping employees to work from home securely, MSPs have assisted companies in implementing cloud-based applications, and managing access and restrictions to certain applications, especially for furloughed staff.
Embracing opportunities in the post-pandemic landscape
The spread of Covid-19 has made remote working the new norm, but how likely is this to become a permanent thing? Many employers and workers have started to believe that working from home will become more and more common for employees, even after the threat of the virus is gone. It’s difficult to know what the final picture will be, but it’s remains a fact that, as offices gradually re-open after lockdown, employers are increasingly looking at new ways of flexible working.
Many organisations that have been forced to work from home have been functioning remotely with little to no issue, so it stands to reason that the future of work will become more flexible. Video-calls, online training sessions, webinars, online meetings, it all sounds too familiar now, doesn’t it?
Remote working was already popular, though for a long time it wasn’t much more than a much-appreciated working benefit offered by employers, as part of the ‘job perks’ package. The pandemic only accelerated the need for remote working capabilities, and now telecommuting seems to be taking over as the new norm.
The IT landscape has mutated, and quite possibly it has changed for good. Technology leaders will have to continue to listen to the evolving needs and demands of the users and the markets in which they operate. For MSPs, it means the crisis is bringing opportunities to provide value to clients seeking support for enhanced mobility and flexible working. Now that work-from-home setups are in place, there’s room for improving remote access solutions and security measures.
Cloud migrations, which are expected to increase after the pandemic, present an opportunity for remote employees to improve collaboration and business resiliency. There will be a push towards more robust cloud-based solutions, and these migrations are likely to become one of the top opportunities for the months to come to drive revenue for MSPs, as well as VoIP solutions, business continuity and hardware sales.
The pandemic seems to have accelerated the demand for cloud services and security solutions. MSPs will play an important role in finding the best solutions for every business type, to enable them to work more flexibly and effectively. IT providers will be increasingly tasked with the job of securing devices and protecting employees as they work remotely, especially for SMBs.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Article | September 14, 2023
Rapid IT infrastructure scaling is always challenging. In March 2020, the coronavirus caused a surge in remote workers as organizations switched overwhelmingly to work-from-home policies. Scaling IT infrastructure to support this sudden shift proved to be a struggle for IT teams, resulting in a migration to cloud-based applications and solutions, a rush on hardware that can support a remote environment, and challenges scaling VPNs to support remote worker security. Here are some of the insights and lessons learned from IT professionals.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, IT Systems Management
Article | September 14, 2023
Revolutionize data management with HCI: Unveil the modernized storage solutions and implementation strategies for enhanced efficiency, scalability, sustainable growth and future-ready performance.
Contents
1. Introduction to Modernized Storage Solutions and HCI
2. Software-Defined Storage in HCI
3. Benefits of Modern Storage HCI in Data Management
3.1 Data Security and Privacy in HCI Storage
3.2 Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Integration
3.3 Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Data Management
4. Implementation Strategies for Modern Storage HCI
4.1 Workload Analysis
4.2 Software-Defined Storage
4.3 Advanced Networking
4.4 Data Tiering and Caching
4.5 Continuous Monitoring and Optimization
5. Future Trends in HCI Storage and Data Management
1. Introduction to Modernized Storage Solutions and HCI
Modern businesses face escalating data volumes, necessitating efficient and scalable storage solutions. Modernized storage solutions, such as HCI, integrate computing, networking, and storage resources into a unified system, streamlining operations and simplifying data management.
By embracing modernized storage solutions and HCI, organizations can unlock numerous benefits, including enhanced agility, simplified management, improved performance, robust data protection, and optimized costs. As technology evolves, leveraging these solutions will be instrumental in achieving competitive advantages and future-proofing the organization's IT infrastructure.
2. Software-Defined Storage in HCI
By embracing software-defined storage in HCI, organizations can benefit from simplified storage management, scalability, improved performance, cost efficiency, and seamless integration with hybrid cloud environments. These advantages empower businesses to optimize their storage infrastructure, increase agility, and effectively manage growing data demands, ultimately driving success in the digital era.
Software-defined storage in HCI revolutionizes traditional, hardware-based storage arrays by replacing them with virtualized storage resources managed through software. This centralized approach simplifies data storage management, allowing IT teams to allocate and oversee storage resources efficiently. With software-defined storage, organizations can seamlessly scale their storage infrastructure as needed without the complexities associated with traditional hardware setups. By abstracting storage from physical hardware, software-defined storage brings greater agility and flexibility to the storage infrastructure, enabling organizations to adapt quickly to changing business demands.
Software-defined storage in HCI empowers organizations with seamless data mobility, allowing for the smooth movement of workloads and data across various infrastructure environments, including private and public clouds. This flexibility enables organizations to implement hybrid cloud strategies, leveraging the advantages of both on-premises and cloud environments. With software-defined storage, data migration, replication, and synchronization between different data storage locations become simplified tasks. This simplification enhances data availability and accessibility, facilitating efficient data management across other storage platforms and enabling organizations to make the most of their hybrid cloud deployments.
3. Benefits of Modern Storage HCI in Data Management
Software-defined storage HCI simplifies hybrid and multi-cloud data management. Its single platform lets enterprises easily move workloads and data between on-premises infrastructure, private clouds, and public clouds. The centralized management interface of software-defined storage HCI ensures comprehensive data governance, unifies control, ensures compliance, and improves visibility across the data management ecosystem, complementing this flexibility and scalability optimization.
3.1 Data Security and Privacy in HCI Storage
Modern software-defined storage HCI solutions provide robust data security measures, including encryption, access controls, and secure replication. By centralizing storage management through software-defined storage, organizations can implement consistent security policies across all storage resources, minimizing the risk of data breaches. HCI platforms offer built-in features such as snapshots, replication, and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring data integrity, business continuity, and resilience against potential threats.
3.2 Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Integration
These HCI platforms seamlessly integrate with data analytics and business intelligence tools, enabling organizations to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions. By consolidating storage, compute, and analytics capabilities, HCI minimizes data movement and latency, enhancing the efficiency of data analysis processes. The scalable architecture of software-defined storage HCI supports processing large data volumes, accelerating data analytics, predictive modeling, and facilitating data-driven strategies for enhanced operational efficiency and competitiveness.
3.3 Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Data Management
Software-defined storage HCI simplifies hybrid and multi-cloud data management by providing a unified platform for seamless data movement across different environments. Organizations can easily migrate workloads and data between on-premises infrastructure, private clouds, and public clouds, optimizing flexibility and scalability. The centralized management interface of software-defined storage HCI enables consistent data governance, ensuring control, compliance, and visibility across the entire data management ecosystem.
4. Implementation Strategies for Modern Storage Using HCI
4.1 Workload Analysis
A comprehensive workload analysis is essential before embarking on an HCI implementation journey. Start by thoroughly assessing the organization's workloads, delving into factors like application performance requirements, data access patterns, and peak usage times. Prioritize workloads based on their criticality to business operations, ensuring that those directly impacting revenue or customer experiences are addressed first.
4.2 Software-Defined Storage
Software-defined storage (SDS) offers flexibility and abstraction of storage resources from hardware. SDS solutions are often vendor-agnostic, enabling organizations to choose storage hardware that aligns best with their needs. Scalability is a hallmark of SDS, as it can easily adapt to accommodate growing data volumes and evolving performance requirements. Adopt SDS for a wide range of data services, including snapshots, deduplication, compression, and automated tiering, all of which enhance storage efficiency.
4.3 Advanced Networking
Leverage Software-Defined Networking technologies within the HCI environment to enhance agility, optimize network resource utilization, and support dynamic workload migrations. Implementing network segmentation allows organizations to isolate different workload types or security zones within the HCI infrastructure, bolstering security and compliance. Quality of Service (QoS) controls come into play to prioritize network traffic based on specific application requirements, ensuring optimal performance for critical workloads.
4.4 Data Tiering and Caching
Intelligent data tiering and caching strategies play a pivotal role in optimizing storage within the HCI environment. These strategies automate the movement of data between different storage tiers based on usage patterns, ensuring that frequently accessed data resides on high-performance storage while less-accessed data is placed on lower-cost storage. Caching techniques, such as read and write caching, accelerate data access by storing frequently accessed data on high-speed storage media. Consider hybrid storage configurations, combining solid-state drives (SSDs) for caching and traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) for cost-effective capacity storage.
4.5 Continuous Monitoring and Optimization
Implement real-time monitoring tools to provide visibility into the HCI environment's performance, health, and resource utilization, allowing IT teams to address potential issues proactively. Predictive analytics come into play to forecast future resource requirements and identify potential bottlenecks before they impact performance. Resource balancing mechanisms automatically allocate compute, storage, and network resources to workloads based on demand, ensuring efficient resource utilization. Continuous capacity monitoring and planning help organizations avoid resource shortages in anticipation of future growth.
5. Future Trends in HCI Storage and Data Management
Modernized storage solutions using HCI have transformed data management practices, revolutionizing how organizations store, protect, and utilize their data. HCI offers a centralized and software-defined approach to storage, simplifying management, improving scalability, and enhancing operational efficiency. The abstraction of storage from physical hardware grants organizations greater agility and flexibility in their storage infrastructure, adapting to evolving business needs. With HCI, organizations implement consistent security policies across their storage resources, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring data integrity. This flexibility empowers organizations to optimize resource utilization scale as needed. This drives informed decision-making, improves operational efficiency, and fosters data-driven strategies for organizational growth.
The future of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure storage and data management promises exciting advancements that will revolutionize the digital landscape. As edge computing gains momentum, HCI solutions will adapt to support edge deployments, enabling organizations to process and analyze data closer to the source. Composable infrastructure will enable organizations to build flexible and adaptive IT infrastructures, dynamically allocating compute, storage, and networking resources as needed. Data governance and compliance will be paramount, with HCI platforms providing robust data classification, encryption, and auditability features to ensure regulatory compliance. Optimized hybrid and multi-cloud integration will enable seamless data mobility, empowering organizations to leverage the benefits of different cloud environments. By embracing these, organizations can unlock the full potential of HCI storage and data management, driving innovation and achieving sustainable growth in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
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Application Infrastructure
Article | May 9, 2022
We’re all hoping that 2022 will finally end the unprecedented challenges brought by the global pandemic and things will return to a new normalcy. For IT infrastructure and operations organizations, the rising trends that we are seeing today will likely continue, but there are still a few areas that will need special attention from IT leaders over the next 12 to 18 months.
In no particular order, they include:
The New Edge
Edge computing is now at the forefront. Two primary factors that make it business-critical are the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid workplace models where employees will continue working remotely, either from home or a branch office, resulting in an increased adoption of cloud-based businesses and communications services.
With the rising focus on remote and hybrid workplace cultures, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet have continued to expand their solutions and add new features. As people start moving back to office, they are likely to want the same experience they had from home. In a typical enterprise setup, branch office traffic is usually backhauled all the way to the data center. This architecture severely impacts the user experience, so enterprises will have to review their network architectures and come up with a roadmap to accommodate local egress between branch offices and headquarters. That’s where the edge can help, bringing it closer to the workforce.
This also brings an opportunity to optimize costs by migrating from some of the expensive multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or private circuits to relatively low-cost direct internet circuits, which is being addressed by the new secure access service edge (SASE) architecture that is being offered by many established vendors.
I anticipate some components of SASE, specifically those related to software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), local egress, and virtual private network (VPN), will drive a lot of conversation this year.
Holistic Cloud Strategy
Cloud adoption will continue to grow, and along with software as a service (SaaS), there will be renewed interest in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), albeit for specific workloads. For a medium-to-large-sized enterprise with a substantial development environment, it will still be cost-prohibitive to move everything to the cloud, so any cloud strategy would need to be holistic and forward-looking to maximize its business value.
Another pandemic-induced shift is from using virtual machines (VMs) as a consumption unit of compute to containers as a consumption unit of software. For on-premises or private cloud deployment architectures that require sustainable management, organizations will have to orchestrate containers and deploy efficient container security and management tools.
Automation
Now that cloud adoption, migration, and edge computing architectures are becoming more prevalent, the legacy methods of infrastructure provisioning and management will not be scalable.
By increasing infrastructure automation, enterprises can optimize costs and be more flexible and efficient—but only if they are successful at developing new skills. To achieve the goal of “infrastructure as a code” will require a shift in the perspective on infrastructure automation to one that focuses on developing and sustaining skills and roles that improve efficiency and agility across on-premises, cloud, and edge infrastructures. Defining the roles of designers and architects to support automation is essential to ensure that automation works as expected, avoids significant errors, and complements other technologies.
AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations)
Alongside complementing automation trends, the implementation of AIOps to effectively automate IT operations processes such as event correlation, anomaly detection, and causality determination will also be important. AIOps will eliminate the data silos in IT by bringing all types of data under one roof so it can be used to execute machine learning (ML)-based methods to develop insights for responsive enhancements and corrections.
AIOps can also help with probable cause analytics by focusing on the most likely source of a problem. The concept of site reliability engineering (SRE) is being increasingly adopted by SaaS providers and will gain importance in enterprise IT environments due to the trends listed above. AIOps is a key component that will enable site reliability engineers (SREs) to respond more quickly—and even proactively—by resolving issues without manual intervention.
These focus areas are by no means an exhaustive list. There are a variety of trends that will be more prevalent in specific industry areas, but a common theme in the post-pandemic era is going to be superior delivery of IT services. That’s also at the heart of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, a forward-focused business framework designed to help companies make technology investments for the future.
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