Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Article | October 3, 2023
Consider IaaS (infrastructure as a service) as a virtual version of your traditional data center. IaaS is a branch of cloud computing technology that offers virtualized storage, server, and networking wrapped together as a self-service platform. It is highly cost-efficient and makes up for easier, faster workloads. Although incredibly convenient for business, it largely depends on what your company needs to use it for.
What is IaaS, and How Can It Benefit Your Business?
IaaS first rose to popularity in the early 2010s. Since then, it has become the standard abstraction model for many types of workloads. But with the rise of the microservices application pattern and the arrival of new technologies like containers and serverless IaaS is still a foundational service, but the field is more crowded than ever.
The most common household cloud computing names—AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure— are all IaaS providers. They all maintain giant data centers around the globe. It includes tons of storage systems, physical servers, and networking equipment under a virtualization layer. Cloud customers access these resources to deploy and run applications in a highly automated manner.
Developing a cloud adoption strategy is a vital step forward for modern-day business. And this subscription-based cloud computing service, IaaS, offers a remote management solution and reduces your purchase cost at the same time.
Additionally, IaaS also provides key solutions vital for any company’s future plans, such as big-data analysis. It allows businesses like yours to analyze massive data sets and see future trends, patterns, and associations that a human wouldn’t.
Understanding the IaaS Architecture
In an IaaS service model, your cloud provider will take over your infrastructure components, such as traditional on-premises data centers and host them on the internet. This includes virtual computing, servers, networking hardware, and infrastructure components, as well as the hypervisor layer.
IaaS service providers will also provide a wide array of services to accompany those infrastructure components.
Monitoring
Detailed billing
Security
Log access
Load balancing
Clustering
Storage resiliency
Backup
Replication
Disaster Recovery
IaaS services are automated and highly policy-driven, so you can implement all your infrastructure tasks effortlessly.
How Does It Work?
IaaS customers access their resources through a WAN (wide area network). Leveraging the cloud provider's services, they will install the remaining elements of an application stack.
For example, you can log in to the IaaS platform to create VMs (virtual machines), install operating systems on each VM, deploy middleware like databases, create storage buckets for workloads and backups, and install the enterprise workload on that VM. Afterward, you can also use the IaaS provider's services to track costs, balance network traffic, monitor performance, troubleshoot application-related issues and manage disaster recovery.
IaaS Use Cases
As IaaS provides general-purpose computing resources, it can be used for any kind of use case. IaaS is most often used today for the development and testing environments, websites, and web apps that interact with customers, data storage, analytics, and data warehousing workloads. Plus, it also offers backup and disaster recovery services, especially for on-premises workloads. IaaS is also a good way to set up and run common business software and apps like SAP.
Real-life Examples
GE Healthcare: Reputed medical imaging facility GE Healthcare adopted Amazon EC2 from AWS to design the GE Health Cloud. GE Health Cloud platform successfully empowered its consumers by collecting, storing, accessing, and processing information worldwide from different types of medical devices to obtain value from data.
Coca-Cola: The beverage giant Coca-Cola collaborated with SoftLayer adopting a pay-as-you-go architecture to manage their CRM system effectively during peak seasons.
Final Thoughts
Before choosing a provider, you will need to think carefully about the services, reliability, and costs. First, you should thoroughly assess the capabilities of your organization’s IT department and determine how well equipped it is to deal with the ongoing demands of IaaS implementation. Accordingly, you will be prepared to choose an alternative provider and move to the alternative infrastructure if you need to.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure
Article | July 19, 2023
Unlocking the potential of hyper-converged infrastructure: Designing an advanced data center with scalability, efficiency, and performance for seamless HCI deployments through recent trends.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Top Trends to consider in HCI
2.1. Public Cloud Services: An Option to On-premises Storage Infrastructure
2.2. Increasing Priority for Edge in Digital Businesses
2.3. Application Modernization
2.4. Hybrid and HCI: The Way to Future
2.5. HCI Automation Software in Pipeline
2.6. Backup and Disaster Recovery
2.7. Quadrupling of Micro Data and Edge Centers
3. Wrap Up
1. Introduction
In the era of hyper-converged infrastructure, designing an advanced data center is crucial to unlock the full potential of this transformative technology. With HCI combining compute, storage, and networking into a single platform, the data center must be carefully planned and optimized to ensure scalability, flexibility, and efficient operations. In this article, explore the key considerations and top hyper converged infrastructure trends for designing an advanced data center tailored for HCI, enabling organizations to harness the benefits of this innovative infrastructure.
2. Top Trends to consider in HCI
2.1 Public Cloud Services: An Option to On-premises Storage Infrastructure
HCI is experiencing the option of public cloud services as an alternative to on-premises storage infrastructure. By leveraging cloud services and native HCI platform file services, organizations can optimize workloads, leverage data storage services, eliminate silos, and create a unified and high-performance infrastructure. A 2019 ESG survey conducted among IT and data storage professionals found that public cloud storage infrastructure is increasingly favored over on-premises options. The survey revealed that IT professionals are twice as likely to consider public cloud storage infrastructure due to its benefits in cost efficiency, ease of procurement, automation capabilities, and simplified evaluation processes. Hyperconverged infrastructure facilitates on-premises and cloud-based deployments, enabling organizations to integrate and manage their IT infrastructure across both environments seamlessly. As organizations continue to explore hybrid IT strategies, HCI will play a critical role in providing a flexible and efficient infrastructure foundation.
2.2 Increasing Priority for Edge in Digital Businesses
Organizations are investing in IT to support this new business model of edge computing, and HCI plays a crucial role in enabling the deployment of edge resources. This trend also drives cloud adoption for such implementations, facilitating rapid responses to evolving business models and enabling dynamic scalability without impacting the core business. The rise of remote workforces has highlighted the importance of edge computing, where computing resources are brought closer to the point of data generation and consumption. This streamlined approach enables organizations to deploy and manage edge resources efficiently, ensuring reliable performance and data availability for remote employees. Furthermore, the adoption of IT infrastructure is complemented by the increasing use of cloud services. HCI serves as a bridge between on-premises infrastructure and the cloud, facilitating seamless integration and enabling organizations to leverage cloud capabilities for rapid scalability and flexibility.
2.3 Application modernization
One among Hyper-Converged Infrastructure trends, is application modernization is driving CIOs to seek opportunities for migrating to next-generation digital platforms that leverage HCI and cloud-native approaches. As part of this modernization approach, DevOps practices will need to incorporate containers and orchestration layers to provide the burst capabilities required to keep up with the escalating demands of digital experiences. The need for application modernization makes embracing advanced digital platforms that can efficiently modernize their existing applications compelling. This transformation allows for the rapid development of new products, services, and processes, enhancing customer experiences and increasing customer satisfaction. Containers provide a lightweight and scalable environment, allowing for consistent and reliable application deployment across various platforms. Orchestration tools streamline the management of containerized applications, enabling automated scaling, load balancing, and efficient resource allocation. By leveraging these containerization and orchestration layers, organizations can meet the growing demands of digital experiences, ensuring optimal performance and responsiveness.
2.4 Hybrid and HCI: The Way to Future
Traditional, cumbersome infrastructure is slowing down companies and impeding their ability to innovate faster than their more agile competitors. The future of IT infrastructure lies in hybrid environments, and HCI serves as a powerful facilitator for this transition. HCI allows businesses to seamlessly simplify their environments, optimize workload experiences, and improve scalability. According to research by 451 Research, 45% of respondents using HCI report that it facilitates resource scaling across their environments as circumstances and goals evolve. Additionally, an overwhelming 97% of HCI customers agree that HCI simplifies the deployment process for hybrid IT environments. This demonstrates the value and relevance of HCI in supporting the agility and flexibility demanded by the future of IT infrastructure. Fundamental innovations such as compute/storage disaggregation with HCI Mesh, native file services, and Kubernetes integration are broadening the range of applications for which HCI is well suited. With ongoing product innovations, such as compute/storage disaggregation, native file services, and Kubernetes integration, HCI continues to expand its range of applications, providing organizations with the performance, agility, and cost savings needed in modern IT infrastructure.
2.5 HCI Automation Software in Pipeline
The highly automated nature of HCI helps mitigate the risk of downtime by automating everyday life-cycle infrastructure management tasks, such as firmware upgrades and system refreshes. This automation reduces the need for complex, disruptive forklift upgrades traditionally prevalent in data centers. As a result, the data center becomes more intelligent and automated through the pervasive use of artificial intelligence and hyper-convergence, particularly in the monitoring and managing of assets and risks. Hyper converged infrastructure vendors are heavily investing in machine learning and automation to improve the underlying hardware and hyper-converged software for providing hyper converged solutions. The development of automation software, machine-learning-based AI for HCI reflects the industry's focus on enhancing HCI's efficiency, resilience, and manageability. Integrating artificial intelligence and automation technologies into HCI offerings paves the way for more intelligent and self-managing data centers. As the trend continues to evolve, organizations can expect greater automation capabilities and improved management of their decentralized and distributed systems through innovative HCI software solutions.
2.6 Backup and Disaster Recovery
Increasing concerns for faster data backup and security drive significant growth in the backup and disaster recovery application segment. Research firm MarketsAndMarkets reports that backup and disaster recovery are the fastest-growing applications within the hyper-converged market. One notable trend in the backup and disaster recovery space is the ability of hyper-convergence to reduce the total cost of ownership and operating expenses. Organizations can achieve cost savings and streamline their backup and disaster recovery processes by consolidating backup software, deduplication appliances, and storage arrays into a unified infrastructure. This integrated approach simplifies management, eliminates the need for separate components, and improves overall efficiency. According to MarketsAndMarkets, the global hyper-converged infrastructure market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 33 percent over the next four years, reaching a value of $17.1 billion by 2023. The demand for continuous application delivery and the increasing awareness among enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses are expected to drive this hyper converged market size expansion.
2.7 Quadrupling of Micro Data and Edge Centers
The evolution and adaptation of traditional enterprise data centers, driven by the rise of cloud computing, are paving the way for the expansion of micro or edge data centers. Gartner predicts that by 2025 these edge data centers will quadruple, fueled by innovations such as 5G and hyperconverged infrastructure. This shift presents an opportunity for hyper-converged offerings to consolidate servers, storage, networking, and software into a single, streamlined solution at the edge. While small remote office and edge deployments may require fewer storage and compute resources, they greatly benefit from centralized management and high-availability designs. HCI's ability to consolidate resources and its compact form factor make it an ideal solution for edge environments with limited physical space.
3. Wrap Up
Designing an advanced data center for hyper-converged infrastructure trends requires careful planning and consideration of key factors in HCI such as scalability, network architecture, storage requirements, and redundancy. By implementing approaches like modular design, modern digitalization, efficient cooling, proper power distribution, and robust security measures, organizations can create a data center that optimally supports HCI deployments. With an advanced data center, organizations can realize the full potential of HCI, achieving agility, scalability, and improved performance for their IT infrastructure.
An advanced data center tailored for hyper-converged infrastructure is essential to fully leverage HCI's benefits. By following the trends & techniques and considering critical factors in design, organizations can create a future-proof and efficient data center that enables seamless deployment and operation of HCI solutions, unlocking agility and scalability for their IT infrastructure.
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
Article | October 3, 2023
At last, the wait for 5G is nearly over. As this map shows, coverage is widespread across much of the U.S., in 24 EU countries, and in pockets around the globe.
The new wireless standard is worth the wait. Compared to 4G, the new wireless standard can move more data from the edge, with less latency. And connect many more users and devices—an important development given that the IDC estimates 152,000 new Internet of Things (IoT) devices per minute by 2025. Put it together, and 5G is a game-changing backhaul for public networks. (Wi-Fi 6, often mentioned in the same breath as 5G, is generally used for private WANs.
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IT Systems Management
Article | July 6, 2022
IT and data center administrators are under pressure to foster quicker innovation. For workers and customers to have access to digital experiences, more devices must be deployed, and larger enterprise-to-edge networks must be managed. The security of distributed networks has suffered as a result of this rapid growth, though.
Some colocation providers can install custom locks for your cabinet if necessary due to the varying compliance standards and security needs for distinct applications. However, physical security measures are still of utmost importance because theft and social engineering can affect hardware as well as data.
Risk Companies Face
Remote IT work continue on the long run
Attacking users is the easiest way into networks
IT may be deploying devices with weak controls
When determining whether rack-level security is required, there are essentially two critical criteria to take into account. The first is the level of sensitivity of the data stored, and the second is the importance of the equipment in a particular rack to the facility's continuing functioning. Due to the nature of the data being handled and kept, some processes will always have a higher risk profile than others.
Conclusion
Data centers must rely on a physically secure perimeter that can be trusted. Clients, in particular, require unwavering assurance that security can be put in place to limit user access and guarantee that safety regulations are followed. Rack-level security locks that ensure physical access limitations are crucial to maintaining data center space security. Compared to their mechanical predecessors, electronic rack locks or "smart locks" offer a much more comprehensive range of feature-rich capabilities.
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