Rethinking Enterprise Storage: The Rise of Hyper-converged Infrastructure

Editor's Notes

1. Lets double click on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) leverages the hypervisor to deliver compute, networking and shared storage from a single x86 server platform. The software-driven architecture allows the convergence of physical storage onto commodity x86 servers, enabling a building block approach with scale-out capabilities. The use of commodity x86 server and storage hardware allows datacenters to operate with agility on a highly scalable, cost-effective infrastructure. How VMware Enables Hyper-Converged Infrastructure The foundational components of VMware’s HCI solution are VMware vSphere and VMware Virtual SAN, which allow the convergence of compute, storage and networking onto a single, integrated layer of software that, can run on any commodity x86 infrastructure. vSphere abstracts and aggregates compute and memory resources into logical pools of compute capacity while Virtual SAN, embedded in vSphere, pools server-attached storage to create a high performance, shared datastore for virtual machine storage. Customers can further extend vSphere to achieve the convergence of networking using VMware NSX which decouples network resources from underlying hardware and brings the operational model of a virtual machine to the datacenter network.
2. Virtual SAN is VMware’s software-defined storage solution, built from the ground up for vSphere virtual machines. It abstracts and aggregates locally attached disks in a vSphere cluster to create a storage solution that can be provisioned and managed from vCenter and the vSphere Web Client. VSAN is hypervisor-converged – that is – storage and compute for VMs are delivered from the same x86 server platform running the hypervisor. It integrates with the entire VMware stack, including features like vMotion, HA, DRS etc. VM storage provisioning and day-to-day management of storage SLAs can be all be controlled through VM-level policies that can be set and modified on-the-fly. VSAN delivers enterprise-class features, scale and performance, making it the ideal storage platform for VMs.
3. Benefits of VMware Hyper-Converged Infrastructure End-to-end integration and unified management: VMware HCI solution provides a single layer of compute, networking and storage software. Management is unified through common tools and interfaces. Features like HA, vMotion, DRS etc. work seamlessly across the VMware stack.   Streamlined Provisioning and Automation: SLAs can be controlled through ‘virtual machine-level’ policies that can be set and changed on-the-fly. Virtual SAN dynamically self-tunes and load balances, adapting to changes in workload conditions to ensure that each virtual machine has the storage resources it needs, as defined by its policy. The end-to-end vSphere integration and policy-driven approach automates manual tasks and makes management of compute, storage and networking extremely easy.   Elastic, linear scale out or up: Virtual SAN architecture allows for elastic, linear and non-disruptive scaling. Capacity and performance can be scaled simultaneously by adding new hosts (scale-out); or capacity and performance can be scaled independently by adding new drives to existing hosts (scale-up).   Lowest TCO: The “grow-as-you-go” scaling approach as well as the ability to use commodity hardware, implies that the overall TCO of the HCI solution is dramatically lower than using standalone hardware or converged systems.   Choice of deployment options: VMware provides the broadest choice of deployment models with multiple options across vendors. Certified hardware through Virtual SAN Ready Nodes guarantee flexibility while the EVO family of Integrated Systems is designed for simplification of procurement, deployment and management.
4. VMware is the market leader in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure with over 2000 customers globally across industries.
5. VSAN HW includes SSDs and HDDs only, since compute required on both sides Hybrid array support is estimated at 20% of list for 3-years 24x7 Estimated required 54K IOPS for normal operation on array after RAID penalty – 70R/30W Estimated VSAN performance: 128,000 IOPS – based on HY-6 series ready nodes street assumed @50% Comparable VSAN hardware configuration created on SuperMicro reseller website: www.thinkmate.com– see notes for spec - no discount assumed on top of online provided price Support includes Hardware + Software support, VSAN support is 3yr production SnS only whileHW price includes HW support – 3yr NBD onsite service
6. Single-software stack One stop for managing storage, server, network and virtualization One management tool to learn Simple and rapid monitoring One stop for managing storage, server, network and virtualization One management tool to learn Simple and rapid monitoring
7. Data deduplication ratios depend on type of workload and can vary from one environment to another Erasure coding savings are estimates and might change based on final implementation Dedupe will be inline Enable/Disable per cluster Dedupe is applied on a per Disk Group basis One Parity block - RAID5 - will be 3+1. This requires at least 4 nodes Two Parity blocks - RAID6 - will be 4+2. This required at least 6 nodes RAID5 can tolerate 1 failure and RAID6 can tolerate 2 failures 3+1 RAID5 configuration would use 1.33x space 4+2 RAID6 configuration would use 1.5x space The space savings that come with R5/6 are at the cost of performance overhead and IO amplification