The Modern Data Center: Hyperconvergence [2/5]

The Modern Data Center Part 1: An Overview [1/5]

The Modern Data Center: Infrastructure and Application Analytics [3/5]

I love a good remix of a classic track. It brings back all the memories of what made the original song so enjoyable, and it adds a new flavor that makes the (often dated) song feel alive again. A little while back, I wrote a blog title "The Soul of the Server", which gave an account of what makes Cisco UCS so special, and I feel like HyperFlex is like a smooth UCS remix - delivering a valuable new experience while accentuating what made UCS special in the first place.

You can read the original blog post here, but allow me to offer a quick recap. Stateless Computing gives us the ability to define every identity point and policy in a software construct called a Service Profile. This Service Profile contains everything from the number of NICs, to the MACs associated to those NICs, and even policies such as Firmware and BIOS settings. The Service Profile (the "soul") is then applied to a physical server (the "body") to create a fully-functional compute node. If the body is destroyed or needs to be upgraded, the soul can simply be migrated to the new body.

HyperFlex turns UCS into a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution that is delivers new functionality onto the features that made the original UCS the best server platform on the market. As another brief recap, hyperconvergence deploys software-managed storage over disks installed directly into a physical servers, thus delivering simplicity to storage management and often removing the need for a storage array.

So in our UCS remix, what new beats do get to enjoy? Glad you asked!

An integrated beat - The secret to the success of UCS is the fabric interconnects (FIs), switch-like devices that front-end the server environment. By leveraging the FIs, the network can be virtually carved up and delivered to each server. Traditional HCI products fall on their face when it comes to networking, shirking the burden of strict QoS configuration and administration and often blaming the network for their problems. HyperFlex is the only HCI solution that hyperconverges the networking, and it does so in an automated fashion. Speaking of which…

An automated tempo - Plug n' Play is at the very core of HyperFlex. Plug a HyperFlex node into the FIs and watch as the service profile is automatically pushed down, which includes the finely-tuned BIOS settings and QoS policies! Nodes even come preinstalled with your hypervisor of choice. It doesn't get any easier to deploy new nodes than HyperFlex.

Harmonization - If a new server is needed, many HCI solutions require that storage also be expanded, even if unnecessary! HyperFlex delivers maximum investment protection by allowing for independent scaling of compute and storage. If additional compute is needed, add a blade to the deployment. If additional storage is needed, add disks. In fact, original servers and storage can be fully integrated into a HyperFlex cluster!

With other incredible features like data reduction, cloud-based management, and a purpose-built, high-performance file system, HyperFlex stands apart from the crowd as the best HCI solution on the market. By building upon the firm technical foundation of UCS, this remix won't be getting old any time soon.