Items Tagged: VCE
Hyperconvergence tackles storage and server strain
The simplicity of all-in-one data center offerings makes hyperconvergence popular with smaller businesses. After spending more than a decade selling IT shops on the benefits of separate server and storage environments, IT infrastructure vendors are starting to take a different tack, bundling servers and storage -- and in some cases, networking -- into Lego-like modules. The big plus is, they scale for capacity and performance, and they're managed as a single system.
- Premiered: 05/20/14
- Author: Taneja Group
- Published: Tech Target: Search Data Center
In the Cloud Era, The Era of Convergence Is Upon Us
The era of IT infrastructure convergence is upon us. Every major vendor has some type of offering under this category. Startups and smaller players are also "talking" convergence. But what exactly is convergence and why are all the vendors so interested in getting included in this category? We will explain below the history of convergence, what it is, what it is not, what benefits accrue from such systems, who the players are, and who is leading the pack in true convergence.
- Premiered: 06/10/14
- Author: Arun Taneja
- Published: Virtualization Review
Ready or not, converged infrastructure systems are here
Converged infrastructures assemble components from multiple IT domains into one integrated system by combining virtualization, storage, networking and compute. A management framework is also included that allows orchestration of the entire infrastructure so that each constituent technology doesn't have to be managed separately. But from that set of basic parameters, the individual flavors vary significantly, and those different flavors are well worth a closer look.
- Premiered: 07/08/14
- Author: Taneja Group
- Published: Tech Target: Search Virtual Storage
Executive Summary: VCE and Nutanix in the Real World
Taneja Group prepared a Field Report for Nutanix on the real-world customer experience for seven Nutanix hyperconvergence and seven VCE convergence customers. We did not cherry pick customers for dissatisfaction or delight; we were interested in typical customers’ honest reactions.
The same conclusions kept emerging: VCE users see convergence as a benefit over traditional do-it-yourself infrastructure, but an expensive one. Some of the concerns include high prices, infrastructure and management complexity, expensive support contracts, and concerns over the long-term viability of the partnership between EMC, VMware and Cisco. The Nutanix users also shared valuable hyperconvergence benefits. In contrast to VCE, they also cited simplified architecture and management, reasonable acquisition and operating costs, and considerably faster time to value.
Our conclusion is that VCE convergence is an improvement over traditional architecture, but Nutanix hyperconvergence is an evolutionary improvement over VCE.
EMC upgrades Isilon NAS for file storage, Hadoop analytics
EMC today launched two new Isilon scale-out network-attached storage arrays and added the ability to use flash as a read cache for all Isilon systems.
- Premiered: 07/08/14
- Author: Taneja Group
- Published: Tech Target: Search Storage
Five VM-Level Infrastructure Adaptations
It used to be that IT struggled to intimately understand every app in order to provide the right supporting infrastructure. Today, server virtualization makes the job much easier, because IT can now just cater to VMs. By working and communicating at the VM level, both app owners and infrastructure admins stay focused, using a common API to help ensure apps are hosted effectively and IT runs efficiently.
- Premiered: 07/21/14
- Author: Mike Matchett
- Published: Virtualization Review
Siloing stifles data center growth
It's time to knock down those silos, one by one. IT is transforming from a siloed set of reactive cost centers into a service provider with a focus on helping the business compete.
- Premiered: 09/16/14
- Author: Mike Matchett
- Published: Tech Target: Search Data Center
General Purpose Disk Array Buying Guide
The disk array remains the core element of any storage infrastructure. So it’s appropriate that we delve into it in a lot more detail.
- Premiered: 02/17/15
- Author: Taneja Group
- Published: Enterprise Storage Forum
EMC dramatically expands HyperConverged offerings with VxRack
With its VCE VxRack announcement this week at EMC World, EMC is fully validating and expanding the HyperConverged category of infrastructure.
- Premiered: 05/07/15
- Author: Jeff Kato
Hyperconverged storage challenges the SAN paradigm
HCI makes local storage cool again -- and it keeps pace with how VMs access and store data better than some traditional storage architectures.
- Premiered: 06/16/15
- Author: Taneja Group
- Published: TechTarget: Search Data Center
In the Cloud Era, The Era of Convergence Is Upon Us
What exactly is convergence and what is making vendors scramble to get included in this category?
- Premiered: 06/10/15
- Author: Arun Taneja
- Published: Virtualization Review
Converged IT Infrastructure's Place in the Internet of Things
All of the trends leading towards the world-wide Internet of Things (IoT) – ubiquitous, embedded computing, mobile, organically distributed nodes, and far-flung networks tying them together - are also coming in full force into the IT data center. These solutions are taking the form of converged and hyperconverged modules of IT infrastructure. Organizations adopting such solutions gain from a simpler building-block way to architect and deploy IT, and forward-thinking vendors now have a unique opportunity to profit from subscription services that while delivering superior customer insight and support, also help build a trusted advisor relationship that promises an ongoing “win-win” scenario for both the client and the vendor.
There are many direct (e.g. revenue impacting) and indirect (e.g. customer satisfaction) benefits we mention in this report, but the key enabler to this opportunity is in establishing an IoT scale data analysis capability. Specifically, by approaching converged and hyperconverged solutions as an IoT “appliance”, and harvesting low-level component data on utilization, health, configuration, performance, availability, faults, and other end point metrics across the full worldwide customer base deployment of appliances, an IoT vendor can then analyze the resulting stream of data with great profit for both the vendor and each individual client. Top-notch analytics can feed support, drive product management, assure sales/account control, inform marketing, and even provide a revenue opportunity directly (e.g. offering a gold level of service to the end customer).
An IoT data stream from a large pool of appliances is almost literally the definition of “big data” – non-stop machine data at large scale with tremendous variety (even within a single converged solution stack) – and operating and maintaining such a big data solution requires a significant amount of data wrangling, data science and ongoing maintenance to stay current. Unfortunately this means IT vendors looking to position IoT oriented solutions may have to invest a large amount of cash, staff and resources into building out and supporting such analytics. For many vendors, especially those with a varied or complex convergence solution portfolio or established as a channel partner building them from third-party reference architectures, these big data costs can be prohibitive. However, failing to provide these services may result in large friction selling and supporting converged solutions to clients now expecting to manage IT infrastructure as appliances.
In this report, we’ll look at the convergence and hyperconvergence appliance trend, and the increasing customer expectations for such solutions. In particular we’ll see how IT appliances in the market need to be treated as complete, commoditized products as ubiquitous and with the same end user expectations as emerging household IoT solutions. In this context, we’ll look at Glassbeam’s unique B2B SaaS SCALAR that converged and hyperconverged IT appliance vendors can immediately adopt to provide an IoT machine data analytic solution. We’ll see how Glassbeam can help differentiate amongst competing solutions, build a trusted client relationship, better manage and support clients, and even provide additional direct revenue opportunities.
Hyperconvergence Finally Gets Scale At VMware
EVO:RACK, now known as EVO SDDC (no colon) are supporting a more diverse set of hardware and much greater scale, says VMware.
- Premiered: 08/31/15
- Author: Taneja Group
- Published: The Platform
Oracle Takes Convergence to New Extremes
Regardless of naysayers, convergence is the new rage of this era.
- Premiered: 10/26/15
- Author: Arun Taneja
Potential impact of Dell Buying EMC for VCE Customers – It may be a good time to try HyperConverged
Even with the improved ease-of-use with converged 3-tier products like EMC VCE, customers routinely see complexity and cost as key reasons to switch to HCI.
- Premiered: 12/03/15
- Author: Jeff Kato
Hyperconvergence for ROBOs and the Datacenter
Remote/branch office management is more important, and complicated, than ever. Here are some survival tips.
- Premiered: 12/17/15
- Author: Mike Matchett
- Published: Virtualization Review
Nutanix Versus VCE: Web-Scale Versus Converged Infrastructure in the Real World
This Field Report was created by Taneja Group for Nutanix in late 2014 with updates in 2015. The Taneja Group analyzed the experiences of seven Nutanix Xtreme Computing Platform customers and seven Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) Vblock customers. We did not ‘cherry-pick’ customers for dissatisfaction, delight, or specific use case; we were interested in typical customers’ honest reactions.
As we talked in detail to these customers, we kept seeing the same patterns: 1) VCE users were interested in converged systems; and 2) they chose VCE because VCE partners Cisco, EMC, and/or VMware were embedded in their IT relationships and sales. The VCE process had the advantage of vendor familiarity, but it came at a price: high capital expense, infrastructure and management complexity, expensive support contracts, and concerns over the long-term viability of the VCE partnership (see an opinion of the DELL/EMC merger at end of this document). VCE customers typically did not research other options for converged infrastructure prior to deploying the VCE Vblock solution.
In contrast, Nutanix users researched several convergence and hyperconvergence vendors to determine the best possible fit. Nutanix’ advanced web-scale framework gave them simplified architecture and management, reasonable acquisition and operating costs, and considerably faster time to value.
Our conclusion, based on the amount of time and effort spent by the teams responsible for managing converged infrastructure, is that VCE Vblock deployments represent an improvement over traditional architectures, but Nutanix hyperconvergence – especially with its web-scale architecture – is an big improvement over VCE.
This Field Report will compare customer experiences with Nutanix hyperconverged, web-scale infrastructure to VCE Vblock in real-world environments.
Assimilate converged IT infrastructure into the data center
With the hype around converged and hyper-converged IT infrastructure, resistance seems futile. While your IT organization will likely be a mix of converged, dedicated and cloud-based resources, convergence is moving into new areas.
- Premiered: 03/16/16
- Author: Mike Matchett
- Published: TechTarget: Search Data Center
The Hyperconverged Data Center: Nutanix Customers Explain Why They Replaced Their EMC SANS
Taneja Group spoke with several Nutanix customers in order to understand why they switched from EMC storage to the Nutanix platform. All of the respondent’s articulated key architectural benefits of hyperconvergence versus a traditional 3-tier solutions. In addition, specific Nutanix features for mission-critical production environments were often cited.
Hyperconverged systems have become a mainstream alternative to traditional 3-tier architecture consisting of separate compute, storage and networking products. Nutanix collapses this complex environment into software-based infrastructure optimized for virtual environments. Hypervisor, compute, storage, networking, and data services run on scalable nodes that seamlessly scale across massive virtual assets. Hyperconvergence offers a key value proposition over 3-tier architecture: instead of deploying, managing and integrating separate components – storage, servers, networking, data services, and hypervisors – these components are combined into a modular high performance system.
The customers we interviewed operate in very different industries. In common, they all maintained data centers undergoing fundamental changes, typically involving an opportunity to refresh some portion of their 3-tier infrastructure. This enabled the evaluation of hyperconvergence in supporting those changes. Customers interviewed found that Nutanix hyperconvergence delivered benefits in the areas of scalability, simplicity, value, performance, and support. If we could use one phrase to explain why Nutanix’ is winning over EMC customers in the enterprise market it would be “Ease of Everything.” Nutanix works, and works consistently with small and large clusters, in single and multiple datacenters, with specialist or generalist IT support, and across hypervisors.
The five generations of Nutanix products span many years of product innovation. Web-scale architecture has been the key to Nutanix platform’s enterprise capable performance, simplicity and scalability. Building technology like this requires years of innovation and focus and is not an add-on for existing products and architectures.
The modern data center is quickly changing. Extreme data growth and complexity are driving data center directors toward innovative technology that will grow with them. Given the benefits of Nutanix web-scale architecture – and the Ease of Everything – data center directors can confidently adopt Nutanix as their partner in data center transformation just as the following EMC customers did.
Hyper-converged vendors offer new use cases, products
Hyper-converged market systems show they are ready to branch out beyond primary storage applications. In fact, it's happening now.
- Premiered: 04/15/16
- Author: Arun Taneja
- Published: TechTarget: Search Converged IT