HCI - SNIA on Data, Networking & Storage

A Storage Debate Q&A: Hyperconverged vs. Disaggregated vs. Centralized

July 12, 2021August 27, 2021 John Kim 1 Comment

The SNIA Networking Storage Forum recently hosted another webcast in our
Great Storage Debate webcast series. This time, our SNIA experts debated three competing visions about how storage should be done: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), Disaggregated Storage, and Centralized Storage. If you missed the live event, it’s available on-demand. Questions from the webcast attendees made the panel debate quite lively. As promised, here are answers to those questions.

Q. Can you imagine a realistic scenario where the different storage types are used as storage tiers? How much are they interoperable?

A. Most HCI solutions already have a tiering/caching structure built-in. However, a user could use HCI for hot to warm data, and also tier less frequently accessed data out to a separate backup/archive. Some of the HCI solutions have close partnerships with backup/archive vendor solutions just for this purpose.

Q. Is there a possibility where two or more classifications of storage can co-exist or be deployed? Examples please?

Another Great Storage Debate: Hyperconverged vs. Disaggregated vs. Centralized

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021 David McIntyre Leave a comment

The SNIA Networking Storage Forum’s “Great Storage Debate” webcast series is back! This time, SNIA experts will be discussing the ongoing evolution of the data center, in particular how storage is allocated and managed. There are three competing visions about how storage should be done: Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), Disaggregated Storage, and Centralized Storage. Join us on May 4, 2021 for our live webcast Great Storage Debate: Hyperconverged vs. Disaggregated vs. Centralized.

IT architects, storage vendors, and industry analysts argue constantly over which is the best approach and even the exact definition of each. Isn’t Hyperconverged constrained? Is Disaggregated designed only for large cloud service providers? Is Centralized storage only for legacy applications?

Tune in to debate these questions and more:

What Are the Networking Requirements for HCI?

February 20, 2019February 20, 2019 J Metz 1 Comment

Hyperconverged infrastructures (also known as “HCI”) are designed to be easy to set up and manage. All you need to do is add networking. In practice, the “add networking” part has been more difficult than most anticipated. That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) hosted a live webcast “The Networking Requirements for Hyperconverged Infrastructure” where we covered what HCI is, storage characteristics of HCI, and important networking considerations. If you missed it, it’s available on-demand.

We had some interesting questions during the live webcast and as we promised during the live presentation, here are answers from our expert presenters: Read More

Networking for Hyperconvergence

December 21, 2018December 21, 2018 Alex McDonald Leave a comment

“Why can’t I add a 33^rd node?”

One of the great advantages of Hyperconverged infrastructures (also known as “HCI”) is that, relatively speaking, they are extremely easy to set up and manage. In many ways, they’re the “Happy Meals” of infrastructure, because you have compute and storage in the same box. All you need to do is add networking.

In practice, though, many consumers of HCI have found that the “add networking” part isn’t quite as much of a no-brainer as they thought it would be. Because HCI hides a great deal of the “back end” communication, it’s possible to severely underestimate or misunderstand the requirements necessary to run a seamless environment. At some point, “just add more nodes” becomes a more difficult proposition.

That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) is hosting a live webcast “Networking Requirements for Hyperconvergence” on February 5, 2019. At this webcast, we’re going to take a look behind the scenes, peek behind the GUI, so to speak. We’ll be talking about what goes on back there, and shine the light behind the bezels to see:

The impact of metadata on the network
What happens as we add additional nodes
How to right-size the network for growth
Networking best practices to make your HCI work better
And more…

Now, not all HCI environments are created equal, so we’ll say in advance that your mileage will vary. However, understanding some basic concepts of how storage networking impacts HCI performance may be particularly useful when planning your HCI environment, or contemplating whether or not it is appropriate for your situation in the first place.

This webcast is the second installment of our Storage Networking series. Our first was “Networking Requirements for Ethernet Scale-Out Storage.” It’s available on-demand as are all our educational webcasts. I encourage you to peruse the more than 60 vendor-neutral presentations is the NSF webcast library at your convenience.