We all will agree that managing a data center was always a high-pressure, tedious and complicated task. All the data center managers have experienced sleepless nights praying that nothing goes wrong. And if it did, they spent sleepless nights coordinating with the different hardware teams to figure out the exact problem. But, those days are over - well, to a large extent. With the introduction of new technologies involving software-defined storage and networking, edge computing to 5G networks, and the advent of AI and ML, the data center landscape has evolved and is changing with every passing day.
One of the biggest changes that the data center ecosystem has witnessed in the past decade is the introduction of HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure - technology.
HCI uses off-the-shelf commodity components– typically x86 machines, equipped with identical networking and storage hardware, hypervisor, and management software. Each unit or appliance serves as a miniature data center in a box, which can be scaled up by simply attaching more such boxes.
There is no question that HCI helps the enterprise achieve its digital transformation with software-defined capabilities. An organization can now consider its hardware infrastructure components as services. But importantly, HCI also helps customers overcome their traditional problems.
One of the key objectives of HCI is to help reduce the footprint of infrastructure by consolidating three space-consuming components (Server, Storage and SAN Switches) of the data center in a single X86 box.
With the reduced floor space of the data center and fewer components in the data center, the total power and the cooling requirements also go down. This is a huge saving in the long run and can help achieve a faster ROI.
Organizations that choose the HCI model also gain advantages in terms of IT labour costs and productivity. IT teams need not wrestle with system deployment, integration, upkeep of individual hardware components, and other data center management challenges that are common with three-tier data center architecture.
In addition, organizations have a lesser need for IT specialists in areas like storage and networking. With HCI, IT generalists can handle most of the work, reducing the effort of expensive consultants.
Organizations that run their IT workloads on the HCI can access computing capacity, file storage, memory and network connectivity management through a single console. Simplified IT management helps in faster resolution time keeping the high uptime demand of business full-filled.
Scalability is one of the added advantages of deploying HCI. This enables IT managers to quickly respond to changing IT needs and priorities of the business.
HCI clusters, both local and remote, are administered together, greatly simplifying IT management.
It is very clear that the HCI technology has drastically simplified data center infrastructure management that transcends the limitations of traditional systems and lowers the deployment and operating cost of the data center besides simplifying the life of the IT staff and catering to the dynamically changing business demands.
SK International offers support and consulting services on HCI and relevant infrastructure solutions and can help you in your digital transformation journey.
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