What is Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?
Hyper-converged infrastructure is a software-centric architecture tightly integrated to compute, network and store resources into a single system. Hyper-converged systems require at least three hardware nodes at a minimum for high availability, expanded later by adding more nodes according to requirement.
A higher-level abstraction to write code/login in a high-level language that utilizes modules to perform tasks on the machine level.” Click to explore about, Infrastructure as Code Tools and Best Practices
Why is Hyper-Converged Infrastructure(HCI) Important?
Hyper-converged infrastructure consumes less space, reducing data containership and maintenance due to the number of nodes. The administrator's burden reduces with the reduced number of nodes. The cost of heating and electricity decreases as the required number of nodes are running.
It provides horizontal scaling to add more nodes in the cluster according to the requirement, enabling users to start with the smaller cluster. In recent years, there has been an increase in the adoption of the hyper-converged strategy in data centres, which is used in edge locations like local office locations. It is easier for smaller or midsize organizations to adopt Hyper-Converged infrastructure.
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Lower Cost
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Smarter, More Efficient Staff
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Greater Gains Through Automation
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Simplified Procurement and Support
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Increased Data Protection
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Improve Performance
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Scalability
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Flexible
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Software Defined Storage
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Agility
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery mechanisms are applied to test server configuration, server image building, environment provisioning and the mixture of environments.” Click to explore about, Infrastructure as Code in CI/CD Pipeline
What are the benefits of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?
the benefits of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
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Better utilization of resources.
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Reduced maintenance cost.
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Horizontal Scaling.
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Reduced data center footprint.
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Reduces administrator burden.
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Cost efficient.
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Optimize the Health of Private Cloud.
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Continuous Real-Time Workload Decisions.
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Right Storage Right Work Load.
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Plan Quickly and Easily Scale.
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Automatable Workload Placement.
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Software-Defined Storage.
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Data Protection.
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Deploys Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
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Consolidating Data Center.
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Remote Management.
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No Downtime with Software-Centric Approach.
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Manages Complex Infrastructure.
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Simplified Vendor Management.
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Continuous, Portable and Flexible Protection.
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Enhanced Governance.
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Ease of Termination.
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Encryption of Virtual Machines.
Fig 1: Benefits of Hyper-Converged InfrastructureHow does HCI Architecture work?
A hyper-converged platform integrates computing, storage, and networking with software-defined software that defines the operational aspects of that infrastructure. The general and traditional choice for orchestration is a hypervisor for provisioning resources like storage, computing, and network.
Kubernetes is also used to provide resources. Kubernetes is an open-source container-orchestration system for automating containerised application deployment, scaling, and management. It sits between the application and the infrastructure and lets application workflows dynamically control storage, computing, and networking resources. Software-defined storage like Rook (Ceph) is used for elastic storage.
Expanded according to a requirement by adding more nodes. Kubernetes and Ceph are open-source solutions that run on commodity hardware and avoid vendor lock-in. Hardware vendors provide several software tools depending on the server chosen.
A tool used for changing, building, and versioning infrastructure efficiently and safely.” Click to explore about, Infrastructure as Code using Terraform Overview
How to Adopt Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?
Adopting hyper-converged infrastructure is relatively easy, but while selecting hardware or software, one must be aware of current and future requirements. To get started with high availability, at least three nodes are required. Choose an orchestration platform that scales horizontally, like OpenStack, Openshift, or Kubernetes, to run on commodity hardware without requiring special hardware and avoid vendor lock-in. Software-defined storage like Ceph or Glusterfs is used for high availability and redundancy. It also runs on commodity hardware, eliminating the need for specialized hardware.
What are the best practices for hyper-converged infrastructure?
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Use of software-defined storage technologies like Ceph and Glusterfs.
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Use of open-source orchestration tools like Kubernetes, Openshift or OpenStack. To avoid any vendor lock-in.
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Use of commodity or open computation hardware.
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Use of automation tools as much as possible.
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Proper Monitoring and security setup.
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Best Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Tools
The best Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Tools are listed below:
Hyper-converged infrastructure is a technical advancement in data centre architecture that leverages the hypervisor to deliver virtualized computing, networking, and storage from a single server platform.
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