How Nimble dHCI Excels when Hyperconverged Solutions Fall Short
A hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) brings with it a host of benefits for IT teams looking for a viable alternative to traditional data center architectures. All storage in an HCI is software-defined, for example. If setup correctly, when one storage node goes down, none of the others will be impacted, thus offering a superior level of connectivity and uptime compared to the solutions that came before it.
Likewise, HCI is inherently scalable thanks to that node-based infrastructure. It’s very easy to add or subtract nodes to match whatever your resource requirements are. This, coupled with the fact that the costs to maintain and support an HCI are lower than that of traditional data centers, has created a perfect storm in the best possible way for IT Teams.
The Trouble with Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Of course, none of that is to say that HCI is perfect as it does have its fair share of flaws, too. Baked into the architectural design of HCI is essentially a performance penalty that was seen as a trade-off for a lot of the benefits outlined above. Users deal with high, unpredictable latency at scale.
By its very nature, HCI also scales in essentially just a single way: you add more nodes over time. This can add complexity and cost to an environment over time. As you scale, everything from storage to compute becomes significantly more expensive.
Is it better than a traditional data center environment? Yes. But is it as good as it could be? Well, it’s getting better with dHCI.
Enter: Disaggregated dHCI
Also commonly referred to as dHCI for short, Disaggregated HCI offers users all the benefits of traditional hyperconverged solutions with as few of the potential downsides as possible. Companies get the superior management experience, but they also get the ease of use of working with a more traditional three tier infrastructure. Plus, in-house teams can manage it all through a single pane of glass, allowing them to enjoy the low latency and high performance needed without restriction.
Nimble Storage dHCI for Mission-Critical Workloads
Nimble Storage dHCI is a platform built to drive more resiliency for mission-critical business apps, more performance at scale, and most importantly, a more cost-effective way of working.
It can deliver up to 10x lower latency than traditional hyperconverged solutions, for example, allowing users to accelerate applications for a better business impact. It also offers 4x more resiliency, with absolutely zero tuning. When you also consider that there are no wasted resources and Nimble Storage dHCI is 5x more efficient than a traditional HCI configuration, it’s easy to see why this is a solution that is well worth paying attention to.
For many, the immediate benefit of something like Nimble Storage dHCI is that it is thoughtfully designed to offer the simplest experience yet. Users can be up and running in as little as 15 minutes (or less, in many cases). At that point they remain up. IT teams can enjoy the advantages of always-on, no-compromise data services, not to mention continuous wellness monitoring for everything from storage to virtual machines and back again. Not only that, but they can manage it all via VM-centric operations in VMware vCenter, while staying up-to-date with effortless single click upgrades.
Nimble dHCI Is More Cost-Effective than HCI
Even in terms of cost-effectiveness, dHCI wins over traditional hyperconverged solutions. By allowing users to scale compute and storage independently of one another, it’s a platform that offers the best data efficiency available today. Gone are the days when you would have to worry about issues like over-provisioning. You can now extend applications and their data into the hybrid cloud, all while reducing storage costs by between 33-50% in a lot of situations.
Customize Nimble Storage dCHI for Your Business
All told, HCI delivers on promises pertaining to things like agility and ease of use; but when you consider a lot of the architectural limitations that are built into it as a result of certain trade-offs that had to be made, it’s not alwasy the right choice to make for mission-critical business applications.
Something like Nimble Storage dHCI, however, becomes the clear victor in this particular discussion. With sub-ms latency, a 99.9999% level of guaranteed availability and data protection mechanisms that can handle up to three simultaneous drive failures without skipping a beat, it becomes clear why this is a solution shows no signs of slowing down.
Curious about Nimble Storage dHCI? Our certified technologists can evaluate your current infrastructure solutions and provide recommendations for upgrading based on your business needs. Learn about ComportSecure’s Managed Infrastructure offerings and contact us to discuss your options.
