Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-­defined architecture with integrated compute, software­-defined storage, networking, and virtualization. It enables compute, storage, and networking functions to be decoupled from the underlying infrastructure and run on a common set of physical resources that are based on industry ­standard x86 components. Using hyper-converged infrastructure, customers can start with a small deployment, and then flexibly scale out to extreme scale and to support dynamic workloads and evolving business needs.

VxRack

      VCE VxRack system is a new hyper-converged offering that complements VCE converged infrastructure systems. These self-contained units of servers and networking are well-suited for the rapid growth in next-generation applications—enabling you to support a growing number of use cases with built-in resiliency and less stringent availability and performance requirements on infrastructure.

      VxRack has a modular design and provides flexibility to add units incrementally—so you can rapidly deploy the infrastructure you need, at scale. As a natural continuum of the VCE Vscale Architecture, the VxRack sytem and existing VCE systems accelerate data center transformation.

VSPEX BLUE

      EMC VSPEX BLUE, is a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance (HCIA) powered by Intel Xeon processor technology and EMC software. VSPEX BLUE enhances business agility by allowing IT to build, deploy, scale and maintain their HCIA through a more flexible operational framework.

      EMC VSPEX BLUE redefines simplicity by delivering virtualization, compute, storage, networking and data protection in an agile, scalable, easy to manage hyper-converged infrastructure appliance. Available as a single product for simple ordering, EMC VSPEX BLUE accelerates time-to-value by enabling customers to go from power-on to VM creation in 15 minutes. Designed for simplicity, fully orchestrated installation, management, patches and upgrades, EMC VSPEX BLUE provides linear scaling capability that grows based on your business needs. One call global support from EMC, for both hardware and software, lets customers rest assured knowing they have 24x7 support and repair service. The EMC VSPEX BLUE architecture is a scale-out system consisting of common modular building blocks that scale linearly from one to eight 2U/4 node appliances. The VSPEX BLUE approach is ideal for virtualization of Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO), Test/Development and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) in customer and managed services environments.

Comparison

      The architectural differences between a hyper-converged system and a converged or integrated system are significant. Integrated systems provide autonomous compute, storage, and networking systems integrated at the factory by a vendor or reseller. Conversely, hyper-converged systems integrate compute and storage functions into a single software stack running on a single node or a cluster of nodes. A hyper-converged system includes a native distributed file system/object store, while an integrated system leverages the file-based storage attributes of its autonomous storage array.

      A hyper-converged software stack natively enables workload adjacency, containerization, and hardware abstraction. In comparison, integrated systems include separate resource components responsible for discrete services. Last, with integrated systems, all required networking is included to connect the separate server and storage components. With hyper-convergence, an optional Ethernet switch connects the compute and storage layers together but also provides scale-out and/or high availability capabilities. As a result, IDC views hyper-converged systems as a revolutionary break from converged or integrated systems and their predecessor reference architectures.

      Back to the products, Vblock has a scale-up architecture, and VxRack is scale-out which supports from 4 nodes to over thousand nodes. Vblock is suitable for the traditional applications such as Oracle, SAP, Exchange while VxRack is good for MongoDB, Gemfire, CloudFoundry and other big data or cloud applications.

Author: Roger