5 Reasons why Hyperconvergence might be right for you

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) – may be a buzzword right now, but once it is better understood, its meaning makes sense – as combining multiple complex processes together helps make our IT lives easier. But how does hyperconvergence achieve this – and is it right for you? Below are five key considerations why this could be your next step in improving both your infrastructure and business performance.

But before we get to the five, let me quickly summarise HCI for context. If you’re familiar with converged infrastructure (CI), you’ll know it combines the 4 set pieces of a data centre – compute, storage, networking and virtualisation through a single interface. Hyperconvergence (HCI) on the other hand goes one stage further and manages all of these components of hardware through one piece of software, which is known as a hypervisor. This allows for the fast addition and removal of resources to the base unit.

With that in mind, here’s five HCI advantages:

1 Safe and sound
Let’s be honest – protecting and backing up data is boring, but it has to be done. However, many businesses only undertake the basic steps of protecting their data, because it’s tedious and it can be very expensive. HCI won’t make data backup thrilling, but it will make protecting your data simpler and cheaper, as backup and recovery features are all built in.

2 A moveable feast
Businesses are required to be adaptable and respond quickly to changing situations. The term agility comes to mind – staying fresh on your toes so you can move resources and infrastructure quickly and efficiently. In a HCI system, the entire data centre is stored in an easy to handle all-in-one box, so businesses can relocate quickly and easily without compromising the expectations of their customers.

3 A useful interface
The more separate components you have in a data centre, the more software you need to ensure everything runs well. HCI takes all these units, whether it’s storage, backup, or cloud gateway functionality, and combines everything into a neat, comfortable software package known as a hypervisor, which uses a centralised interface to mange it from – which saves training time, and cuts costs maintaining multiple layers of software.

4 One vendor, fewer problems
Under the traditional cloud deployment, businesses would have to get their storage from one provider, their networking from another, and so on. Because the hypervisor manages all of the hardware in an umbrella-like structure, only one point of contact is necessary, which can improve the efficiency of every stage of its lifecycle, from the analysis to the installation, management and maintenance.

5 It’s just cheaper
Given the above, this may seem like an obvious point, but new HCI systems are much cheaper than their standard counterparts up front. For small and growing businesses, the savings exponentially grow as more systems are required, with less time and effort is required to install the hardware, and less money needed to maintain and manage the software as more components are added, as only one interface is ever used.

That’s our quick take on HCI – if you’d like to learn more or request a demo, drop us an email at info@bcn.co.uk.