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What is Hyperconverged Storage?

By Lauren Wahlman

February 23, 2022 | min

Hyperconverged storage is a part of hyperconverged infrastructure that brings cloud architecture to IT datacenters and powers modern enterprise applications without the need for dedicated storage arrays and storage teams. It uses distributed storage algorithms to keep data protected, available, and secure at all times. Compared to traditional infrastructure, hyperconverged storage makes it easier for IT admins to manage storage resources and lower total cost of ownership, securing better pricing on storage than from public cloud service providers.

How is hyperconverged storage different from other storage solutions?

In today’s IT environment, there are many different types of storage to choose from to store your company’s data. Traditionally, we have direct attached storage and network attached storage. But as data storage continues to evolve, more advanced solutions have emerged like  hyperconverged storage. Hyperconverged storage companies differ from traditional storage companies because they deliver all control and logic through software, instead of specialty built hardware. This type of storage is also embedded in application servers, delivering higher performance, even as workloads are added and the storage grows over time. Hyperconverged storage can also scale in granular increments - either large or small- as needed, allowing companies to only pay for what they need, not having to purchase in large quantities which requires extensive planning and has an associated opportunity cost. 

Advantages of hyperconverged storage

Hyperconverged storage has clear advantages over traditional and legacy storage solutions:

Greater Flexibility: IT can adapt quickly and easily to changing business needs through virtualization and highly-automated processes.

Cost Savings: lower operational costs and pure capital cost by architecting highly automated solutions that run on industry-standard hardware devices, delivering a lower cost for performance than traditional storage counterparts. 

Less Downtime: Automated self-healing and parallel architecture compared to single-redundancy with traditional storage arrays. HCI makes it easy to configure and monitor resiliency, without the need for deep technical expertise or careful designs or intensive manual processes.

Hyperconverged storage is typically used to store data from Virtual Machines (VMs), but can also be used as general-purpose data storage supporting a range of storage protocols.  Some use cases for hyperconverged storage include server virtualization, databases, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), data protection for backup and disaster recovery, branch office deployments, where server resources are needed on site rather than in the datacenter, and  provides the foundation for private cloud and hybrid clouds.

To learn more about hyperconverged storage, check out our storage solution, AOS Distributed Storage. It intelligently manages and shares unstructured data to help organizations make informed decisions by  leveraging underlying hyperconverged storage to deliver multiprotocol storage for all different types of data. Another product available is Nutanix Unified Storage that is a capability made possible by hyperconverged storage.

Explain what is hyperconverged storage

  • Brings cloud architecture to IT datacenters
  • Powers modern enterprise applications without the need for dedicated storage array/storage teams
  • Uses distributed software algorithms to keep data protected, available, and secure

How is hyperconverged storage different from other storage solutions

  • CDW example
  • Under “The Future of Data Storage”, there are different forms of storage that are more complex solutions. Explain how hyperconverged storage differs from traditional storage as well as software-defined storage
  • HCI Storage Delivers all storage control and logic in software, instead of specialty built hardware (i.e., it is software-defined)
  • Storage is embedded in application servers, delivering higher performance, even as workloads are added and grow in size over time. (i.e., data locality)
  • Scales in small increments as needed, instead of large monolithic purchases that require extensive planning

Advantages of hyperconverged storage 

  • Vmware example
  • Flexibility for IT to adapt quickly and easily to changing business needs
  • Lower Cost (Both operational cost as well as pure capital cost)
  • Less downtime - automated self-healing, parallel architecture (compared to single-redundancy with traditional storage arrays)

Related products and solutions from Nutanix

  • Unified storage - Leverages underlying Hyperconverged Storage to deliver multi-protocol storage for all kinds of data

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