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. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

HyperConverged
Infrastructure
VMware and Intel Special Edition

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These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

HyperConverged
Infrastructure
VMware and Intel Special Edition

by Michael Haag

VMware Storage & Availability |

Product Line Marketing Manager

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HyperConverged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition

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Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book......................................................................... 1
Foolish Assumptions.................................................................. 2
Icons Used in This Book............................................................. 2
Where to Go from Here.............................................................. 2

Chapter 1: The Data Center Has Evolved

Has Your Infrastructure Kept Up? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
New Requirements for Your Data Center................................ 4
The Rise of the Software-Defined Data Center........................ 5
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: The Fastest
Route to the Software-Defined Data Center......................... 6
Traditional infrastructure................................................ 6
Converged infrastructure................................................ 7
Hyper-converged infrastructure..................................... 8

Chapter 2: A New Approach: Hyper-Converged

Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Defining Hyper-Converged Infrastructure............................. 11
Identifying Trends Driving Hyper-Convergence................... 12
Higher-density flash technologies................................ 13
More powerful servers................................................... 13
Prevalence of server virtualization.............................. 14
Cloud principles and economics.................................. 15
Assembling the Ingredients forSuccess................................ 15
A proven hypervisor...................................................... 16
Radically simple storage................................................ 16
A unified management platform................................... 17
Flexible deployment choices......................................... 17
Looking at Key Use Cases for Hyper-Converged
Infrastructure........................................................................ 18
Business-critical applications....................................... 18
Virtual desktop infrastructure/
end-user computing.................................................... 19
Remote office/branch office deployment.................... 19
Management clusters..................................................... 20

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The Big Payoff: The Benefits of Hyper-Converged
Infrastructure........................................................................ 21
Simplicity......................................................................... 21
Performance.................................................................... 21
Cost................................................................................... 21
Flexibility......................................................................... 22
Availability....................................................................... 22

Chapter 3: Extending Virtualization to Storage:

Software-Defined Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
The Problems with Your Grandfathers
Storage Model........................................................................ 23
Reinventing the Storage Model............................................... 24
Exploring the DNA of Software-Defined Storage................... 25
Driving Storage Innovation through the Hypervisor............ 26
The Hypervisor: The Ideal Place to Deliver
Software-Defined Storage..................................................... 27
Two Abstraction Paths to SDS................................................ 28
Path 1: Specialized storagehardware.......................... 28
Path 2: x86 hardware...................................................... 28
A New Way to Manage YourStorage...................................... 29
The Promise of Software-Defined Storage............................. 30
Toward a Software-Defined Everything................................. 31

Chapter 4: The VMware Approach to

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Two Different Routes to Hyper-Converged
Infrastructure........................................................................ 33
VMware-Powered HCI............................................................... 35
Powered by VMware VirtualSAN........................................... 36
In-kernel integration....................................................... 37
Flash-optimized performance....................................... 37
Efficiency advantages..................................................... 38
Operational advantages................................................. 38
Hardware choice............................................................. 39
Elastic, nondisruptive scaling....................................... 39

Chapter 5: Transforming the Operational

Model with Unified Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Single-Pane-of-Glass Management........................................... 41
Advanced Monitoring............................................................... 42
Taking Operations Down to the Virtual Machine Level....... 42
Automation Driven by Policies............................................... 43
Dynamic Control of StorageServices..................................... 44

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Table of Contents

vii

Programmable via Application Programming Interfaces..... 45

The VMware Implementation: vSphere Storage
Policy-Based Management................................................... 45
Renewing the Friendship between the Virtual
Infrastructure Admin and theStorage Admin................... 46

Chapter 6: Getting Started with Hyper-Converged

Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Implementing VMware-Powered HCI:
Deployment Choices............................................................. 47
Certified Solutions: Virtual SAN Ready Nodes...................... 49
Looking at the benefits of a Virtual SAN
Ready Node.................................................................. 49
Choosing the right Virtual SAN Ready Node............... 50
Implementing your Virtual SAN Ready Node.............. 50
Integrated Systems: VCE VxRail HCI Appliances.................. 51
Storage area network power in just two racks........... 51
A familiar experience..................................................... 52

Chapter 7: Ten Reasons to Love Hyper-Converged

Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Improving Cost Efficiency........................................................ 53
Improving Operational Efficiency........................................... 54
Enabling Dynamic Responsiveness........................................ 54
Improving Precision and Granularity..................................... 54
Enabling Flexible Consumption.............................................. 55
Scaling Elastically..................................................................... 55
Preparing for Future Applications.......................................... 56
Providing Consistent Performance for
Every Application.................................................................. 56
Providing Enterprise-Class Availability................................. 56
Providing a Building Block toward the Private Cloud.......... 57

Appendix: Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
HCI Backgrounders................................................................... 61
Free eLearning........................................................................... 62
Free Preview of Courses.......................................................... 62
Other Resources....................................................................... 62

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viii

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Introduction

elcome to HyperConverged Infrastructure For Dummies,

your guide to catching the hyperconvergence wave
thats sweeping through todays data centers.
Why should you care about catching the hyperconvergence
wave? Well, as Stephen Covey once said, You cant change
the fruit without changing the root.
In this case, the fruit is the return on your data center infrastructure investments. Are you getting all you can get from
your investments? Probably not, assuming youre using conventional approaches.
To get more fruitful returns on your investments, you have
to change the root your data center architecture so you
put less capital and staff time into operating and managing
your infrastructure.
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) does just that. HCI
evolves how compute, storage, and management are delivered
and provisioned to help you cut operational and capital costs,
increase information technology (IT) and business agility, and
improve application performance.
How do you get there? The first step is to immerse yourself in
the concepts of this new approach to the data center. Thats
what this book is about.

About This Book

Dont let this books small size fool you. HyperConverged
Infrastructure For Dummies is loaded with information that
can help you understand and capitalize on HCI.In plain and
simple language, this book tells you
What HCI is all about
Why its such a hot topic
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

How you can get started

Where youll get the biggest bang for your HCI buck

Foolish Assumptions
This book makes a few assumptions about you. If youre reading this book, I assume the following:
You work in an IT shop.
Youre familiar with data center terminology.
You understand the concept of virtualization.

Icons Used in This Book

To make it even easier to see the most useful information, For
Dummies books use the following eyecatching icons.
This book is designed to work as a reference book that you
dont need to memorize. But information marked with the
Remember icon is so valuable, its worth remembering, even if
you dont memorize the whole book.
Check passages marked with the Technical Stuff icon for a
detailed technical explanation. If youre short on time, you
can skip these passages without missing the main point.

Follow the target for advice that can save you time and effort.

Watch out for these potential pitfalls on the road ahead.

Where to Go from Here

For more information on HCI, check out the VMware
HyperConverged Infrastructure site at www.vmware.com/
products/hyperconvergedinfrastructure.

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Chapter1

The Data Center Has

Evolved Has Your
Infrastructure Kept Up?
In This Chapter
Highlighting todays infrastructure challenges
Exploring the softwaredefined data center
Introducing hyperconverged infrastructure

ave you seen an information technology (IT) pro in pain

over infrastructure issues? Just look around your data
center. Maybe you can look in the mirror.
In the enterprise IT landscape, maintaining an agile data
center infrastructure tends to be a source of headaches for
IT leaders and administrators. Without fundamental changes,
the pain will only get worse, as business moves further into
the world of digital everything. Thats because the demands
on infrastructure are exploding.
A big part of the problem stems from runaway data growth.
How fast is data growing? According to research by IDC (EMC
Digital Universe Study, with data and analysis by IDC, April
2014), the digital universe (the data we create and copy annually) is doubling in size every two years. By 2020, it will reach
an unfathomable 44 zettabytes (thats 44 trillion gigabytes).

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

This problem affects more than one part of a business. The

coin has two sides:
On one side, virtually every part of every organization
is pushing the limits. Theyre generating more information, demanding new kinds of access, and planning to
keep it forever (or nearly so). In some cases, the need to
acquire and harness information drives entire business
models.
On the flip side, cloudsavvy end users are increasing
their expectations. They expect everbetter performance
for their applications, lowercost infrastructure, and ever
faster responses from the IT organization.
This new era of heightened expectation creates new requirements for your data center. In this chapter, I cover some of
these requirements. I also explain the rise of the software
defined data center (SDDC) and what it means for you. Finally,
I wrap up the chapter by explaining how hyperconverged
infrastructure (HCI) helps you clear a path to the SDDC.

New Requirements for

Your Data Center
Data storage capacity is growing like crazy. According to
research from IDC, storage capacity is forecast to grow at an
annual rate of 32 percent through 2020 (Doc #US41249416/
May 2016).
That capacity growth comes with good news and bad news:
The good news: The cost of storage hardware continues
to shrink.
The bad news: The costs associated with increased
capacity, performance, and management complexity
often exceed the cost savings on storage hardware.
For many environments, storage now is the lions share of
IT spend. Given that reality, its no surprise that as volumes
grow from terabytes to exabytes, storage efficiency is attracting more scrutiny from the business.

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Chapter1: The Data Center Has Evolved Has Your Infrastructure Kept Up?

Additionally, enduser expectations are increasing because of

the widespread use of server virtualization, the rise of cloud
based services, and the emergence of scaleout applications.
End users now expect better application performance and
faster responsiveness from the IT services organization.
These expectations put more pressure on your IT team to
increase infrastructure efficiency, while controlling cost.

The Rise of the SoftwareDefined

Data Center
The SDDC promises to change how IT services are delivered.
What was once static, inflexible, and inefficient becomes
dynamic, agile, and optimized. In other words, the SDDC
builds on the success of server virtualization to evolve the
data center from the past to the future.
In this new, softwaredefined world, all IT infrastructure elements (including compute, storage, management, and networking) are virtualized and delivered as a service. Resources
are automatically deployed, with little (or no) human involvement. Everything is highly automated, controlled by software,
and governed by policies that incorporate the logic of business requirements for IT.
In an SDDC, you dont spend weeks provisioning the infrastructure to support a new application. You can get an application running in minutes. That means
Superfast time to value
Really happy business executives
For perspective, consider this: In many ways, the SDDC is the
natural extension of server virtualization. Just as server virtualization helps you squeeze more value out of your computing
systems, the SDDC helps you squeeze more value out of all the
resources you use to host an application, especially storage.
The softwaredefined approach is a muchneeded framework
for greater IT agility and more responsive IT service delivery,
all at a lower cost. Its the key to the data center of the future.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

HyperConverged Infrastructure:
The Fastest Route to the
SoftwareDefined Data Center
Okay, we know that the SDDC helps IT pros overcome many
common challenges stemming from legacy issues. So, how
do you get there? Many roads will move you forward, but the
fastest, most direct, and most popular route to the SDDC is
HCI.Figure11 shows how the SDDC provides an ideal architecture for private, public, and hybrid clouds, extending virtualization concepts to all data center resources and services.

Figure1-1:The softwaredefined data center.

HCI is the next big step in the evolution of data center architectures. This ongoing evolution first moved us from traditional silobased infrastructure to converged infrastructure.
And now its moving us to HCI.In the following sections, I walk
you through each of these types of infrastructure.

Traditional infrastructure
The traditional infrastructure model relies on proprietary,
purposebuilt hardware for storage and networking. These

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Chapter1: The Data Center Has Evolved Has Your Infrastructure Kept Up?

components form separate silos with their own management software from numerous vendors. They work best
when optimized and managed by dedicated specialists.
Furthermore, because performance is set at the hardware
layer, resources are not properly optimized and overprovisioning often occurs.
Figure12 shows the traditional approach as an expensive solution to a generalpurpose IT need. It results in an
increased footprint, increased complexity, and increased staffing and specialization. Worse, todays dynamic applications
and virtualized workloads require provisioning flexibility that
hardwarecentric approaches arent designed to deliver. Its
the opposite of simple and streamlined.

Figure1-2:Traditional silobased infrastructure.

Converged infrastructure
A converged infrastructure improves on the traditional model
by bringing compute, storage, management, and networking
into a single rack, as shown in Figure13. Different specialty
vendors typically still provide these elements. The overall
management may be integrated and optimized, but separate
systems, workflows, and management platforms are still
required for many operations and troubleshooting tasks.
In addition, the hardware bundles are preconfigured to run
specific workloads and cant be easily altered resulting in
a loss of flexibility. The physical boundaries may have been
eliminated, but provisioning and operational challenges
remain.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

Figure1-3:Converged infrastructure.

Hyperconverged infrastructure
Hyperconverged solutions take the next step: The storage and
compute resource pillars are physically converged onto a single
industrystandard x86 server, forming a seamless, software
defined environment well suited to todays IT challenges.
The secret sauce of HCI lies in the hypervisor (the source of
the hyper in hyperconvergence). As shown in Figure14, key
data center functions compute, storage, storage networking, and management are now running as software on the
hypervisor, enabling efficient operations, streamlined and
speedy provisioning, and costeffective growth.
Thanks to benefits like these, the HCI market has a huge
amount of momentum. IDC predicts that the market for hyper
converged systems will experience a 60 percent compound
annual growth rate from 2014 to 2019, when it will generate
more than $3.9 billion in total sales (Doc #255614/Apr 2015).
When you deploy HCI, youre clearing your path to the
SDDC.HCI natively integrates compute, storage, and storage
networking functions, running them all in software on a virtualized platform along with common management tools. You
can then build on your HCI foundation by adding automation
and complete network virtualization capabilities to create
your full SDDC.
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Chapter1: The Data Center Has Evolved Has Your Infrastructure Kept Up?

Figure1-4:A hyperconverged infrastructure software stack.

Even better, you can extend your hyperconverged environment to your existing external storage arrays supported by
vSphere to protect your current investments. Arrays that
support VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes can be managed
under the same storage policybased management framework.
Virtual Volumes is an industrywide initiative supported
by all major storage vendors that can coexist with VMware
vSpherebased HCI solutions. This initiative allows you to
leverage the unique capabilities of your current storage
investments in a softwaredefined storage (SDS) environment
or to simplify the modernization of your data center with nondisruptive migration based on proven features like VMware
vSphere vMotion and Storage vMotion.
vSphere Virtual Volumes is an API integration framework that
exposes virtual machine (VM) disks as native storage objects.
This enables arraybased operations at the virtual disk level.
In other words, Virtual Volumes makes storage area network
(SAN) and networkattached storage (NAS) devices VMaware.
The Virtual Volumes framework also allows your storage
arrays to integrate with the VMware SDS control plane,
known as VMware Storage PolicyBased Management (SPBM).
Through vSphere Virtual Volumes, you can then control your
existing storage arrays via the VMlevel policy mechanism.
This means you can now transition easily, without d
isruption,

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

to a simpler and more efficient operational model thats

optimized for virtual environments and works across all storage types.
You can get a deeper understanding of Virtual Volumes by visiting the VMware website at www.vmware.com/products/
vsphere/features/virtualvolumes.html.
A gap is growing between traditional data center architectures and the requirements of the SDDC.Your organization
needs a new approach to your architecture.

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Chapter2

A New Approach:
HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Exploring the trends driving hyperconverged infrastructure
Interpreting the role of the hypervisor
Highlighting success factors and use cases

his chapter explores some of the reasons hyperconverged

infrastructure (HCI) is such a hot topic in information
technology (IT) circles. You get a basic definition of HCI, explanation of the traits of a fullbodied solution, a walkthrough of
common use cases, and list the key benefits that stem from
hyperconvergence.

Defining HyperConverged
Infrastructure
First, lets lay out a basic definition. Hyperconverged infrastructure, as shown in Figure21, collapses compute, storage
(including storage networking), and management onto virtualized, standard hardware, enabling a buildingblock approach
to infrastructure with scaleout capabilities.
In HCI, all key data center functions run as software on the
hypervisor in a tightly integrated software layer. HCI is fundamentally about this final architecture; as a result, there are
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

different paths to the same end from turnkey appliances to

flexible hardware platforms installed with the hyperconverged
infrastructure software.

Figure2-1:Hyperconverged infrastructure.

In an HCI environment, compute, storage, and management

resources are delivered through an x86 Intelbased server
platform. The server platform runs a hypervisor and pools
direct attached storage devices either flash devices like
SSDs or hard disk drives together from across multiple
servers in the cluster to create shared storage, which acts like
that provided by traditional storage area network (SAN) or
networkattached storage (NAS) devices.

Identifying Trends Driving

HyperConvergence
The hyperconverged engine is fueled by a number of key
technology trends:
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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure

13

Higherdensity flash technologies that deliver higher performance at lower costs

More powerful servers, thanks to advances in central
processing unit (CPU) and memory densities
Widespread adoption of server virtualization for most
workloads
Influence of cloud principles, economics, and cloudnative
applications demanding an updated approach toIT
Hyperconvergence harnesses all these trends to deliver
modern infrastructure with more performance and simplicity
for less total cost.

Higherdensity flash technologies

Highdensity flash and nonvolatile memory technologies are
rapidly evolving. These technologies can accelerate storage
performance and reduce readandwrite latency.
But theres a catch: To fully realize the potential performance
gains of these new memory technologies, you must eliminate
the network hop where data passes through bridges, routers,
or gateways. The goal is to bring the data much closer to the
CPUs onto the same server. This is the hyperconverged
approach, which gets a big boost from flash technologies.
As the cost of flash devices continues to decrease, the price
per IOPs becomes more attractive and leads to more adoption of HCI.

More powerful servers

With new multicore CPUs, industrystandard x86 servers keep
getting more powerful. Theyre now so powerful that they can
handle the workload requirements of highperformance storage in enterprise environments. Better still, if your HCI solution is based on Intel hardware, you have the assurances that
come with a predictable cadence of performance increases
with new processor platforms. With HCI, you can take advantage of those increases immediately as a software solution can
easily be updated or expanded to run on the latest, offthe
shelf standard servers.

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14

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

Heres where things get really good: The cost of x86 hardware,
including flash memory, is usually a bargain compared to
purposebuilt storage arrays. As a result, HCI delivers considerable cost savings compared to deploying siloed servers,
storage networking, and external storage solutions.
Given its advantages, widespread adoption of HCI is inevitable. In the coming months and years, youll see HCI solutions
in data centers everywhere.

Prevalence of server virtualization

The hypervisor breaks the ties that bind an application to a
particular piece of hardware. It allows a physical server to
act as a host for multiple guest operating systems, or virtual
machines (VMs). Each VM acts like its own system and runs
its own applications. In the background, the hypervisor controls how the underlying server resources are accessed by
the VMs.
With the widespread adoption of server virtualization, the
hypervisor is everywhere in todays data centers. It has
emerged as the standard platform for enterprise applications.
Consider these findings:
Server virtualization has become the defacto platform
to run enterprise applications. According to Gartner,
The market has matured rapidly over the last few years,
with many organizations having server virtualization
rates that exceed 75 percent, illustrating the high level
of penetration (Gartner Press release, Gartner Says
Worldwide Server Virtualization Market Is Reaching Its
Peak, May 12, 2016, www.gartner.com/newsroom/
id/3315817h). Most enterprises now operate with a
virtual first policy which means applications are
deployed on virtual platforms by default.
IDC predicts that storage attached to virtual environments will make up more and more of all enterprise
storage shipped. By 2019, storage systems for virtual
environments will make up more than twothirds of all
revenue generated by enterprise storage systems and
approach $28 billion (Doc #258550, August 2015). This
new reality makes server virtualization and VMs the
primary workhorses for the storage infrastructure.

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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure

15

Because of this widespread use, the hypervisor is the obvious foundation for expanding on the benefits of server
virtualization to cover storage, networking, and unified
management enabling a clear path to HCI and ultimately
the SDDC without requiring forklift changes to current infrastructure and expertise.

Cloud principles and economics

The growth of ondemand, cloudbased services are being felt
in the data center with administrators looking for simple and
affordable ways to deliver business results. This is especially
true for smaller companies or individual departments that
are looking to architect a simple solution to meet their key
ITneeds.
This desire for cloudtype consumption is directly driving the
adoption of HCI, which provides a much higher level of flexibility, simplicity, and ondemand growth than traditional data
center infrastructure while delivering the onpremise benefits
of highperformance, security, and control.
In addition, nextgeneration HCI solutions deliver strong support for deploying a hybrid cloud model, whether through
integration with OpenStack technologies or supporting
nextgeneration workloads, like cloudnative applications and
containers.

Assembling the Ingredients

forSuccess
Building an HCI environment has a lot in common with
making a mouthwatering meal: Start with the best ingredients,
combine carefully, and use proven techniques for making
everything work together as a unified whole. The four key
ingredients for HCI success are:
A proven hypervisor
Radically simple storage
A unified management platform
Flexible deployment choices
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

A proven hypervisor
In an HCI solution, the hypervisor forms your foundation
its the hyper in hyperconverged, and plays a key role in
ensuring data availability, storage efficiency, application performance, and flexible scalability.
Given that the benefits of virtualization from operational
efficiency to increased availability all stem from the hypervisor, choosing the right hypervisor is critical. The more capable and featurerich your hypervisor, the better your results.
For the past six years, VMware has been recognized as a
leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for its x86 Server
Virtualization Infrastructure, VMware vSphere hypervisor (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization
Infrastructure, 14 July 2015). More than 500,000 enterprises
including 100 percent of the Fortune 100 trust VMware as
their virtualization infrastructure platform.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service
depicted in its research publications, and does not advise
technology users to select only those vendors with the
highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartners research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact.
Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with
respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Radically simple storage

In a hyperconverged solution, storage and storage networking are collapsed into the server and virtualized. This
streamlines operations, costs, and overall physical footprint.
However, not all approaches to softwaredefined storage in an
HCI environment are created equal. Nextgeneration HCI solutions deliver extremely tight integration between the server
and storage virtualization software. The tight integration
eliminates the need for a separate virtual storage appliance
deployed on each server, which leads to lower resource utilization and lower VM densities.

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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure

17

Unlike hardwarecentric solutions, hyperconverged infrastructure software pools serverattached storage to create
highperformance, resilient, shared storage thats optimized
for VMs. What was previously complicated and expensive
becomes just the opposite: simple, powerful, streamlined, and
intelligent.
The right storage solution can lower operational expenditures
(OpEx) by streamlining routine tasks, enabling better and
more predictable performance, and allowing your organization and IT infrastructure to grow affordably without the need
for large capital investments. Capital expenditure (CapEx)
costs are greatly reduced by eliminating the need for purpose
built hardware and storage networking silos.

A unified management platform

Youre now at the point in the recipe where youve virtualized your infrastructure (compute, storage, and storage
networking) which means youre halfway there! Next, you
need a way to manage it. When selecting a management solution, youll want to avoid creating a learning curve for users,
or worse, multiple management silos that you have to juggle
when managing or monitoring the different layers in the HCI.
What you do want is a familiar interface, one you already
know how to use. And because simplicity and ease are also
vital, look for a unified platform that manages the entire stack
and seamlessly integrates all your workflows.

Flexible deployment choices

Software cant run on software you need to put it on something. To ease your path forward, look for an HCI platform
that gives you the broadest possible choices for the hardware
platform. This flexibility helps you build an HCI environment
that matches your needs and preferences exactly. It allows
you to leverage the x86 infrastructure you already know
costeffective, industrystandard, Intel Architecturebased
servers, Intel Networking, and Intel storage products from a
wide variety of computer manufacturers. This means no new
hardware to learn, no new purchasing process, and no new
support model to navigate.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

A word to the wise: Dont scrimp

Scrimping on your ingredients by
settling for less than the best can
yield unsatisfactory results. Opting
for initial cost savings or accepting
performance limits will be a decision youll likely regret sooner rather
than later. Its important to consider
the impact of your selection beyond
the HCI solution.
To that end, ask yourself the following questions:
How will it integrate with your
existing environment?

What are the operational

impacts?
Can the solution efficiently and
costeffectively grow when,
where, and how you need it?
Choosing the best quality of your
ingredients can help you avoid
a halfbaked solution that leaves
you with silos, vendor lockin,
e xpensive upgrade and expan
sion paths, and unpredictable
performance.

Looking at Key Use Cases for

HyperConverged Infrastructure
The benefits of HCI emerge clearly across four common use
cases:
Businesscritical applications (BCAs)
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)/enduser computing
Remote office/branch office deployment
Management clusters

Businesscritical applications
Traditional infrastructure makes BCAs slow to provision
and complicated to manage. Tasks like database processing,
email server management, and Web 2.0 workloads require
high levels of performance, availability, and reliability. Older
architectures simply cant deliver without overprovisioned

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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure

19

storage, expensive purposebuilt hardware, and siloed management tools.

Hyperconverged infrastructure software overcomes these
challenges with a simple, distributed scaleout architecture,
often optimized for highperformance flash devices, that puts
IT back in charge of the applications that are so important to
the business.

Virtual desktop infrastructure/

enduser computing
With so many enduser devices in play, the need for VDI has
grown, but legacy systems make deployment a challenge. VDI
requires a combination of high IOPs and low latency to ensure
a justlikephysical user experience. It also needs to maintain low capital and operational costs to justify the return on
investment (ROI).
Using traditional infrastructure, VDI is expensive to deploy
and maintain, with high upfront capital requirements, as well
as the high maintenance costs necessary to provide adequate
performance and scale for virtual desktops and applications.
HCI delivers the perfect solution to these VDI challenges.
It provides a highperformance and lowcost solution for a
more consistent, predictable user experience, a lower CapEx
requirement, and a simpler operational model.

Remote office/branch office

deployment
Many organizations have remote offices and branch offices
that rely on local IT infrastructure managed by IT staff at
another location. This remote, distributed architecture presents a host of challenges that range from unpredictable performance to management complexity to poor reliability and
availability.
IT teams need better visibility from a distance, along with
tools that will make administration and management simpler

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and less timeconsuming. And as their businesses grow, they

need the ability to scale without breaking the bank.
HCI is a perfect match for remote office/branch office deployment: It delivers a single, lowcost infrastructure solution with
compute, storage, management, and networking integrated.
In addition, the right HCI solution can be easily scaled up
or down, and is flexible enough to accommodate changing
needs exactly what companies with remote offices need.

Management clusters
Businesscritical applications may get most of the attention,
but management clusters play a critical, behindthescenes
role in keeping the overall IT environment running smoothly.
A management cluster is a dedicated group of hosts reserved
for running VMs that provide management services to infrastructure environments, which can include directory services,
domain name system (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP), and VMware vCenter Server.
Their vital role makes it imperative that management clusters
are always available and always have adequate resources. In
the case of a sitewide failure, they must be brought online
first, as quickly as possible. Its important to keep them in an
isolated environment and sized to allow you to bring them up
rapidly.
Traditionally, these clusters resided on expensive hardware
to ensure high availability and high performance. If they lived
on shared resources for the purpose of reducing costs, they
had to compete with business workloads for compute and
storage resources and made recovery more challenging.
HCI helps you manage these challenges. It enables simplified
management, faster restoration, and disaster recovery, and
allows you to isolate infrastructure without high capital costs.
Keep in mind that the HCI use cases cited here arent a complete list. HCI solutions can also be used to meet a wide range
of other IT needs, such as systems for hybrid cloud support,
disaster recovery sites, secondary data centers, DMZ deployments, and test and development functions.

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Chapter2: A New Approach: HyperConverged Infrastructure

21

The Big Payoff: The Benefits of

HyperConverged Infrastructure
Now lets get to the dessert the business and IT benefits of
an HCI solution that has all the right ingredients.

Simplicity
With a fully featured HCI environment, you can eliminate
many of the components and hardware silos found in traditional infrastructure. In simple terms, with HCI you need a lot
less stuff in your data center. This simplicity helps you reduce
operational time and complexity across your data center.
To help you simplify your environment, HCI
Provides a single, integrated software stack that runs on
industrystandard servers
Delivers ease of deployment and maintenance, with
policydriven automation
Reduces physical components to manage, monitor, and
maintain

Performance
HCI accelerates applications and enhances the user experience. To drive performance gains, HCI
Delivers allflash optimizations for application fast
response times
Enables easy scaleout and scaleup capabilities
Ensures predictable performance to keep users happy

Cost
HCI can help you greatly reduce infrastructure spending
across your data center. In particular, HCI

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Generates cost and storage efficiency

Leverages technical resources and expertise you already
have
Eliminates overprovisioning with granular growasyougo
scaling

Flexibility
With a data center built around HCI, your IT organization is
poised to rapidly respond to changing business demands. To
deliver this flexibility, HCI
Offers broad deployment choice no hardware vendor
lockin
Enables a futureproof IT environment, with support for
todays traditional applications, as well as new cloud
native applications and container technologies
Allows you to scale up and scale out to easily meet
specific application needs

Availability
HCI helps you minimize risk with a proven, secure platform
that
Ensures predictable performance with quality of
service(QoS)
Delivers high availability and resiliency with no single
point of failure
Builds confidence on the foundation of a proven,
industryleading hypervisor
Ultimately, HCI is a natural evolution in your data center.
Ifyoure in a VMware vSphere environment, you are among
the 500,000+ customers who know and use vSphere and all the
familiar tools, and you already virtualize industrystandard
Intelbased hardware. For your organization, HCI will deliver
major advantages with minimal change and learning.

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Chapter3

Extending Virtualization to
Storage: SoftwareDefined
Storage
In This Chapter
Introducing softwaredefined storage
Exploring the DNA of a new approach to storage
Explaining the value of hypervisor integration

his chapter explores the big picture of softwaredefined

storage (SDS), which is one of the key building blocks
for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and the software
defined data center (SDDC). SDS abstracts physical storage constructs to enable flexible and precise consumption
according to application requirements. This goodness is all
made possible by the hypervisor, which acts as a broker
that balances the needs of a virtual machine (VM) and the
applications it runs.

The Problems with Your

Grandfathers Storage Model
To achieve the potential of the SDDC, all the key components
of the information technology (IT) infrastructure must be
virtualized, so they can be automated and controlled by software. This requirement foreshadows big changes for existing
storage infrastructure that was built for the past.

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In simple terms, old storage architectures have a hard time

keeping up with the demands of the SDDC, let alone the
demands of the digital era. But current storage infrastructure
isnt all wrong. In reality, storage today is a mixed bag. There
are both the very good and the very notsogood:
On the upside: Modern storage arrays offer great capabilities for storing, managing, and protecting data.
On the downside: Todays storage arrays are largely
worlds unto themselves, like walled cities with their own
cultures and their own ways of doing things.
The enterprise storage model hasnt changed much in the
last 20 years: Providing storage services means acquiring
dedicated storage arrays and surrounding them with dedicated
operating teams. This model sometimes worked in the terabyte world, but not in todays petabyte and exabyte world.
Yesterdays enterprise storage model has many operational
shortcomings. For example:
Most organizations rely on purposebuilt, dedicated
storage arrays. Each array has its own specialized functionality and operational procedures tied to the hardware
and not the applications or VMs.
Application needs and storage services arent aligned.
Application owners and virtualization administrators
cant easily or precisely specify what they need and when
they need it. The result is either an inability to meet
servicelevel agreements (SLAs) for applications or overprovisioning of storage capacity and services.
Operational workflows are stovepiped between storage, application, and virtualization teams. Requests
are made, meetings are held, sticky notes are posted on
monitors, work is scheduled and time is lost.
Clearly, yesterdays approaches to infrastructure fall far short
todays needs. We need an allnew approach. A software
defined approach.

Reinventing the Storage Model

SDS reinvents the storage model by eliminating legacy silos
and enabling the true pooling of storage resources. The
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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage

25

hypervisor brings to storage the same operational efficiency

that server virtualization brings to compute.
To enable this shift, SDS puts the application and its requirements at the top of the IT food chain, enabling storage
resources to respond to the dynamic changes in application
requirements. Now the application is the boss; the supporting
resources are the workers who make sure the boss gets what
the boss needs when the boss needs it.
This is a change from the conventional bottomup hardware
centric approach. This approach usually requires your storage admins to create static pools of storage resources, and
then hope for alignment between the applications needs and
the preprovisioned storage services. This timeworn tactic
leads to wasted resources (because of overprovisioning to
ensure against future growth).
In an HCI environment built on SDS, the x86 server platform
runs a hypervisor and includes virtualized storage devices.
The storage software runs either in the hypervisor or in a
VM.The storage components are typically a mix of solidstate
drives (SSDs) or harddisk drives (HDDs). Newer allflash
HCI solutions are built from SSDs (like Intel SSD Data Center
Series), PCIe devices, or other flash technologies.
HCI implements shared storage by pooling the storage
resources distributed across multiple server nodes. You
essentially end up with a storage area network (SAN) inside
an x86 server system.
In the simplest terms, HCI extends the server virtualization
technology you already know by abstracting and pooling storage attached to the x86 servers, and incorporating them as
part of the virtualized environment.

Exploring the DNA of Software

Defined Storage
Before diving into the components of SDS and their interactions, there are a few core concepts and key attributes to
understand in VMwares SDS.Your IT shop may require

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

ifferent solution components based on your specific needs,

d
but all these concepts are important to an understanding of
SDS as a whole.
A robust SDS environment delivers the following benefits:
It enables applicationcentric storage services. SDS
enables storage services to be tailored to the precise
requirements of an application and adjusted as needed
for each application, without affecting neighboring applications. Storage services become fluid a little more for
this application, a little less for that one.
It enables policydriven automation. In SDS, IT admins
set policies for requesting, monitoring, and adjusting
storage services for specific applications. SDS then
enables the storage layer to figure out how best to satisfy
those requirements.
It enables dynamic storage services. Most of todays
storage products use a static model to deliver storage
services. All classes of service are physically pre
provisioned in storage volumes or logical unit numbers
(LUNs). SDS uses a dynamic model, as with virtualized
compute. IT admins can precisely match demand and
supply, according to specific application requirements,
inthe exact time the resources are needed.
It supports conventional storage arrays. When IT organizations bring in new technologies, they put a premium on
the ability to continue to use existing investments. And
thats the case with VMwares approach to SDS.Existing
SAN and networkattached storage (NAS) storage systems can coexist with serverattached storage pools
or can leverage the storagepolicy based management
system with VMware Virtual Volumes.

Driving Storage Innovation

through the Hypervisor
The hypervisor has a long track record when it comes to storage innovation. In the specific case of VMware, the hypervisor has enabled all kinds of capabilities in the VMware for
vSphere environment to improve the management of storage
systems.
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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage

27

A few examples:
vSphere Thin Provisioning allows you to overallocate
storage capacity to increase utilization and simplify
capacity management.
vSphere Storage DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)
continuously balances storage space usage and storage
I/O load to help you prevent resource bottlenecks and
meet your targeted application service levels.
vSphere Replication enables you to replicate VMs across
any kind of storage systems for data protection and
disaster recovery.
With SDS, VMware continues along this path of driving storage transformation through the hypervisor. The ultimate goal
is to bring to storage the same level of operational efficiency
that server virtualization brought to compute. And this big
step forward begins with the hypervisor.

The Hypervisor: The Ideal Place

to Deliver SoftwareDefined
Storage
Given its unique position between the physical server and
the VMs that run on it the hypervisor has a unique vantage
point. It basically sees everything, including applications and
the host hardware.
This privileged location in the IT stack leaves the hypervisor
uniquely positioned to act as a broker that balances the needs
of a VM and the applications it runs including requirements
for compute, storage, and networking. The hypervisor has the
eyeinthesky view thats needed to make intelligent placement decisions and manage ongoing workload optimizations.
Why can the hypervisor act as a broker between applications
and storage services? Its because of awareness and position:
On one hand, the hypervisor is inherently application
aware. It has a direct line of sight into each application running on the VMs that are connected to the
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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

host server. It understands the applications storage

requirements thats part of its job.
On the other hand, the hypervisor is positioned in the
I/O data path between the host server and the hosted
VMs, and it manages the underlying storage infrastructure. This coveted position allows the hypervisor to turn
rockhard physical resources into fluid pools of storage
capacity and capabilities that can flow into applications
as needed.

Two Abstraction Paths to SDS

The first big concept in SDS is the idea of abstracting physical
storage constructs to allow flexible and precise consumption
according to application requirements. In simple terms, SDS
makes storage resources inherently aware of VMs, so you can
have finer control over your storage, all the way down to the
VM level.
There are two fundamentally different paths for abstracting
storage to make it VMaware.

Path 1: Specialized
storagehardware
The first form of abstraction assumes that you continue to use
your traditional storage architecture based on either SAN or
NAS systems. To enable this abstraction, SDS uses a new integration framework between the hypervisor and the traditional
storage systems to introduce a new, granular management
solution that delivers perVM control.

Path 2: x86 hardware

The second form of abstraction allows you to transition to
flexible storage that uses industrystandard x86 hardware (not
specialized, purposebuilt storage hardware). Lots of good
things result from this change. With the use of storage components built into industrystandard Intelbased hardware, the
storage environment bypasses the roadblocks that are built
into conventional storage architectures.

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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage

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The new softwaredefined systems are sometimes referred

to as server SANs, which is really just another way of saying
hyperconverged infrastructure or HCI.This approach
rewrites the old capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational
expenditure (OpEx) rules for enterprise storage. Storage components no longer cost premium prices. Your IT shop is free
to select the specific components that best meet your particular requirements for performance, cost, and capacity.
With HCI, storage components share compute and memory
with the server infrastructure. This eliminates the need for separate storage arrays, controllers, memory, SANs, and more. All
storage technologies are fully integrated into the virtualization
cluster. Its like having a SAN tucked inside a server.
Today, there are two very different ways to implement an SDS
architecture on x86 hardware and direct attached storage:
Thirdparty software running in VMs that sit on top of a
hypervisor (not in a hypervisor) to create virtual storage
appliances (VSAs).
Storage functionality integrated directly into the hypervisor. This architecture is called hyperconverged storage.
Its the approach used in HCI solutions.

A New Way to Manage

YourStorage
The second key concept in SDS is the notion of transforming
management and provisioning to make it all about the application, not all about the hardware.
In simple terms, SDS changes the management layer to allow
application requirements (not hardware resources) to drive
your storage decisions.
Historically, storageservices management revolved around
a rigid list of requirements for capacity, performance, protection, and other storage needs. These requirements were
communicated from one team to another, then physically
implemented as either LUNs or storage volumes. When they
were executed, there was little room for change. The requirements were pretty much set in stone.
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SDS rewrites this script. Applicationcentric storage policies

replace this hardwarecentric approach. Storage policies are
associated with the VMs that run an application; these policies are automatically pushed down to the storage layer for
implementation and enforcement. Heres the payoff:
Storage policies and the service levels they control are
easily and dynamically changed as an application goes
through its life cycle, moving from development and testing to rollout and full production.
Its far less wasteful than hardwarespecific policies.
Applications get exactly the storage services they need,
when they need them, without routinely overprovisioning capacity or data services.
SDS delivers a common standardized management
approach that works and spans across different storage
types and tiers. The policybased management becomes
a unified commandandcontrol center for your storage
environment. You can manage the new hyperconverged
storage architecture, plus traditional storage solutions
(such as SAN and NAS), and collect all the benefits of
applicationcentric storage policies.
SDS delivers a new abstraction for storage and a new control
plane:
Abstraction can be implemented on traditional storage,
or you can implement an entirely new HCI architecture
that abstracts storage resources attached to x86 server
hardware.
The control plane is a new dynamic way to manage storage services that is common across different types of
storage.

The Promise of SoftwareDefined

Storage
Basically, SDS puts the application and its requirements at the
top of the IT hierarchy. Now storage can respond to dynamic
changes in application requirements.

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Chapter3: Extending Virtualization to Storage: SoftwareDefined Storage

31

SDS uses policies to create a justintime model for storage service delivery. Storage assets and capabilities arent configured
and assigned to specific applications until theyre needed.
Should the policy change, the storage environment responds
with the requested new service level.
What matters are the needs of your business. In an age of
digital everything and cloudsavvy end users, you need to
quickly deploy IT applications that dynamically adjust storage
services so you deliver consistently great performance. SDS
helps you get there today.
SDS creates a compelling opportunity for your IT team to
fundamentally reenvision how data is stored and managed.
Through the introduction of new technologies and associated
operational models, you can get ahead of rising storage costs
and deliver better and more tailored storage services.
SDS allows you to precisely and automatically match storage
supply to application demand.

Toward a Software-Defined
Everything
Compute virtualization is a mature category that has enabled
benefits in performance and scalability. Today we are
seeing other critical data center components also advancing
and becoming dynamic resource pools that can scale. We
are seeing the rise of software-defined everything from
software-defined networking to software-defined storage
and hyperconverged-infrastructure to software-defined
application services. These all pave the way for the softwaredefined data center (SDDC), which is a software abstraction
of your entire data center.
VMware NSX is the network virtualization platform for the
software-defined data center. NSX embeds networking and
security functionality that is typically handled in hardware
directly into the hypervisor. The NSX network virtualization
platform fundamentally transforms the data center network
operational model like server virtualization did ten years ago,
and is helping thousands of customers realize the full potential
of an SDDC.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

With NSX, you can reproduce in software your entire networking environment. NSX provides a complete set of logical
networking elements and services, including logical switching,
routing, firewalling, load balancing, VPN, QoS, and monitoring.
Virtual networks are programmatically provisioned and managed independent of the underlying hardware.

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Chapter4

The VMware Approach

to HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Highlighting the routes to hyperconverged infrastructure
Introducing VMwarepowered hyperconverged infrastructure
Explaining the attributes of VMware Virtual SAN

his chapter looks at how hyperconverged infrastructure solutions powered by VMware Virtual SAN offer the
advantages of an inkernel architecture. This chapter also
looks at the benefits of the VMware software stack and introduces the advantages of flexible deployment choices.

Two Different Routes to Hyper

Converged Infrastructure
From a storage architecture standpoint, there are two
common paths to delivering HCI.Although they may seem
similar, these approaches are fundamentally different:
Bolting storage software onto a hypervisor
Building storage software into the hypervisor
The common bolton approach to hyperconvergence runs
thirdparty storage software in virtual machines (VMs) that sit
on top of a hypervisor.
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Although it enables hyperconvergence, the bolton architecture approach has some distinct disadvantages. These limitations stem from the creation of a separate storage layer that
runs as a guest VM on each server that consumes dedicated
resources from each server.
Some of the biggest disadvantages of bolton hyper
convergence are
Excessive resource use
Lower performance and longer latencies
Limited integration with the existing management and
multiple operational environments
The VMware approach to HCI is built in. In this innovative approach, the storage software is inkernel, or built
directly into the hypervisor. This means convergence does
not happen on the hypervisor using a virtual appliance, but
instead happens inside the hypervisor.
The advantages of the hyperconverged approach are
compelling:
Reduced resource use
Better performance and lower latencies
Tight integration enabling endtoend management from a
single tool and a simplified operational model
Here are a few examples of the advantages of builtin hyper
converged storage:
Theres no need to dedicate certain virtual central processing units (vCPUs) to a virtual storage appliance
(VSA) on a perhost basis.
CPU resources are used only when theyre needed. You
dont need to reserve CPUs for the worstcase scenario.
You save CPU cycles by going through one stack (hypervisor), not two (hypervisor plus a guest operating system
[OS] of the VSA). Its plain math.
With hyperconverged storage, convergence takes place in the
hypervisor, not in a VM that runs on the hypervisor.

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Chapter4: The VMware Approach to HyperConverged Infrastructure

35

VMwarePowered HCI
To enable HCI solutions, VMware converges compute, storage (including storage networking), and management onto a
single, integrated layer of software that can run on industry
standard Intelbased hardware, as shown in Figure41. You
can radically simplify your data center and deliver lowcost,
highperformance compute and storage powered by VMware
HyperConverged Infrastructure software and Intel processors
and solidstate drives (SSDs). It is the ideal combination of
proven Intel hardware and VMware software for high performance and exceptional reliability.

Figure4-1:VMwarepowered HyperConverged Infrastructure.

The VMware HyperConverged Infrastructure software stack

is composed of three widely trusted solutions:
VMware vSphere: The hypervisor that defines the industry standard

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VMware Virtual SAN: A radically simple, enterprise

class storage solution that is uniquely embedded in the
hypervisor
VMware vCenter Server: A unified and extensible management solution
HyperConverged Infrastructure solutions powered by
VMware are available through a broad set of deployment
options, ranging from turnkey HCI appliances to more than a
hundred precertified servers through the Virtual SAN Ready
Node program.

Powered by VMware VirtualSAN

The VMware implementation of hyperconverged storage,
VMware Virtual SAN, pools together serverattached storage
(SSDs, HDDs, and other flash devices), as shown in Figure42.
It creates a shared datastore with advanced data services
designed for virtual environments. This datastore is highly
resilient with no single point of failure and optimized for the
latest flash technologies.

Figure4-2:VMware Virtual SAN.

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Chapter4: The VMware Approach to HyperConverged Infrastructure

37

Virtual SAN works with both flash drives and HDDs in standard x86 Intelbased servers to deliver enterpriseclass storage for virtualized applications. This is highperformance
storage thats built for the challenges of your businesscritical
applications.
Even better, Virtual SAN seamlessly works with the rest of the
VMware software stack. Management is simplified by using
standard, Intelbased hardware and common VMware tools
and interfaces across compute, storage, and networking. This
makes Virtual SAN the simplest storage platform for your VMs.
In the following sections, I walk you through the attributes of
VMware Virtual SAN.

Inkernel integration
Hyperconverged solutions use the hypervisor to support and
deliver storage functions and storage networking in software.
Theres no need for dedicated storage hardware, such as a
storage array, or for complex storage networking, such as a
Fiber Channel switch.
Because Virtual SAN is embedded inside the vSphere kernel,
Virtual SAN can deliver the highest levels of performance
without taxing the CPU with additional overhead. In addition, the inkernel architecture simplifies management and
eliminates risk associated with extra components and points
of integration. This is a major difference from the many virtualized storage appliances that run separately on top of the
hypervisor.

Flashoptimized performance
Because softwaredefined storage depends on the hypervisor,
the hypervisor is like the engine that moves the load along. So
topnotch hypervisor performance is key to topnotch storage
performance.
In the case of the VMware vSphere virtualization environment, the ESXi hypervisor is specifically designed to offer
great storage performance on flash hardware. This didnt
happen by chance. The ESXi hypervisor has been optimized
for more than ten years. With hyperconverged designs, the
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f unctionality that used to be implemented by the disk array

moves onto the same hosts where the workloads or VMs run.
Virtual SAN extends this performance advantage at the hypervisor layer with a distributed storage system architected from
the ground up to streamline storage operations and utilize the
capabilities of the latest flash technologies. As a result, applications benefit from fast response times and IT administrators
enjoy higher levels of VM density.

Efficiency advantages
In addition, advanced storage efficiency features include
deduplication, compression, and erasure coding. Intel processors and SSDs provide the performance to run these efficiency
and data reduction technologies inline before any data is written to the capacity tier of Virtual SAN.These features drastically improve the storage utilization rate (meaning you need
less physical storage to store the same amount of data).
And thanks to integration, those features which can consume a significant amount of CPU and memory overhead on
VSAbased HCI solutions have minimal impact on the compute overhead. This means you can turn them on and forget
them, even for mixed workload environments. No complicated
planning, no tough decisions, no need to monitor or adjust
the environment based on changing workloads.

Operational advantages
Operational advantages are perhaps the biggest win of the
hyperconverged approach. A hyperconverged storage
approach is built from the ground up to integrate and leverage all the functionality of the hypervisor, without more
operational overhead or any reduction of core functionality.
If you run a vSphere environment, you probably appreciate
the functionality of your virtualization layer (including such
things as vSphere High Availability and vSphere vMotion).
Presto! Now you can have the same functionality in vSphere
based hyperconverged storage, because its all embedded in
the hypervisor.

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Chapter4: The VMware Approach to HyperConverged Infrastructure

39

Hardware choice
To deliver the maximum value and flexibility, and ultimately a
path to the complete softwaredefined data center (SDDC), an
HCI solution shouldnt be tied to a specific hardware platform.
This is where the hardwareagnostic approach to deploying
VMware HCI solutions delivers differentiating choice, letting
you control your infrastructure.
True HCI flexibility allows you to choose your x86
server platform and vendor. All major x86 server vendors provide precertified hardware solutions ready to
run Virtual SAN.Choose from existing hardware bundles,
called Virtual SAN Ready Nodes, or pick supported components to customize your infrastructure. This flexibility
puts you in the drivers seat.
Theres a fast track to VMwarepowered HCI through
turnkey appliances. These offerings are delivered as
hardware appliances with more controlled configurations. Its a little less flexible, but you gain the immediate
benefits of faster deployment, integrated life cycle management, and simplified purchasing.

Elastic, nondisruptive scaling

VMware Virtual SAN is designed with a distributed architecture that allows for elastic, nondisruptive scaling. This is a key
architectural advantage of using the x86 platform. You can
run your data center in a modular fashion, like a cloud service
provider. As business needs change, HCI solutions powered
by Virtual SAN can scale up or scale out to meet the exact
needs of your applications.
This growasyougo model helps you spread your investments
over time.
There are two ways to scale, and both are pretty simple:
Scaling out increases capacity and performance at the
same time by adding a new host to the cluster.
Scaling up increases capacity and performance independently by adding new drives to existing hosts.

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Virtual SAN can be configured as either allflash or hybrid

storage. In a hybrid storage architecture, Virtual SAN pools
serverattached HDDs and SSDs to create a distributed shared
datastore:
Flash is used as a read cache/write buffer to accelerate
performance.
HDDs are used for data persistence.
This implementation costeffectively delivers very high performance, although with flash prices declining and advanced
space efficiency features available, the tipping point is
quickly shifting to allflash configurations being both faster
and lower cost.

The ideal storage for virtual machines

After reviewing all the characteristics of hyperconverged storage,
its apparent that this new approach
offers advantages that make it the
ideal storage for VMs.
Here are the most valuable advantages of hyperconverged storage:
Better priceperformance the
gains you expect with todays
servers

Integration of storage with the

hypervisor and its powerful
capabilities
Flexible options for deploying and
scaling your storage environment
Such benefits are the reasons
that hyperconverged storage has
become the ideal storage for VMs.
Its the purest form of SDS and the
fastest on-ramp to the SDDC.

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Chapter5

Transforming the
Operational Model with
Unified Management
In This Chapter
Managing and monitoring the hyperconverged infrastructure

environment

Taking operations down to the virtual machine level

Using policydriven automation
Enabling dynamic control of storage services

eady to jump down into the information technology (IT)

operations trenches? This chapter shows how hyper
converged infrastructure (HCI) transforms the operational
model with simple, unified management of resources.

SinglePaneofGlass
Management
If youre in IT operations, you know all about swivelchair
management when you hop from one interface to another
to manage different aspects of your environment. HCI helps
you simplify your life with singlepaneofglass management.
In a VMware environment, you can use your familiar vSphere
tools specifically VMware vCenter Server to manage
compute, storage, and networking from a common interface.

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vCenter Server gives you simple and automated control over

the virtual environment deploy, manage, and monitor in
one place with no additional tools required. Youll breathe
easier when you eliminate the need for multiple tools.
But dont assume that all HCI environments offer unified management. Be on the lookout for systems that require different
tools for HCI system, hypervisor, and/or storage management.

Advanced Monitoring
When it comes to system monitoring, your HCI environment
should incorporate builtin monitoring features.
For example, in a VMware environment, advanced performance and capacity monitoring are built directly into vCenter.
Check capacity usage quickly. Easily verify that your hardware is running the latest, certified firmware. Ensure performance is meeting your required levels.
If you want to enrich your VMwarepowered HCI solution
with proactive, sophisticated performance monitoring and
analytics features think custom dashboards and historical
trends you have the option to add the advanced capabilities of VMware vRealize Operations Manager and vRealize Log
Insight.
Capabilities like these help you gain the deep operational
visibility and an endtoend picture of the software stack and
environment for proactive monitoring and faster troubleshooting.

Taking Operations Down to

the Virtual Machine Level
At its essence, enterprise IT is all about application delivery.
Thats how users see the world: through the lens of their
applications. HCI is in sync with this view. With HCI, you can
adjust all your storage services for specific applications and
the virtual machines (VMs) where they reside.

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Chapter5: Transforming the Operational Model with Unified Management

43

HCI conforms to how users see the world, not how IT defines
infrastructure components. This is quite different from the
status quo in storage. Todays storage devices usually have
poor knowledge of applications. They see the world as
storagecentric logical unit numbers (LUNs) and file systems;
each offers a container with a static combination of capacity,
performance, and protection.
Leveraging storage abstraction at the data plane level, HCI
gives you much finer control over storage services, all the
way down to the VM level. This means you can create storage
services driven by application requirements, not by physical
storage constraints. In other words, its all about the needs of
the applications and the end users, not the backend hardware.

Automation Driven by Policies

To enable more efficient operations, nextgeneration HCI systems uses storage policies to drive automation. You can set
policies for an applications requirements for capacity, performance, availability, redundancy, and the like.
Basically, policies are templates that spell out storage requirements for VMs and the applications they run.
The management control plane automates VM placement. It
does this by identifying available datastores that meet the
applications storage requirements. This allows you to avoid
the tedious work that comes with provisioning VMs on a case
bycase basis.
The combination of automation and policybased management helps you simplify storage management. Better, it helps
you quickly deliver value to your customers the people
who use your IT services. For example:
Application admins can consume storage as a service,
without being slowed down by the servicefulfillment
bottlenecks that come with conventional approaches to
storage provisioning.
Storage resources are provisioned to the precise requirements of an application. The application admins get just
what they need, without costly overprovisioning.

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After storage policies are configured, your application admins

can choose their needed application or VM template. The control planes policy engine reads the associated storage policy
and then precisely provisions storage resources to match the
applications requirements.

Dynamic Control of
StorageServices
With todays static storage model, storage admins must
estimate (or make guesstimates) about the needs of d
ifferent
applications well in advance of deployment. They then
acquire the physical hardware and allocate it into pre
provisioned resource pools with different service levels for
capacity, performance, and protection. At that point, the
application is made available for consumption.
Its easy to see why this conventional model isnt ideal. Here
are a few of the many problems with this approach:
If an applications requirement doesnt precisely fit one
of the preestablished storage service levels, the storage
admins must make compromises.
If an applications requirements move outside the range
provided by the predefined storage resource pool, the
storage admins must do more work to move the application to the appropriate pool.
If actual aggregate storage demand doesnt line up with
the preallocated buckets, resources either are wasted or
dont meet demand.
Using softwaredefined storage (SDS), HCI shatters the conventional storage mold. All hardware and software resources
are presented as large pools of storage services that can be
allocated to applications. When application requests come
in for a specific storage service based on a given policy, HCI
dynamically configures the precise mix of data services just
the right amount of capacity, performance, and protection
to meet the needs of the application.
Much as you do with virtualized compute today, HCI uses
SDS to enable your IT team to precisely match demand and

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Chapter5: Transforming the Operational Model with Unified Management

45

supply without having much foreknowledge of the specific application requirements. Youre prepared for whatever
comes your way.

Programmable via Application

Programming Interfaces
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are at the heart of
anything thats softwaredefined. APIs give you the flexibility
to tailor your HCI environment to different use cases.
Specifically, the policydriven control plane provides integration points, using APIs, to enable the agile delivery of IT
services in private cloud environments and selfservice consumption of storage services by application owners. These
APIs allow you to integrate your HCI environment with data
center management tools, such as scripting and cloud automation solutions for selfservice consumption of storage.

The VMware Implementation:

vSphere Storage PolicyBased
Management
In a VMware environment, the foundation for the policybased
control plane is called VMware vSphere Storage PolicyBased
Management (SPBM).
SPBM allows you to capture your storage requirements for
capacity, performance, and availability in the form of templates, called VM storage policies. Based on these policy
templates, SPBM automates the provisioning and monitoring
of storage services. As the needs of individual VMs change,
SPBM gives them the storage resources they need. All this
adds up to faster storage provisioning for new applications.
The use of policies also simplifies the change process. The
virtual infrastructure (VI) admin can make changes to policies
at any time, and the necessary infrastructure changes are configured through automation. This makes it easier to keep your
applications in step with the changing needs of the business.
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Renewing the Friendship

between the Virtual
Infrastructure Admin and
theStorage Admin
In todays data centers, VI administrators and storage administrators are caught up in a codependent relationship. Neither
can function without the other. This codependency can lead
to an IT tugofwar, with each side pulling on the other to get
things done.
Using SPBM, SDS eliminates reasons for this tugofwar. SPBM
simplifies storage operations, automates manual tasks, and
eliminates the operational dependencies between the VI admin
and the storage admin. SPBM separates the provisioning of storage infrastructure from the consumption of storage by VMs.
In this softwaredefined world, the VI admin doesnt depend
on the storage admin to fulfill infrastructure change requests:
The storage admin is responsible for the upfront setup
of the storage capacity and data services, which are
published as the socalled virtual datastore. The storage
admin is always in control of the resources that are available for consumption, so the job is more efficient.
The VI admin uses the virtual datastore as a menu of
storage items to serve the needs of VMs. The VI admin is
selfsufficient policies can be changed any time. And,
like storage administration, VI administration is more efficient because the necessary infrastructure changes are
configured through automation.
The VI admin and the storage admin no longer depend on each
other to get things done every day. Each can be selfsufficient
for many daytoday tasks. Hey, they can be friends again!
Administrators have two basic roles in an SDS environment:
The storage admin makes large resource pools available
for dynamic consumption.
The VI admin defines policies and monitors execution.
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Chapter6

Getting Started with

HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Introducing deployment choices for VMwarepowered HCI
Exploring certified solutions
Explaining hyperconverged infrastructure appliances

eady to put theory to practice? This chapter highlights resources you can leverage to implement hyper
converged infrastructure (HCI) on your terms and timelines.

Implementing VMwarePowered
HCI: Deployment Choices
You have two main options for implementing VMwarebased
HCI, as shown in Figure61:
Certified solutions based on VMware Virtual SAN Ready
Nodes and Intel hardware
Integrated systems in the form of the turnkey VCE VxRail
HCI Appliance

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

Figure6-1:HCI deployment models.

Either of these options will radically simplify your data center

and deliver lowcost, highperformance compute and storage
powered by VMware Virtual SAN along with Intel processors
and solid state drives (SSDs). The natively integrated software
combines Virtual SAN, vSphere, and vCenter with HCI deployment choices on industrystandard Intel architectures.
VMware Virtual SAN offers the best storage value with radically simple management, high performance, low cost and a
futureproof road map supporting any app and any scale.
Intel Xeon processorbased servers are optimized for virtualization and uptime. Highperformance Intel Xeon processor
servers with Intel SSDs caching, and Intel Ethernet Converged
Network Adapters deliver consistent, high bandwidth and low
latency.
By being softwaredefined and delivered from the hypervisor,
Virtual SAN is completely hardware independent; it works
with any x86 vSpherecompatible server. This means that,
when youre ready to get rolling with HCI, you have a broad
range of VMware and thirdparty components and options for
configuring and deploying Virtual SAN nodes, whether youre
looking for maximum flexibility or the fastest time to market.
Regardless of the deployment model you choose, with Virtual
SAN you gain serverside economics. You can lower your
storage capital expenses by taking advantage of lowercost,
industrystandard Intelbased storage components while
gaining all the other benefits of the SDS operational model.

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Chapter6: Getting Started with HyperConverged Infrastructure

49

Certified Solutions: Virtual SAN

Ready Nodes
You can deploy Virtual SAN with a certified hardware platform from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendor
of your choice. These precertified platforms, called Virtual
SAN Ready Nodes, include a full hardware stack composed of
the server, controller, and drives. VMware and server OEMs
have jointly validated numerous server configurations that
are ready to run Virtual SAN.
This approach allows you to build Virtual SAN nodes that
cater to different workload capacity and performance needs,
by selecting the Ready Node of your choice from the menu of
options that are provided by each vendor. The Ready Nodes
can be purchased as is or further customized to meet your
needs for example, including more memory, central processing units (CPUs), or drives.
In short, Virtual SAN Ready Nodes are ideal as hyperconverged
building blocks for large data center environments looking for
automation and customizable hardware configurations.

Looking at the benefits of a

Virtual SAN Ready Node
Virtual SAN Ready Nodes help you simplify the buying decision, take control of your HCI, and accelerate time to value by
providing the following benefits:
Choice of hardware: Select a server OEM of your choice
and choose from more than 100 precertified Ready Nodes
designed for your workload needs. Each solution profile
provides a different price/performance focus.
Elimination of silos: Deploy your HCI environment on
the x86 platforms you already know and use. This means
no new hardware to learn, no new procurement process
to establish, and no new support model to manage.
Ease of order and customization: Purchase a single
stock keeping unit (SKU) preconfigured with CPU,
memory, network, I/O controller, hard disk drives
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(HDDs), and SSDs, and also optionally preloaded with

vSphere and Virtual SAN.Buy as is or customize to your
specific needs.
Licensing options: Leverage your existing enterprise
license agreements or simplify procurement of licenses
as a new customer.

Choosing the right Virtual SAN

Ready Node
Heres how to choose the right Virtual SAN Ready Node:
1. Refer to the Virtual SAN Hardware Quick Reference
Guide for pointers on how to identify the hardware
requirements for your workload profile and the
category of Ready Node that meets your needs:
http://partnerweb.vmware.com/programs/
vsan/Virtual SAN Hardware Quick Start
Guide.pdf.
2. Visit the Virtual SAN Ready Node Configurator for
stepbystep help picking a profile and identifying
the options from your vendor of choice: http://
vsanreadynode.vmware.com/RN/RN.

Implementing your Virtual SAN

Ready Node
Here are some tips for implementing your Virtual SAN Ready
Node:
Follow the vSphere Compatibility Guide. Be sure
to follow the guidelines and advice in the vSphere
Compatibility Guide for Virtual SAN.This online tool
(available at https://www.vmware.com/resources/
compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsan)
is regularly updated to provide the latest guidance from
VMware. Follow it precisely.
Always verify that VMware supports any hardware
components you plan to use for your Virtual SAN
deployment.

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Chapter6: Getting Started with HyperConverged Infrastructure

51

Create balanced configurations. As a best practice,

deploy ESXi hosts with similar or identical configurations
across all cluster members, including similar or identical
storage configurations. This ensures an even balance of
virtual machine (VM) storage components across the
disks and hosts cluster.
Design for the life cycle of the Virtual SAN cluster. For
both hybrid and allflash configurations, its important to
scale in a way that enables an adequate amount of cache
and capacity for your workloads.
Consider choosing hosts that have disk slots for additional capacity and provide an easy way to install additional devices into these slots.
Size for capacity, maintenance, and availability. A configuration with four nodes (or more) provides more availability options than a threenode configuration. Be sure
you have enough storage capacity to not only meet your
availability requirements but also allow for a rebuild of
components after a failure.

Integrated Systems: VCE VxRail

HCI Appliances
The VCE VxRail Appliance is a fully integrated, preconfigured,
and pretested VMware HCI appliance family. Built on VMware
vSphere and Virtual SAN, VxRail delivers an allinone information technology (IT) infrastructure transformation solution by leveraging a known and proven building block for the
softwaredefined data center (SDDC).

Storage area network power

in just two racks
With the power of a whole storage area network (SAN) in
justtwo rack units, these appliances provide a simple, cost
effective hyperconverged solution for a wide variety of
applications and workloads. VxRail Appliances deliver features for resiliency, quality of service (QoS), and centralized

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anagement functionality, enabling faster, better, and

m
simpler management of consolidated workloads, virtual
desktops, businesscritical applications, and remote office
infrastructure.

A familiar experience
Built on the foundation of VMware HyperConverged
Infrastructure and managed through the familiar VMware
vCenter Server, VxRail Appliances provide current VMware
customers with a familiar experience, plus the hallmark benefits of the virtual computing environment (VCE) increased
agility, simplified operations, and lower risk.
VxRail Appliances are fully loaded with integrated EMC
missioncritical data services, including replication, backup,
and cloud tiering, at no additional charge. As a VMwarebased
solution, the appliances also integrate with VMwares cloud
management platform and enduser computing solutions.
VxRail is also a platform for introducing advanced SDDC offerings like VMware NSX, vRealize Air Automation, and Horizon
Air Hybrid Mode.
Additionally, VxRail Appliances are discoverable and visible
in VCE Vision Intelligent Operations for a comprehensive IT
coretoedge management ecosystem. It provides a turnkey
solution for the simplest and fastest deployment.
HCI capabilities are also available in Integrated Systems from
VMware. These systems are powered by VMwares hyper
convergence software, vSphere for virtualization, and Virtual
SAN for storage. Integrated Systems combine VMware compute, storage, and networking with certified partner hardware
into HCI appliances. The result is an allinone, easytodeploy,
simpletomanage data center systems.

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Chapter7

Ten Reasons to Love

HyperConverged
Infrastructure
In This Chapter
Exploring operational benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure
Highlighting business benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure
Understanding evolving application needs

his book saves the best for last (or next to last, if youre
a stickler about chapter numbers). Heres the payoff for
hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI): really good outcomes
for both business and information technology (IT).

Improving Cost Efficiency

With an HCI, you can cut costs by using standards-based
server hardware as the basis for your storage systems.
Offtheshelf hardware can cut acquisition costs and reduce
ongoing m
aintenance expenses, compared to the costs of
buying and maintaining proprietary solutions. The result is an
overall drop in capital expenditures (CapEx) and operational
expenditures (OpEx).

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Improving Operational
Efficiency
One thing stands out when comparing HCI workflows with
traditional storage workflows: There are far fewer steps, and
theyre usually done by far fewer people. This is intentional.
HCI environments are designed to be automated from the
outset, not as an afterthought.
Heres an example of how HCI improves operational efficiency: Instead of carrying out the same storage provisioning
tasks over and over, you set policies and let software do the
job for you. Then make any necessary adjustments in storage
allocations over time. And even better, this can all be done
through familiar tools you already know and trust!

Enabling Dynamic
Responsiveness
Application storage service requirements change over time.
An application moves from pilot to production. A heavy workload needs more storage resources. Another workload needs
to be decommissioned.
In a hardwarecentric world, these changes can bring a lot of
heavy lifting for your IT staff but not in the application
centric world of HCI.HCI environments are designed for
agility. Change the application policy and the infrastructure
responds transparently and automatically, thanks to Storage
PolicyBased Management (SPBM). You gain more reliable service levels and save time and resources.

Improving Precision
and Granularity
In hardwarecentric conventional storage environments, overprovisioning is the norm. Admins configure static pools of

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Chapter7: Ten Reasons to Love HyperConverged Infrastructure

55

storage resources according to their best guesstimates about

the maximum storage and application needs. This leads to a
lot of wasted capacity.
In an HCI environment, storage services are consumed when
theyre needed, so theres little (or no) waste. Applications get
just the performance, capacity, and protection they need
and no more. Gross approximations give way to fine adjustments, and overprovisioning becomes a relic of the past.

Enabling Flexible Consumption

In traditional storage environments, your hands are tied by
the physical storage preallocations you make in the form of
logical unit numbers (LUNs). If you want something different,
go back to your storage admin to check whats available.
In an HCI environment, storage admins can make large virtualized resource pools available for dynamic consumption.
They meet the changing needs of virtual machines (VMs) and
the applications they support. The virtual infrastructure (VI)
admin then sets policies for individual VMs and lets the management control plane do the rest.

Scaling Elastically
In HCI with Virtual SAN, you can scale in an elastic, nondisruptive manner by taking advantage of x86 servers for storage:
Scaleout: Both capacity and performance can be scaled
out at the same time by adding a new host to the cluster.
Scaleup: Capacity and performance can be scaled up
independently merely by adding new drives to existing
hosts; just add solid state drives (SSDs) for more performance or hard disk drives (HDDs) for more capacity.
This growasyougo model provides both linear and granular scaling in an affordable manner. Buy only what you need
when you need it, and spread your investments out over time.

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Preparing for Future

Applications
A new style of application is becoming more common in IT
environments. Whether its a mobile application, big data
analytics, or new cloudnative applications, these newer applications are far more dynamic in their resource requirements
than traditional enterprise applications. The rising popularity
of containers and cloud applications is placing new demands
on your IT infrastructure.
The old approach of making static upfront assumptions about
an applications requirements no longer flies. Instead, the
underlying infrastructure should be poised to make automatic
adjustments to answer the applications changing needs.
Thats HCI.

Providing Consistent
Performance for Every
Application
Ensure you can run any application with confidence from
businesscritical applications to future cloudnative applications. Scale knowing that performance will not be compromised. And with options for allflash, you get the most
costefficient performance. Additionally, you can utilize space
efficiency features with minimal impact on CPU and memory
overhead.

Providing EnterpriseClass
Availability
With HCI, you can eliminate costly downtime. Enable maximum levels of data protection and availability with builtin
failure tolerance, asynchronous longdistance replication, and

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Chapter7: Ten Reasons to Love HyperConverged Infrastructure

57

stretched clusters. With fivenines (99.999%) availability, you

have peace of mind even when the unexpected occurs.

Providing a Building Block

toward the Private Cloud
HCI, with its modular architecture, is the fundamental building block toward the private cloud. And for companies wanting to move toward SDDC, the right HCI vendor will provide a
path to do so with additional networking and advanced management capabilities, and enable you to utilize the same data
management services across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Achieve the next generation of hyper-convergence
with VMware through the most comprehensive, integrated,
and interoperable software-defined data center stack.

What is VMware Cloud Foundation?

VMware Cloud Foundation is based on a modular, hyper-converged architecture, leveraging the hypervisor to deliver compute, storage, and networking in
single software layer (see the following figure).
The foundational components of VMware HCI solution are VMware vSphere,
VMware Virtual SAN, and VMware vCenter Server, which allow the convergence of compute, storage, and management onto a single layer of software
that can run on any commodity x86 infrastructure. vSphere abstracts and
aggregates compute and memory resources into logical pools of compute
capacity, while Virtual SAN, embedded in vSphere, pools server-attached
storage to create a high-performance, shared datastore for virtual machine
storage.
VMware Cloud Foundation takes HCI one step further by extending the convergence of compute and storage to include networking with VMware NSX.
NSX decouples the networking functionality from the physical switches and
embeds it into the hypervisor for enhanced security, greater network efficiency and elastic scalability at data-center scale. And for organizations that
want advanced automation and monitoring for their SDDC, Cloud Foundation
can be enhanced with additional cloud automation and cloud operation
solutions.
(continued)

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

(continued)

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Notes

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Notes

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Appendix

Resources

eady for a deeper dive into hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI)? Here are some top resources for your further
exploration.

HCI Backgrounders
Why HCI and Why Now? Explore the data center
infrastructure strategy that radically simplifies storage.
http://learn.vmware.com/36403_vSAN_HCI_ToF_
Reg?asset=vsantech&touch=1
IDC: Trends in HyperConverged Storage: Gain insight into
industry trends and ways that VMware VSAN addresses
hyperconverged storage concerns. http://learn.
vmware.com/36403_vSAN_HCI_ToF_Reg?asset=
whitepaper&touch=1
IDC: Reviewing the Current State of Hyperconvergence and
RealWorld Benefits of VMware Virtual SAN Deployments:
Learn about the trends driving organizations to deploy HCI
and discover the benefits of the solution and the amount of
CapEx and OpEx savings that VMware Virtual SAN customers
are seeing today. http://learn.vmware.com/36403_
vSAN_HCI_ToF_Reg?asset=currentstate&touch=1
Why Enterprises Are Embracing HyperConverged
Infrastructure: Learn why growing numbers of enterprises
arecatching the HCI wave. http://learn.vmware.
com/36403_vSAN_HCI_ToF_Reg?asset=vsan094&touch=1
What to Look for in HyperConverged Infrastructure:
AHandy Checklist: Explore the requirements for a fully featured HCI solution. http://learn.vmware.com/36403_
vSAN_HCI_ToF_Reg?asset=buyersguide&touch=1
These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

Free eLearning
VMware Virtual SAN Fundamentals [V5.5]: Learn how to
deploy and manage a softwaredefined storage solution with
VMware Virtual SAN. https://mylearn.vmware.com/
mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_
subject=55806
SoftwareDefined Storage Fundamentals: Learn about the
storage pillars of a SoftwareDefined Data Center and how
VMwares SoftwareDefined Storage (SDS) strategy helps
to mitigate the storage challenges faced by the Hardware
Defined Data Centers. https://mylearn.vmware.com/
mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_edu&a=one&id_
subject=64761

Free Preview of Courses

Sneak Peek On Demand Classroom for Virtual SAN:
Deploy and Manage [V6]: Learn how to deploy and manage
Virtual SAN, and configure Virtual SAN networks and clusters. Guide-me videos and lab exercises included. https://
mylearn.vmware.com/mgrreg/courses.cfm?ui=www_
edu&a=one&id_subject=70577

Other Resources
VMware HCI site: Explore deployment options and find
resources to get you started down the path to HCI. www.
vmware.com/products/hyperconvergedinfra
structure.html
Virtual SAN handson lab: Get handson HCI experience via
this easytouse online environment. www.vmware.com/go/
tryvsanhol?cid=70134000001MBhr
Virtual SAN free trial: Try Virtual SAN for 60 days at no cost
in your own environment. https://my.vmware.com/web/
vmware/evalcenter?p=vsan

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

Appendix: Resources

63

Virtual SAN TCO and Sizing Calculator: Quantify the

economic impact that Virtual SAN can have in your environment. https://vsantco.vmware.com
5 Reasons to Choose VMware HyperConverged Software:
Discover how VMware makes HCI simple and effective.
http://learn.vmware.com/36403_vSAN_HCI_ToF_
Reg?asset=techbrief&touch=1
Virtual Volumes product page: Learn the basics about
VirtualVolumes and find resources to get you started. www.
vmware.com/products/vsphere/features/virtual
volumes.html
Virtual Volumes handson lab: Try Virtual Volumes for
freewith this easytouse online environment. http://
labs.hol.vmware.com/HOL/catalogs
Whats New: VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes white
paper: Read this document to understand Virtual Volumes
concepts in depth. www.vmware.com/files/pdf/
products/virtualvolumes/VMwareWhatsNew
vSphereVirtualVolumes.pdf
Virtual Volumes Getting Started Guide: Use this document to
understand the operational requirements of a Virtual Volumes
implementation. www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/
virtualvolumes/vmwvspherevirtualvolumes
gettingstartedguide.pdf
VMware storage blog Virtual Blocks: Gain insights into
current trends and developments in HCI and softwaredefined
storage (SDS). http://blogs.vmware.com/virtual
blocks

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

64

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure For Dummies, VMware and Intel Special Edition 

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

These materials are 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

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