By Bruce Kornfeld
The cloud revolutionised the way IT infrastructure could be managed by providing organizations with a cost-efficient alternative to traditional on-premises hardware. For organizations in need of comprehensive infrastructure, the appeal of cloud storage solutions became desirable due to its scalable infrastructure, without the need for large upfront hardware investments, all while remaining budget friendly. This promised businesses the ability to quickly and easily expand their storage capacity, making it an ideal solution for companies with growing storage requirements.
However, despite the initial excitement surrounding cloud solutions, many organizations are now reconsidering their decision to deploy them. While the public cloud was once seen as a revolutionary solution, many businesses are finding that it doesn’t live up to its initial promises.
The anticipated cost savings haven’t necessarily materialised, and the reality of cloud pricing has proved more expensive than expected. A limited number of licensing and subscription options have pushed costs for businesses with smaller budgets quite high, and as a result, cloud can’t deliver on price. Not to mention, the rise of cyberattacks has left concerns around cloud security. Companies handling sensitive data may need to reconsider their use of the cloud, as weak security may leave them vulnerable to breaches. Adopting measures with tighter security measures in place will provide business leaders with peace of mind.
Many businesses, especially those with smaller and/or edge sites, are now left looking for alternative solutions that are better suited to their environment.
The hybrid cloud model allows edge customers to optimise performance and tighten data security. Utilising a hybrid approach and keeping the cloud, while bringing some applications and data in house, provides companies with the ability to exercise greater control over data storage and with the cloud supporting non-sensitive workloads. This allows companies to simultaneously reap the benefits of a tailored solution, minimising costs and maximising flexibility.
Hyperconverged infrastructure
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) offers many benefits as part of the above model and can be more suitable than cloud-only for many businesses. Similar to the cloud, HCI is a type of IT infrastructure that combines computing, networking, and storage resources into a single and streamlined data center architecture. Legacy servers use specific appliances such as SAN and/or NAS boxes for storage. While networking required a separate device as well. And server and virtualized storage were non-existent. Hyperconverged infrastructure converges those traditional data center hardware components into a single virtualized appliance, controlled by a software layer. It typically consists of industry-standard x86 servers, a hypervisor, and software-defined storage. Operating functions are distributed across the cluster by software running on each server node.
HCI can offer simplified data management and streamline the IT management process by integrating multiple IT elements into a single system. Consolidating compute, storage and networking into a single system allows for management from one single interface, reducing the demand for specialised IT skills and excessive hardware, which also contributes to reduced costs.
Additionally, HCI has attractive security features that ensures robust safety for sensitive data. HCI can spread data across multiple nodes to aid data security and boasts built-in backup and recovery features ensuring data stays safe, with minimal downtime. As such, HCI is an ideal solution for businesses that need to deploy data management with both the need for simplicity and compliance considerations.
With the expense of the cloud remaining one of the top drawbacks for businesses, the most attractive feature of HCI could be its budget friendly pricing structure. Paying for only the features needed, with the potential to add additional features as IT needs grow, allows infrastructure and data storage to grow with the business.
Bolstering the cloud with hyperconverged infrastructure support
Although the cloud still offers a range of benefits, many organizations are finding the financial implications, and lack of data control, too great a sacrifice. Increasing concern surrounding the security of the cloud is provoking businesses to reconsider how they manage their sensitive data. As such, many are opting to bring data storage and management back in-house with the aim of finding a better balance between cost and data control.
Organizations are still able to utilise the cloud but can now bolster its benefits and achieve a tailored solution by implementing HCI alongside cloud. This infrastructure is security-ready out of the box and using HCI as part of a hybrid data management strategy allows organizations to safely store data securely on-premises, allowing easy access to it from the edge, while running workloads from wherever necessary. Bringing sensitive data in-house and adopting HCI ensures that data stays safe and companies remain compliant with industry-specific regulation and requirements, giving businesses peace of mind.
Furthermore, HCI can integrate seamlessly with a variety of different cloud models, allowing organizations to easily combine HCI with current cloud solutions to create a hybrid solution tailored to specific IT needs. Using cloud and HCI as part of a hybrid strategy, enables businesses to run workloads across private and public clouds and also keep data close to the edge, which provides organizations with the best of both worlds.
Embracing the change
The cloud hasn’t lived up to its promises, leaving many businesses in search of a secure, cost-effective solution to meet their IT infrastructure and data storage needs. While the cloud still delivers many of its initial advantages, smaller businesses and those operating at the edge need more flexibility. Integrating HCI enables these businesses to reap the benefits of the cloud, while serving to bolster security and efficiency.
Using the cloud for non-sensitive data storage, gives organizations the ability to take advantage of the performance and cost-efficiency of a private cloud while also tapping into the scalability of the public cloud for non-sensitive data. By using HCI in conjunction with the cloud and keeping sensitive or frequently accessed data on local servers, organizations maintain full control over how and where their sensitive data is stored and accessed, while reaping cost saving benefits.
The author
Bruce Kornfeld, Chief Product Officer at StorMagic
What is hyperconverged infrastructure?
To learn more about hyperconverged infrastructure watch the video below or visit this StorMagic resource: Why Build Your Own Hyperconverged Infrastructure Solution?
